Onkei Ryo is striving to popularise process mining, a new business process improvement technique that can solve business operation issues faced by companies and organizations. We would like to introduce her story of working to promote process mining by utilizing the experience and skills related to launching various new business initiatives that she has gained after joining the company.
Onkei Ryo
Senior Engineer
Financial Systems Services Group
Originally from China, Liang came to Japan as a student in 2008 and joined Hitachi Systems in 2011. After joining the company, she was assigned to the Financial Systems Services Group where she was mainly in charge of launching new businesses. Throughout her career so far, she has achieved great success in the expansion of the leasing business in the Chinese market and the development of CTI services in Japan for contact centers of overseas vendors. She has received a great deal of praise for her ability to smoothly implement the launch of new businesses thanks to her deep understanding of the cultural and business customs of both Japan and abroad. In addition, since 2019, she has participated in a project to expand the Japanese market for process mining tools provided by the German company Celonis SE. Currently, she is in charge of the expansion of the "DX Support Service for Business Processes Through Process Mining" and is taking great strides in the promotion of process mining techniques.
This is Liang's motivation for working to promote the new data-driven business process improvement technique called process mining.
Process mining (*1) is a data-driven business reform technique that comprehensively maps business processes based on current information system logs to discover, monitor, and improve any issues with the business.
It has attracted a great deal of attention as world-renowned companies such as Siemens, BMW, and Uber have achieved significant results after it was implemented.
Systems that are targets for collecting event log data include ERPs such as SAP and Oracle, business systems such as Salesforce, Concur, and Ariba, and in-house-developed business systems. If data contains elements such as the activity (what kind of work), a timestamp (when the activity was performed), and a case ID (a unique ID assigned to each activity and represents the flow of the business), it is possible to systematically and comprehensively identify points for improvement such as rework, delays, duplication, and bottlenecks across business systems.
In 2019, Hitachi Systems introduced the Celonis Execution Management System (Celonis EMS), a tool that has a large global share in the field of process mining, and started business process improvement projects that use process mining techniques. To utilize the know-how and knowledge gained from this initiative and apply it to improving the business processes of clients, in 2020, Hitachi Systems signed a reseller agreement with Celonis EMS and started providing the "DX Support Service for Business Processes Through Process Mining" as a new line of business. Liang has been involved in these projects from the beginning.
In 2008, Liang left her home country of China to study at a graduate school in Japan, and after graduation, she joined Hitachi Systems in 2011 as she had a strong desire to work in planning in the IT industry. Since joining the company, she has worked on a variety of new business projects and made a particularly substantial contribution to a project to deploy systems developed by overseas vendors in Japan. In addition to being proficient in Japanese, she also has a good command of English and a deep knowledge of IT that allows her to conduct business negotiations with overseas vendors. This made her the perfect choice for the project to deploy Celonis EMS in Japan.
Liang had taken maternity leave for around two years before she was to participate in this project. During this time off work, she became a little concerned about whether her desired role in the company would be available upon her return. However, those concerns would prove to be unfounded. As employees with such a wealth of experience and skills are highly valued, she was selected as a member of a process mining-related project almost immediately after returning to work.
Liang got an immense feeling of satisfaction from this project as it actively contributed to promoting DX reforms in Japanese companies and she was able to fully utilize the wealth of experience she had gained through working on numerous new business projects. She was placed in charge of a wide range of tasks from planning and public relations to sales. Her roles included participating in the Hitachi Systems in-house Celonis EMS value verification project, formulating new service menus, creating proposal materials, planning demonstration contents, recruiting organizations for new service PoCs (Proof of Concepts), as well as providing support for press releases.
When the "DX Support Service for Business Processes Through Process Mining" was finally released in December 2020, Liang's shifted her focus to a role in pre-sales. In this role, she mainly worked on preparing proposals, conducting demonstrations, and promoting verification projects for clients who are considering using the service. In order to best prepare herself for a position in pre-sales, Liang acquired the "Implementation Professional" and "Solution Professional" certifications provided by the German company Celonis SE. Since the examinations for these certifications required a broad range of knowledge and understanding of fields other than Celonis products, she diligently studied the fundamentals of process mining, project implementation methods, business value creation methodologies, and data engineering.
Now, we would like to introduce an example of a process mining PoC project in which Liang was involved. This was a verification project to analyze the characteristics and causes and to propose measures to eliminate late payments for policyholders by insurance companies.
When Liang's team received the data from the client's system, they applied various analysis and visualization techniques and discovered that the delays were associated with the process being performed in a different order than was specified by the department in charge.
In response to this discovery, Liang and the project members devised measures such as better promoting usage of the system and issuing alerts for projects that were likely to result in delays in order to ensure that the processes progress with the optimally efficient workflow. These measures are expected to result in cost savings of several million yen per year.
As demonstrated in this example, this makes it possible to discuss the causes of problems while looking at the analysis results of process mining, and through in-depth analysis of problematic areas, it is possible to have more effective discussions based on solid facts. It can even lead to discovering issues that seasoned employees were not able to notice. By participating in various workshops for verification projects in her role in pre-sales and gaining multiple opportunities to directly observe the reactions of clients, Liang increasingly began to recognize the immense value of process mining and decided that she wanted to provide that value to more clients.
Now, in her fourth year of process mining, Liang has her sights aimed at a new goal to become a professional business process improvement consultant, who can help clients solve challenges using various business process improvement techniques such as process mining.
Regarding her new goal, Liang says, "I get a great sense of fulfillment when I discover bottlenecks hidden in business processes and work together with clients to eliminate them. For the time being, I am focusing on further improving my experience and skills in process mining, but process mining is not the only useful business process improvement method. By combining it with other approaches for business process improvement, I hope to be able to solve some of the more complex business process issues faced by clients."
In the future, Liang wishes to become a dedicated business process improvement consultant working across all the business divisions and departments in Hitachi Systems, but outside of work, she is taking care of her four-year old child. In addition to the valuable support of her family and colleagues, she is currently able to work full-time five days a week by taking full advantage of welfare programs such as the telecommuting program and childcare leave. She is committed to continuing to try her best in both her work and private life while utilizing the support, cooperation, and full understanding of those around her.
Liang is excited to tackle her new challenge to become a professional business process improvement consultant.
Process mining is a business process improvement approach that is still relatively unknown in Japan. While striving to expand sales of the DX Support Service for Business Processes Through Process Mining that uses Celonis EMS to analyze and improve business processes, she is actively working to promote further adoption by also sharing information about the benefits of process mining and holding workshops with other companies and organizations.
Process mining is an effective business process improvement approach that can be applied to any business in any industry. Collaboration between various divisions in the public, social infrastructures, finance, manufacturing and retailing fields within Hitachi Systems as well as collaboration with other companies within the Hitachi Group, can be expected to lead to more solutions to the issues facing clients. To create a synergy that transcends the traditional boundaries of organizations and departments, Liang is actively providing and sharing information within Hitachi Systems and between the Hitachi Group companies.
While also further polishing her process mining experience and skills, Liang is actively studying other business process improvement techniques so that she can become a professional with the capabilities to solve a wide range of business process issues faced by companies and organizations. By actively sharing her know-how and skills with the company, she hopes to also boost the problem-solving capabilities of Hitachi Systems as a whole.
Information contained in the articles are as of the date of publication, but may be subject to change without prior notice.
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