with process optimization assess processes identify bottlenecks and drive business results servicenow's process optimization capability lets you visualize your process workflows using data pulled from servicenow audit logs with this information you can identify performance bottlenecks and areas for automation and make continual improvements that advance business outcomes the current path toward process optimization involves three steps first you examine reports kpis and dashboards next you hold meetings with all process owners and other stakeholders to manually map your process then in most cases you engage consultants to help you revise the process the entire procedure is both time consuming and expensive a single process assessment usually takes about 12 weeks and costs over 100 000 the key challenge is the inability to see how the end-to-end process is working therefore you lack hard data identifying weaknesses leaving you with reactive improvements based on incomplete data there are no actionable data based insights on which you can rely the process optimization application represents a radical improvement powered by a process mining engine it enables performance monitoring and performance analysis you can complete conformance checks to verify your in-compliance and most importantly engage in proactive continual optimization let's take a look at how it works process optimization taps information from servicenow audit logs and feeds tasks through a mining engine to produce in-depth process visualizations these let you see which records follow which workflow paths the speed at which they travel where bottlenecks arise and more critically this information enables complete process transparency and proactive continual process improvement because process optimization analysis is pulled from your comprehensive servicenow audit trail data continual improvement opportunities are not limited to the process but include the people technology and services aspect of each transaction those who will benefit from these capabilities include process owners and business process analysts continual improvement managers will also benefit and any other personnel charged with reviewing business reports and data to improve performance and customer satisfaction on the itsm side key use cases include the need to optimize and simplify processes like incident problem change and request management there are several points of entry to optimize a process including performance analytics kpis dashboards continual improvement initiatives benchmark dashboards and more each point of entry will address various use cases and help drive multiple business goals each point of entry leads you to the process optimization workspace this workspace is equipped with pre-defined ready-to-use process models if the appropriate predefined model is not available it's easy to create a new one let's walk through the three simple steps to create a new process model give it a name in this case problem process optimization you then pick your table in this case problem pick a duration here we'll limit the review to incidents occurring within the last three months extracting the data pulls the audit logs from the table in order to create a process visualization this is a simple quick and accurate way to create a new process model or you can use one of the out of the box process models available in itsm process optimization content packs for example here is a model that shows the cases closed during the last three months our incident process owner emily johnson wants to optimize her incident workflow by using process mapping process mapping is the key capability of the process optimization solution it provides an as is view of an entire process akin to a google map view for example emily can see how the state transition or assignment group transition is happening on the process that is being analyzed on the left she has flexible filters to analyze the process based on predefined breakdown in project model definitions on the right the notes section lets emily collaborate with team members and use the continual improvement icon to submit a new initiative with the push of a button whether creating new process models or leveraging existing models emily is equipped with the tools and resources to advance business outcomes and identify areas for improvement integrating process mining performance analytics continual improvement management and actionable insights in one location without a need to send data outside of the now platform servicenow reconceives process optimization for greatly increased transparency ease and accuracy you can now base process related or improved initiative decision making on real-time data that's the power of end-to-end process visibility and performance analysis capabilities available with process optimization