Business Process and Workflow Mining

✨ Feature

GermainUX monitors and analyzes business processes and user workflows in real time. It helps organizations understand how work is performed, where processes slow down or fail, and how much productivity is lost.

By correlating user activity, business events, application performance, and technology data across the complete technology stack, GermainUX can automatically identify:

Item

Workflow bottlenecks

Delayed or failed process steps

Abandoned processes

Repeated or unnecessary work

Excessive waiting time

Processes exceeding their SLA

Lost employee productivity

Differences across users, teams, applications, and process types

Technology issues affecting business operations

GermainUX connects process performance with the user and technology evidence required to understand why delays and inefficiencies occur.

⚙️ Key Capabilities

Capability

Details

Real-time process monitoring

Tracks the progress, completion, performance, and status of business processes as they occur.

Workflow discovery

Identifies process steps and user activities from collected data, including workflows that were not fully defined in advance.

Cross-application analysis

Follows processes across browser, Windows, mobile, backend, database, integration, and other technologies.

Milestone analysis

Measures the performance and efficiency of individual process steps.

Overrun detection

Identifies active or elapsed process time exceeding an accepted SLA.

Lost-productivity detection

Quantifies time users spend waiting for technology beyond an accepted threshold.

Segmentation

Compares process performance by user, team, role, application, workflow, region, version, or other attributes.

Root-cause analysis

Correlates process delays with user activity, errors, application performance, technical traces, and Session Replay.

Alerts and automation

Notifies teams or executes actions when a process stalls, fails, exceeds its SLA, or meets another defined condition.

📡 Monitor Workflows Across the Technology Stack

Business processes frequently span multiple applications and technologies.

For example, an employee may:

  • Start a task in a CRM application.

  • Retrieve information from another internal system.

  • Copy data between applications.

  • Wait for an integration or backend service.

  • Complete the task in the original application.

Monitoring only one application would provide an incomplete view of this workflow.

GermainUX can combine data collected from:

Source

Browser-based applications

Native Windows applications

Mobile applications

User interactions

Application logs

Backend services

APIs and integrations

Databases

Infrastructure

Other monitored data sources

This cross-technology view helps teams identify inefficiencies that would otherwise remain divided across separate monitoring tools and application boundaries.

📚 Business Process Concepts

🔁 Business Process

A Business Process, also referred to as a workflow or business operation, is the parent entity representing the complete activity being monitored.

Examples include:

Example

Creating a quote

Resolving a service request

Processing an insurance claim

Completing a customer order

Onboarding an employee

Updating a customer account

🎯 Step or Milestone

A Step represents a milestone, phase, or activity within a Business Process.

Examples might include:

Example Step

Open request

Review customer information

Validate eligibility

Obtain approval

Submit order

Close request

Steps allow teams to identify which part of a process creates the greatest delay, failure rate, or productivity loss.

⏱️ Interval

An Interval represents user activity that spans a measurable period.

It may include:

Activity

Scrolling

Entering text

Clicking or selecting controls

Reviewing information

Navigating between applications

Updating fields

Waiting for a response

For example, an interval can represent the time during which a user reviews and updates a service request.

⚙️ Business Process Models

GermainUX supports two process-monitoring models: Traditional and Collaborative.

📑 Traditional Business Process

A Traditional Business Process has a predefined structure and an expected sequence of steps.

Characteristic

Traditional process

Step definition

Defined in advance

Number of steps

Fixed

Execution order

Sequential

Completion

Occurs when the final expected step is reached

Data sources

User actions, application events, logs, transactions, errors, and other collected data

Best suited for

Predictable, repeatable, and structured workflows

Examples include:

Example

Checkout funnels

Application submission processes

Approval workflows

Order processing

Structured service procedures

GermainUX evaluates how users and transactions progress through the expected sequence and identifies skipped, delayed, repeated, failed, or abandoned steps.

🤝 Collaborative Business Process

A Collaborative Business Process supports dynamic, iterative workflows that may involve multiple users, sessions, applications, and activities.

Characteristic

Collaborative process

Step definition

Discovered from collected activity; steps do not need to be predefined

Number of steps

Dynamic or unlimited

Execution order

Non-sequential and potentially out of order

Participation

Multiple users and sessions can contribute to the same process

Duration tracking

Activity durations accumulate against the relevant process and steps

Completion

Occurs when a qualifying activity indicates that the process is complete

Primary data source

User activity collected through GermainUX Real User Monitoring

Best suited for

Collaborative, evolving, long-running, or non-linear workflows

Examples include:

Example

Case management

Complex service requests

Sales opportunities

Insurance claims

Collaborative document preparation

Long-running customer-support activities

A user can return to an earlier step, another user can continue the work in a later session, and activity can occur in a different order from one process instance to another.

🧭 Choosing a Process Model

Use Traditional when…

Use Collaborative when…

The expected steps are known in advance

Steps must be discovered from user activity

Steps should occur in a defined sequence

Activities can occur in different orders

A final step clearly marks completion

A status or qualifying activity indicates completion

One journey or transaction drives the process

Multiple users or sessions contribute over time

The objective is funnel or sequential-flow analysis

The objective is analyzing collaborative or evolving work

warning Overrun and Lost Productivity

GermainUX distinguishes between time spent actively performing work, total process duration, and time lost while waiting for technology.

📈 Lost Productivity

Lost Productivity represents technical waiting time exceeding an accepted threshold.

Examples include time spent waiting for:

Waiting For

A page or screen to load

A search to complete

A backend request to return

An application to recover from a freeze

A transaction to finish processing

An error to be resolved or retried

Calculation:

Lost Productivity = Maximum of 0 and (Technical Waiting Time − SLA Threshold)

👥 User Overrun

User Overrun represents active user time exceeding the accepted duration for a task.

This may indicate:

Possible Cause

An unnecessarily complex process

Confusing application design

Excessive data entry

Repeated work

Training or adoption problems

Application switching or manual workarounds

Calculation:

User Overrun = Maximum of 0 and (Active User Time − SLA Threshold)

⏰ Process Overrun

Process Overrun represents total elapsed process time exceeding the accepted duration.

It can include active work, technical waiting time, handoffs, inactivity, and delays between steps.

Calculation:

Process Overrun = Maximum of 0 and (Total Process Duration − SLA Threshold)

⚖️ Comparison

Measure

Time being measured

What it indicates

Lost Productivity

Technical waiting time beyond the SLA

Time likely lost because technology impeded the user

User Overrun

Active user time beyond the SLA

Additional effort required to complete the task

Process Overrun

Total elapsed process time beyond the SLA

Overall delay in completing the process

📊 Analyze Productivity at Scale

GermainUX aggregates productivity and process measures across the organization.

This allows teams to quantify:

Metric

Total time lost

Number of affected users

Number of affected processes

Processes generating the greatest overrun

Teams or populations experiencing the most inefficiency

Applications associated with lost productivity

Trends over time

Improvements following corrective action

Results can be segmented by:

Segment

Organization

Team

User

Role

Application

Process type

Process step

Region

Time period

Other captured attributes

🛑 Analyze Efficiency by Milestone

Milestone analysis identifies the process steps responsible for the greatest delays, failures, or productivity loss.

For each step, teams can analyze:

Measure

Active user time

Technical waiting time

Total elapsed time

SLA compliance

Overrun

Error frequency

Completion and abandonment

Affected users and sessions

This helps determine whether the overall process problem originates from one inefficient step or is distributed across the workflow.

🔎 Investigate Lost Productivity

GermainUX Analysis dashboards help teams investigate individual examples of overrun or lost productivity.

An investigation can include:

Investigation Item

Duration by process step

Duration by user

Active work versus waiting time

Related errors and performance events

Application and technical attributes

Timeline of user and system activity

Related KPIs

Technical traces

Session Replay

From the Analysis dashboard, users can open Session Replay to see how the inefficiency occurred and what the user experienced.

Business Process Waterfall Portlet

Learn more about Business Process insights in Session Replay.

🔧 KPIs and Configuration

GermainUX includes default KPIs and sample Business Processes that demonstrate the available capabilities.

Because workflows vary by organization, application, and team, most implementations require Business Processes tailored to the specific use case.

Custom configuration may define:

Config Item

Process identity

Start and completion conditions

Steps or milestones

Expected sequence

SLA thresholds

User and team attributes

Completion, failure, or abandonment conditions

Overrun and lost-productivity calculations

Dashboards, alerts, reports, and automated actions

Review the available Business Process KPIs.

The GermainUX team can help configure Business Processes for your use cases at no additional cost.

🔔 Alerts and Automated Actions

GermainUX can monitor process conditions continuously and respond when:

Condition

A process exceeds its SLA

A step takes longer than expected

A process stops progressing

A transaction fails

Abandonment increases

Lost productivity exceeds a threshold

An unusual trend or pattern is detected

A specific process population is affected

Depending on the configuration, GermainUX can:

Action

Send an email, SMS, or platform notification

Notify a collaboration or incident-management system

Generate a report

Create or update a ticket

Execute a script, API, query, or automated action

Trigger additional diagnostics

Escalate the issue according to its priority

💼 Use Cases

💡 Key Takeaway

GermainUX shows how business processes actually operate, where time is lost, who is affected, and whether the underlying cause is related to users, workflow design, or technology.

By connecting real-time process mining with user activity, technical evidence, and Session Replay, GermainUX helps organizations improve workflow efficiency, employee productivity, application adoption, and business outcomes.

Component: Engine, RUM JS, RUM Extension

Feature Availability: 2022.1 or later