Process mining has become a popular approach to understanding operations. The promise is compelling: analyze system logs and event data to reveal how processes actually flow through your organization.
But there's a fundamental problem with this approach.
The Log-Only View
Process mining can only see what software records. Every insight it generates comes from system events—timestamps, transactions, status changes in your ERP, CRM, or workflow tools.
What it can't see:
- The workarounds your team uses when the official process doesn't work
- The tribal knowledge passed from employee to employee
- The informal communication channels that actually get things done
- The decision-making context that shapes every action
The Tacit Knowledge Gap
Most operational knowledge is tacit—it exists in people's heads, not in systems. An experienced employee knows:
- Which approvals are really required vs. which are rubber stamps
- Who actually makes decisions vs. who just signs off
- When to follow the process vs. when to find another way
- What context matters vs. what can be ignored
This knowledge is invisible to process mining. No matter how sophisticated your log analysis, you're only seeing the shadow of how work actually happens.
A Different Approach
What if instead of analyzing logs, you could capture tacit knowledge directly?
That's the premise behind conversational process discovery. Rather than inferring processes from system data, you interview the people who actually do the work. AI-powered conversations can capture:
- How work really flows, including the unofficial paths
- The reasoning behind decisions
- The context that makes processes make sense
- The friction points that never show up in logs
The Complement, Not the Competition
This isn't to say process mining is useless. Log analysis provides valuable quantitative data about what systems record. But it's incomplete.
The most powerful approach combines both:
- Process mining for quantitative insights from system data
- Conversational discovery for qualitative understanding of how work really happens
When you bring these together, you finally see the complete picture of your operations.
Moving Forward
If you've been frustrated by the limitations of process mining—if you know there's more to your operations than what shows up in logs—it might be time to explore a different approach.
Your operations are more than your systems record. It's time to capture the full picture.
