Process mining is a process management technique that allows for the analysis of business processes based on event logs. During process mining, specialized data-mining algorithms are applied to event log datasets in order to identify trends, patterns and details contained in event logs recorded by an information system. Process mining aims to improve process efficiency and understanding of processes. Process mining is also known as Automated Business Process Discovery (ABPD).

Process mining techniques allow for extracting information from event logs of various enterprise systems. Virtually any type of logs can be used for process mining purposes. It can be audit trails of a workflow management system or the transaction logs of an enterprise resource planning system. Even a visitor log of a web server indicating a sequence of user navigation across portal pages can serve as an information for business process discovery.

Process mining development substantially relies on ProM framework, which as a renown open source solution developed by Eindhoven University of Technology. ProM provides a platform to users and developers of the process mining algorithms that is easy to use and easy to extend. It recently became the de facto standard process mining platform in the academic world by establishing an active, recognized community of contributors and users, and to create awareness for the power of process mining technology by promoting applications and industrial uptake. It actively advances the state-of-the-art of process mining technology by developing methods that really work, by creating an open community, and by providing a stable and easily extensible platform, which optimally supports process mining. (http://www.processmining.org/)

To be able to apply process mining techniques it is essential to extract event logs from data sources (e.g., databases, transaction logs, audit trails, etc.). Process mining largely relies on specific representation of business logs in a form of XES files. XES is the standard format for process mining supported by the majority of process mining tools. XES was adopted in 2010 by the IEEE Task Force on Process Mining as the standard format for logging events. It is now in the process of becoming an official IEEE standard.

Our team has substantial experience in working with XES files and converting process logs in various proprietary formats into XES files for further process discovery. If your organization is planning process mining, we will be happy to assist these initiatives by porting your process streams to generally recognized log standards and further analysis in ProM and other process mining tools.