Why Process Mining Without AI Document Processing is Leaving Insights on the Table

Businesses today deal with huge amounts of data every single day. This data comes from all kinds of sources—emails, PDFs, scanned documents, customer forms, system logs, and more. To make sense of this chaos, many companies turn to process mining software. It’s a powerful way to see how work flows through your organization and find ways to make it better.

But there’s a catch. If your process mining setup doesn’t include AI document processing, you’re only seeing part of the story. You’re leaving valuable insights behind—sometimes without even realizing it.

In this blog, we’ll explain why combining these two tools is so important and how businesses can unlock smarter decisions by using them together.

What Is Process Mining?

Process mining is a way to analyze how your business actually works. It uses data from your software systems—like ERP, CRM, or accounting tools—to show each step of a process. Whether it’s handling an invoice, onboarding an employee, or delivering a product, process mining maps out what’s happening, where it’s slowing down, and what can be improved.

You get a visual view of your workflows and can easily spot bottlenecks or delays.

But process mining mostly works with structured data—things like timestamps, user IDs, and status updates that are already stored in a clean format.

That’s the problem.

Because in most companies, a big chunk of valuable data isn’t structured. It’s stuck inside documents.

What Kind of Data Is Being Missed?

Think about all the documents your business works with:

• Invoices in PDF format
  
• Customer complaints sent through email
  
• Purchase orders scanned as images
  
• Contracts in Word files
  
• Approvals written in free text
  

These documents often hold key steps in a process. For example, a delayed invoice payment might be because of a missing signature in a PDF. Or a refund request might be approved through an email chain.

If your process mining software can’t read and understand this document-based data, you’re only getting half the picture.

Enter AI Document Processing

This is where AI document processing comes in. It enables computers to read, comprehend, and extract information from unstructured documents—just as a human would.

With technologies such as OCR (Optical Character Recognition), machine learning, and natural language processing, AI document processing can:

• Read scanned images and PDFs
  
• Understand the meaning behind written text
  
• Pick out important details like names, dates, amounts, and signatures
  
• Learn from past documents to improve accuracy over time
  

This means documents that were once invisible to your software now become valuable sources of information.

Why These Two Technologies Are Better Together

When you marry process mining software with AI document processing, you have the whole story of your processes—both from your systems and your documents.

Here’s how that plays out.

Suppose your finance people need to know why invoice approvals are delayed. Process mining shows that the delay happens after the invoice is submitted but before it’s approved. That’s useful—but it doesn’t explain why.

Now, bring in AI document processing. It analyzes the actual invoices and emails. It finds that most delays are linked to missing purchase order numbers or incorrect tax information, which requires back-and-forth emails before approval.

Now you don’t just know where the problem is—you know why it’s happening.

This is how you go from basic process improvement to true operational intelligence.

Key Benefits of Combining Both Tools

1. More Complete Data Analysis

When you include unstructured data from documents, your process mining results are richer and more accurate. You stop missing steps that were happening outside of your main systems.

2. Better Visibility into Human Actions

Not all processes are handled by software. Many still rely on people reading and responding to documents. AI document processing captures these human-based steps and feeds them into your process map.

3. Smarter and Faster Decisions

AI reads and extracts key information from documents in real time. That means faster insights and quicker problem-solving.

4. Easier Compliance Tracking

If your business is in a regulated industry, this is a game-changer. You can track compliance steps inside contracts, emails, or policy documents without manual effort.

5. More Effective Automation

Once you understand your full process—including document-based steps—you can find better places to automate. Whether it’s auto-filling forms or routing documents for approval, you’ll know exactly what can and should be automated.

Real-World Examples

Many industries are already combining these tools and seeing strong results.

Finance: Banks use AI to extract data from loan documents and combine it with process mining to track approval times and compliance gaps.

Healthcare: Hospitals process insurance forms and medical records using AI document processing, then analyze those workflows using process mining.

Manufacturing: Suppliers use these tools to monitor delivery schedules, analyze scanned contracts, and ensure compliance with terms.

Retail: Retailers track return processes by combining customer emails and scanned receipts with order data to understand bottlenecks.

What Happens If You Skip AI Document Processing?

If you’re relying only on process mining software, you’re:

• Ignoring key steps that happen outside of your core systems
  
• Making decisions based on partial data
  
• Missing out on insights hidden inside documents
  
• Taking longer to solve problems because you can’t see the full picture
  

In short, you’re leaving insights on the table. And in a competitive business world, that can cost you time, money, and customer trust.

How to Get Started

You don’t need to overhaul your entire tech stack to benefit from this combination. Here’s a simple way to start:

1. Pick a process to improve — Something document-heavy like invoice approvals or employee onboarding.
   
2. Use process mining software to map the current steps using system data.
   
3. Add AI document processing to read and analyze related documents.
   
4. Compare the new insights — Look at what extra steps or root causes appear once document data is included.
   
5. Optimize and repeat — Make improvements based on the full data, then expand to other areas.
   

Final Thoughts

Process mining gives you powerful insights into how your business runs. But if you’re not including document data, you’re only seeing part of the picture. The full story—the one that shows you not just where problems are happening, but why—requires both process mining software and AI document processing working together.

In a world where business speed and data accuracy matter more than ever, using only one of these tools is like watching a movie with the sound turned off. You’ll get the idea, but you’ll miss the details that matter most.

So, if you’re ready to unlock your business’s full potential, don’t leave your insights on the table. Bring your systems and your documents together—and let the data tell the whole story.