Timelines: View Your Organization from the Fourth Dimension

Hello and welcome back to Feature Highlights, our monthly deep dive into the world of Noreja Process Intelligence. This month, we’re excited to share a feature that’s not just a tool, but a window into the evolution of your business processes: Timelines. We believe that understanding your organization’s journey is key to shaping its future, and Timelines is your time machine for this exploration.

Using the Feature: The Magic of Object-Centric Process Mining

Imagine a traditional painting, capturing a single, static moment. Now, imagine a video, unfolding the story, second by second. This is the power of Timelines in the realm of process intelligence. Utilizing the cutting-edge approach of object-centric process mining, Timelines offer a dynamic and comprehensive view of your business processes, unfolding over time.

View Full Aggregate Processes with Durations

Start with the big picture. With the analyzer and our standard trusty example dataset, you can see your entire business process in one go, understand the average durations of each step, and get a sense of the workflow. However, this is just the surface. The real power lies in digging deeper into trends.

Observe Changes Over Time with the Timeline View

 Switch to the timeline view to track how each step in your process evolves over time. For instance, you might notice that the processing time for order fulfillment spikes every third quarter. This insight can prompt a deeper analysis – is it due to increased sales, staffing issues, or something else? Understanding these patterns helps you anticipate and manage similar situations in the future.

Detect Seasonal Effects on Processes:

Timelines brilliantly highlight how external factors, like seasons, impact your processes. A noticeable increase in duration between November and January could be due to holiday season slowdowns. Or, it might be a signal to investigate other underlying issues, such as supplier delays or inventory challenges. These insights are crucial for planning and optimizing your operations year-round.

Identify Process Anomalies with Negative Time Durations:

 Thanks to the advanced capabilities of causal process mining, Timelines can reveal if steps in your process are happening out of order. If a step that’s supposed to follow another consistently happens first, it’s a red flag. This feature acts as a ‘smell test,’ highlighting areas in your process that might be routinely violated and need your attention.

Real-World Use Cases: Bringing Timelines to Life

Now that we’ve introduced the Timelines feature and its capabilities, let’s ground our discussion with some tangible, real-world scenarios. These examples will help you visualize how Timelines can be applied in your day-to-day operations, especially in small to medium-sized industrial organizations.

1. Optimizing Manufacturing Schedules
   • Problem: A manufacturing company struggles with production delays every summer.
   • Solution: By analyzing their process with Timelines, they discover that machinery maintenance, typically scheduled during this period, is the culprit. Adjusting the maintenance schedule to a less busy time reduces delays and increases efficiency.
2. Enhancing Supply Chain Management
   • Problem: An electronics retailer notices inconsistent delivery times from suppliers, affecting inventory levels.
   • Solution: Using Timelines, they identify specific months when delays are prevalent. They trace this back to seasonal demand spikes in raw materials. This insight allows them to renegotiate delivery schedules and maintain optimal inventory levels.
3. Streamlining Accounts Payable
   • Problem: An organization faces challenges in managing cash flow due to irregularities in the accounts payable process.
   • Solution: Timelines show that invoice processing times often dip into the negatives. Further investigation reveals that this coincides with manual invoice creation that some employees do in advance in order to not clash with financial reporting periods. By redistributing workload and implementing automated solutions during these peaks, they achieve smoother cash flow management and higher process adherence.
4. Enhancing Employee Performance
   • Problem: A company notices a decline in employee productivity but can’t pinpoint the cause.
   • Solution: Timeline analysis indicates that productivity dips align with periods of high staff turnover. This realization leads to the implementation of better onboarding and training programs, resulting in sustained employee performance.
5. Seasonal Marketing Campaign Analysis
   • Problem: A retail business is unsure about the effectiveness of their seasonal marketing campaigns.
   • Solution: They use Timelines to correlate marketing campaign periods with sales data. This reveals which campaigns are driving sales and which aren’t, leading to more informed marketing strategies in the future.

Each of these scenarios illustrates the practical application of the Timelines feature in addressing common challenges faced by businesses. By harnessing the power of object-centric process mining and identifying seasonal effects on processes, you can gain invaluable insights, enabling smarter decisions and more efficient operations. Embrace the potential of Timelines and transform the way you view and manage your business processes!

Building Trust and Reliability in Every Step

At Noreja, we’re passionate about bringing transparency and clarity to your business processes. We understand that not everyone is a process management expert, which is why Timelines is designed to be intuitive and insightful. It’s not just about presenting data; it’s about telling the story of your organization in a way that’s easy to understand and act upon.

For process managers, department heads and the executive alike, Timelines can be a game-changer. Whether you’re looking to streamline your manufacturing processes, optimize your supply chain, or simply gain a better understanding of your daily operations, this feature provides the insights you need in a clear, accessible format.

Embrace the Future with Confidence

In today’s fast-paced business world, staying ahead means not just knowing where you are, but understanding where you’ve been. Timelines empower you with this knowledge, enabling you to make informed decisions, anticipate challenges, and seize opportunities with confidence.

We invite you to explore Timelines and discover how it can transform your understanding of your business processes. Dive into the fourth dimension with Noreja Process Intelligence, and see your organization’s journey like never before. Just reach out to us below for a demo!

Stay tuned for our next Feature Highlight, where we will explore another exciting aspect of the Noreja Process Intelligence suite. Until then, keep innovating and driving your business forward!