Process management is very much enjoying a rise in popularity. As businesses everywhere feel the urgent need to accelerate digital transformation, process management comes into sharp focus as a primary area for improvement—and one with valuable opportunities for ROI.

While business process management continues to be a key area of emphasis for businesses, techniques like process mining and task mining have also entered the lexicon, becoming popular themselves. But what do these terms mean exactly? Are process mining and task mining interchangeable?

Today’s blog looks at these rising stars in the technology vernacular. Let’s dive in to understand the differences between process mining and task mining.

What Is Task Mining?

Task mining provides a way to discover and analyze every step of an individual task as it relates to the goals of a given process.

Task mining software provides an easy way to capture user data, recording all the steps a user makes on his or computer to complete a specified task right from the user’s computer. This ensures an accurate collection of data that is not reliant on human memory or bias, and an easy way to acquire it.

The ultimate goal of tasking mining is to capture highly detailed accurate data so that it can be used to first analyze the path to completion, and then improve it for operational efficiency with automation.

What Is Process Mining?

The concept of process mining is similar to task mining in that it involves the collection of business process data. However, unlike task mining, process mining looks at the enterprise level, looking at the totality of the process for areas of improvement.

The goal of process mining is not just to improve operational efficiencies—although that is certainly part of the objective—but to also identify best areas for automation across the entire organization. When process mining is a feature of a larger process intelligence solution like EPSoft’s, it also provides a full analysis of the mined process(es) and recommendations for potential improvements.

What Is the Difference Between Task Mining and Process Mining?

Both task mining and process mining can be vehicles for process automation and all the benefits that come along with it, thanks in large part to more effective workflow and resource management. However, while they have overlap in this regard, they are different things.

The easiest way to think about it is to understand that task mining is a part of process mining, the same way a task is part of a process. The process considers the workflow start to finish across the entire company, while the task concentrates on how a given stage of the process is completed.

Much like robotic process automation (RPA) and intelligent automation (IA) are complementary technologies, so too are process mining and task mining techniques.

Taking Process Mining Further With Process Intelligence

Task mining offers visibility into everything that happens at the task level, helping you optimize the individual steps of a task. Process mining zooms out further, looking at the end-to-end processes across the enterprise. But to gain the most from these techniques, they should be used as part of a larger process intelligence strategy.