business process discovery plan

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Creating a Business Discovery Plan: Methods & Examples

Axel Lavergne

Axel is one of Salesdorado's co-founders. He's also the founder of reviewflowz.com, a review management tool for B2B SaaS companies

The commercial discovery plan consists of 5 phases:

1. Identify the client context 2. Understand the needs 3. Uncover buying motivations 4. The pitch 5. The next steps

In this article, we offer you a complete guide to designing a successful sales discovery plan, and at the end of the article we offer you some sample questions to include in your scripts.

What is a discovery plan? Definition

The discovery plan is a series of questions – some call it a script – that is designed to help your salespeople identify the information that will enable them to make the right diagnosis and offer the right deal to the prospect.

A well-structured discovery plan collects relevant information. This data allows you to refine your sales arguments. In this way, your sales representatives can better understand the objections of the person they are talking to.

Going further

To optimise your prospecting and improve your chances of closing a sale, discover our guide on commercial prospecting techniques.

Why is the discovery plan an essential component of your sales process?

The customer discovery plan provides little information to trigger a purchase. In fact, information is rarely delivered during an interview.

This is why we recommend that you ask your prospects questions. Your teams can take the time to analyse the answers, understand them and come up with a more convincing argument.

This shows that it is essential to focus on the customer and their needs in order to sell better. If you are too focused on your targets, figures or bonuses, you may not be convincing enough.

The interviewer will have difficulty interpreting your sales message. The proposed sales pitch does not really correspond to their expectations. This ultimately results in a refusal at the time of closing.

In a dedicated article, we discuss the different ways to set up efficient and relevant sales processes .

What is the objective of the customer discovery phase?

The discovery phase provides essential data on the customer’s background, expectations, needs or buying motivations. To sell better, it is important to have access to this information. This is a crucial step for your sales teams.

Sales people need to be focused and actively listen. It is recommended that your teams take notes. This allows you to identify the reasons for buying afterwards.

By carrying out an accurate sales diagnosis, your teams can turn more prospects into customers. The idea is to make them long-lasting, by turning them into influencers and ambassadors for other prospects.

Structure of the Business Discovery Plan

#1. Identify the customer context

All prospects/customers need a solution that meets a need. This is also known as a customer problem. By the time the prospect contacts your team, he or she must have already done some research into solutions that might satisfy his or her immediate need.

It is therefore important to seek out this information through a discovery plan. Identifying the customer’s context allows you to understand the origin of their needs as well as their desire (or not) to change their priorities.

In order to master the context your teams need to be able to answer some of these questions:

• What events are likely to influence the prospect’s final decision?
• What actions have already been taken and what decisions has it been able to take?
• What are the observed results?
• What analysis does the prospect make of his situation?

The FARP method

To identify the customer context, it is recommended that you study the FARP method :

• Gathering the Facts,
• Actions taken,
• the Results obtained,
• and the Perception of your interlocutor (his opinion and feelings).

Adapt your questions and your pace to the “level” of your interviewer: C-levels (CMO, COO, etc.) are more pressed for time. They therefore have much less patience. Use only 4 to 8 quality open questions to find out their business needs. After that, success rates drop considerably.

#2. Understanding customer needs

Researching and understanding your prospect’s needs helps to identify what they want to change or improve. To make it easier for them to make a decision, both you and they should share the same analysis of their needs.

You need to know what the client wants to achieve or improve. You also need to understand why this goal is important to them.

Your understanding will be complete once you have understood and listed all the customer’s needs and prioritised them.

Here are some questions that may be useful to you:

Sample questions: “How do you manage the challenges of integrating and ramping up new recruits as your team grows?” “To what extent is time an obstacle to coaching your representatives more frequently?”

#3. Uncovering purchase motivations

Behind every customer need is a motivation. The objective of your sales teams is to determine the prospect’s underlying motivation. This allows you to propose a much more effective sales pitch.

This study of deep motivation requires a carefully conducted discovery plan. The more your teams gather relevant information likely to trigger a purchase, the more the sales proposals will be in line with the expectations of the contact.

Enriching the customer discovery plan, including note-taking, is essential. This will make you appear more professional and involved with the prospect, while retrieving high value data.

The SONCAS method

In sales, the SONCAS method (Security, Pride, Novelty, Comfort, Money, Sympathy) is simple to implement. It consists of identifying the prospect by asking questions to better understand their profile, their expectations and the reasons for their purchase.

The salespeople then direct their arguments in such a way as to bring them closer to the prospect’s ideal. Beware, other elements come into play, including the subconscious, which accounts for 90% of the decision.

Here are some questions that may help you to do this:

Sample questions: “How much turnover per sales person do you think you are currently missing out on, due to your training time, which you feel is two months too long?” “If you could coach your reps more frequently, how many more deals do you think they would manage to close?”

In the graph on the left, we see that the most successful salespeople are those who ask a series of questions throughout the call. They do not consider the discovery plan as a “static” element. In other words, they ask their questions as the discussion evolves.

On the right you can see that “average” salespeople ask most of their questions in the first few minutes of the call. They do not take into account the evolution of the discussion. Very quickly, the number of topics and questions asked decreases until it is very low in the final moments of the call.

Limit the number of questions you ask here (between 11 and 14 questions). Too many questions make the conversation painful & difficult. Don’t load your questions at the beginning of a call. Listen, and adapt them to create a real dialogue.

#4. The pitch

Empathising with your customer through storytelling is important. Your prospects base part of their decision on the challenges faced by people with similar experiences, rather than on what your salesperson thinks is good or bad for them.

This is one of the reasons why many companies offer case studies. These testimonials demonstrate how your offer or service has helped a company solve a problem.

Storytelling is an excellent alternative to advanced sales questions that can be a barrier to salespeople. To be prepared, however, it is recommended that you do not improvise and prepare your approach, by :

• Consulting the account history via your CRM software
• Checking the recent activity of the company and of your contact person
• Spending some time scanning press articles and releases for any significant updates, initiatives, hires or changes.
• Using LinkedIn to identify your common connections and highlight them where appropriate.

These elements allow you to prepare in advance the story you could tell your prospect.

If you are able to trigger emotion in this phase, name these emotions, help clients feel understood with phrases such as: “it seems like…”; “it seems like…”; “it seems like…”; “it seems like…”; “it seems like…”. “it feels like…”

#5. Preparing the next steps

The purpose of the discovery plan is to move the prospect through the funnel and close them. If your salesperson feels that their first approach has been successful, they should summarise why the product/service offered seems useful to the prospect.

There are two ways to do this:

• The “hypothetical” closing : this method allows you to confirm to your prospect how you feel you can help him or her move towards his or her goals and meet the challenges identified during the call. The objective is to approach the subject with a tone that inspires confidence in the caller, without overselling the product.
• The “prospect buy-in” closure : This method invites the prospect to tell you what challenges they face, while asking you how they can achieve this through the use of, for example, your solutions.

The last important aspect of closing is the involvement of other parties in the sales process. In practice, few salespeople do this. Many lose the opportunity to shorten the sales funnel.

What questions should I ask a customer during the commercial discovery phase?

#1. open questions: qqoqcp method.

This method aims to define the circumstances of a situation through a series of questions. This allows the situation to be understood in its generality. In a commercial setting, the salesperson then finds the most appropriate solutions to the prospects’ needs, after analysing the data.

The QQOQCP questions allow the prospect to speak. They express themselves freely about their expectations, needs and motivations. They develop constructed answers that are interpreted by the salesperson.

Some examples of questions are

#2. Closed questions

The purpose of closed questions is to obtain a specific answer from the prospect, usually “yes” or “no”. This provides information that can help them choose between different solutions. Finally, you can obtain factual information (figure, date).

In a discovery plan, the point of these types of questions is to confirm understanding of what is being said. You can use these questions to push the interviewer to validate a proposition or to obtain quantifiable data.

Your sales meeting is not meant to be an interrogation. This is why we recommend that you analyse the situation in order to bring your added value as a salesperson, through interesting information or information likely to appeal to the prospect, at the most appropriate moment.

#3. Commercial reformulation

Sales reformulation allows the prospect to confirm your analysis of the elements obtained during your discovery plan. This enables you to formulate a relevant commercial offer that meets the prospect’s needs.

There are several types of reformulation:

• ECHO rephrasing: you need to make the prospect understand that they are being listened to. This encourages them to expand on what they have said in order to make it more complete.
• Rephrasing Inference: the aim of the salesperson is to increase their knowledge of the customer.
• Rephrasing Summary: the idea is to validate a situation expressed by the prospect, in order to move the exchange forward towards the objective you have set yourself.

#4. After the questions, active listening

It is estimated that the best salespeople speak for an average of 46% of their prospecting call. They leave 54% of the total talk time to their prospect.

Of course, talking 46% of your call time will not magically close your offer. This is the ideal threshold. Beyond 65%, on the other hand, the risk of losing attention and therefore cancelling your offer is high.

Experience helps to better structure your calls to achieve this statistic. Coupled with a discovery plan and the ability to adapt to the needs of your customers, you can see your statistics improve.

How to adapt your discovery plan to the customer’s posture?

The salesperson must obviously adapt the discovery plan to each customer, but this can be facilitated by proposing a framework, for example based on the customer’s posture. Depending on whether the customer is cooperative, reluctant, or indifferent, you can modulate the plan to suggest leads to your teams and guide their reaction.

Cooperative client

A cooperative customer is one who is willing and able to provide information during the commercial diagnosis. This is the most obvious sales situation. It is the easiest case for your sales teams to handle.

You are invited to collect the FARPs by alternating open/closed questions and rephrasing to obtain the context, priority needs and motivations of the client.

Reluctant customer

A reluctant customer finds it difficult to provide information during a sales meeting. They are distrustful or unable to hold a dialogue and do not go into detail.

You are invited to provide your customer with information with a very high added value. This will make him react:

• Build on previous information: Build on the data collected in your previous interviews. You can then link the data to the marketing information you are planning to offer.
• Share data and factual information with them: get them to react by offering them figures (key indicators, studies). This opens up the dialogue and allows for a more in-depth exchange.
• Put your offer in front of the competition: why is your offer better than your competitors’?
• Use social proof: highlight your recommendations, awards or case studies. This allows the customer to react and engage in discussion.

Indifferent customer

In some cases, the other person may not perceive any interest in talking to you. They may have no desire to change their situation or change their point of view. This is called the indifferent customer. This is the most complicated case for sales teams to handle.

You can find out more about our content related to cold calling and closing techniques through :

• Our complete guide to cold calling
• Our call and sales script list
• Our complete guide to help you close faster
• Our phone plan
• Our selection of the 10 phoning software to make your prospecting explode

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B2B Cold Calling Scripts: Examples & How-to

What is Business Process Discovery?

In this article, we will teach you the definition, benefits, and importance of process discovery, as well as the repercussions of undiscovered processes.

Introduction

A business is a complex maze of processes that work in a symphony to create a valuable business outcome. These processes are the foundation of your business operations and include tasks, documents, tools, employees, teams, departments, and a lot more. 

When business processes work efficiently, your business performance meets all the prerequisites for growth and sustainability. However, when there are inefficiencies in your business processes, they manifest in the form of inadequate business performance, customer dissatisfaction, and employee frustration. 

The natural solution to fixing inefficient business processes is to improve them with Process Improvement techniques.

But you can't fix what you don't see.

Table of Content

Manual vs. Automated Business Process Discovery

Process Mapping Vs. Process Discovery Vs. Process Documentation

Common Pain Points of Undiscovered Processes

Why is business process discovery important, when should you consider discovering your processes, benefits of business process discovery.

Business Process Discovery is a method that businesses use to obtain information on their existing processes in order to enhance them. This method is a crucial aspect of the business process improvement process, as it allows companies to recognize processes that require improvement.

The discovery procedure begins by comprehending current processes through reviewing existing records and documentation. It helps identify any obstacles or inconsistencies in workflows, locate bottlenecks, and enhance overall performance.

Manual Vs. Automated Business Process Discovery

There are two ways to understand your business processes: manual and automated. Manual discovery requires a lot of time and attention, while automated discovery is quicker and more accurate. Regardless of the method, process discovery is important for success. Process discovery is key to improving business processes and avoiding inconsistencies, lack of documentation, and employee frustration. It provides clarity, uniformity, and workflow documentation, which can be used to automate processes, improve employee satisfaction, and make informed decisions. The right approach to process discovery can greatly impact operational success in a rapidly evolving business environment.

Process Discovery Vs. Process Mapping Vs. Process Documentation

Oftentimes, there is confusion between the techniques of process discovery, process mapping, and process documentation. Below, we state the clear distinction between these three concepts.

Process Discovery

As we established, process discovery is a set of techniques used to identify the current structure and workflow of business processes in their as-is state using existing records and documentation of the processes. The techniques mainly focus on extracting information from current and historic process documentation to understand the current processes and their flow. 

Process Mapping

Process mapping is the technique used to visually represent a process workflow to understand, interpret, and improve the existing process. This technique uses the outcomes of the process discovery method to produce a visual workflow of any business process. Process mapping is the next step after process discovery.  Read this article for details on Business Process Mapping . 

Process Documentation

Business process documentation is the process of outlining a detailed description of how a process needs to be executed. It uses the insights derived from the process discovery technique and documents the step-by-step process to make them learnable, viewable, and improvable. It primarily focuses on answering the question - 'how is the process implemented?' Looking to document your processes? Check out our detailed guide on business process documentation.

While you may think that everything is going well in your business operations, there are times when you feel the need for improvement. Here are some of the common pain points of undiscovered processes that you can relate to:

There is a lack of uniformity in process execution

A process is a set of repeated tasks and activities performed to obtain a specified outcome. Undiscovered processes lack the uniformity of steps and activities that are repeated every time the process is executed. This lack of uniformity can cause missing certain important steps, affecting the overall outcome of the process. 

There is little or no documentation

When processes are not documented, the common reason is that there is not enough effort put in to understand the existing structure and workflow of the process. Process documentation can only happen when the processes are represented in their as-is state. 

Process output is inconsistent

Undiscovered processes often lack uniformity and documentation. This leads to inconsistency in the output expected from the process. Inconsistent outcomes suggest clear gaps within your business processes that need your attention.

There is frustration due to process problems

Undiscovered processes are the root cause of your process problems. From the lack of transparency and documentation to ownership and uniformity, undiscovered processes are bound to create problems in the overall operations of your business. This leads to employee frustration and burnout, even affecting personal lives.

Business process discovery is an important step in business process improvement. Let us understand the importance of process discovery.

It helps you identify your processes in their as-is state

Process discovery identifies the small details in a process, ensuring that every step is scrutinized to understand the process in its current state. This allows for the identification of gaps, leaks, and improvement opportunities.

It helps you identify gaps and leaks in your process system

Process discovery breaks down the intricate details of your processes, uncovering any gaps or leaks in their performance. These gaps and leaks serve as valuable opportunities for your business to enhance and refine your processes, ultimately leading to improvements in overall efficiency and effectiveness.

Gaps that can be fixed

Opportunities for process improvements

Learnings from well-performing process elements

It removes uncertainties from existing processes

Process discovery delves deep into your processes, leaving no room for uncertainty when it comes to executing each step. By eliminating uncertainties, you establish a consistent and uniform process execution throughout your business operations. This not only ensures the performance and quality of your operations but also maintains a high level of efficiency.

It helps you map and document your processes

You can only document and map your processes when you uncover the detailed steps, employees, teams, etc., involved in the process. This is why process discovery plays a critical role in process mapping and process documentation.

While there are a lot of reasons for you to start discovering your processes, we identified some major red flags that notify you to start thinking about process discovery. You should consider discovering your processes when:

You want to improve your business processes

The most common reason why businesses invest in process discovery is to improve their existing business processes. Process discovery plays a critical role in business process improvement. It highlights detailed tasks, elements, people, gaps, and opportunities involved in a process. This clarity allows a business to take the necessary steps required to fix the process gaps and improve the process execution. Read our article on Business Process Improvement 101 .

You want to automate your business processes

Business process automation is a technology-enabled solution to automate complex business processes. Some business processes are very demanding of time and effort, which is why businesses today are looking at automating such complex processes with the help of technology. But before you can automate, you need to understand the existing process in its as-is state. Business process discovery is an ideal technique to help you understand an existing process with its minute details. 

You want to document your business processes

Process documentation is the technique used by businesses to document the steps involved in executing a business process. Documentation is necessary for any business to maintain clarity and uniformity across their business processes. Process discovery is an important technique to enable documentation as it identifies process details using historic and current records to enlist specific steps involved in a process. 

You want to improve employee satisfaction

Processes are an ongoing cycle of operations, and your employees are a critical part of these processes. To ensure your employees are happy and satisfied, you need to make sure that your processes are transparent and effective. Process discovery increases the visibility of a process and encourages ownership of tasks and steps involved in a process. It also increases the effectiveness of a process by identifying gaps and creating opportunities for improvement in the execution of a process. 

You want to reduce burnouts

Tangled, ineffective processes cause frustration, burnouts, and a serious impact on employee experience. If you are facing challenges similar to these, you need to invest in the exercise of business process improvement. Process discovery is a primary step towards process improvement. The technique helps pinpoint the exact problem of a process by representing the process in a step-by-step guide. 

The benefits of business process discovery are closely aligned with the advantages of other business improvement techniques, such as process mapping, process documentation, and process mining. Let us take a look at some distinctive benefits of implementing process discovery.

Enables Process Visibility

One of the key advantages of implementing process discovery is that it enables visibility of the tasks involved in a process. This encourages ownership of specific process steps, workflows, and structures. With a complete map of the processes, enterprises can easily identify new pathways and future automation opportunities.

Reduces Process Risks

Process discovery identifies gaps and leaks from within the process, hence allowing an opportunity to fix such otherwise invisible gaps. This proves to be a preventive approach to process management that minimizes risks after severe scrutiny of process operations. 

Captures Processes from Employees’ Heads onto Paper

Process discovery helps you capture the steps and procedures involved in your processes that are stored in your employees’ and partners' heads and document them so that they are accessible to everyone. If such a process is not discovered and the process is not documented, you run the risk of losing important process information when the employee or partner decides to move out. This makes it difficult to predict process outcomes since the process is not standardized and changes almost every time the process is executed.

Increases Cost efficiency

Process discovery techniques lay process details on the table for everyone to map, understand, and analyze. When the gaps and leaks are identified, the opportunities to fix the gaps are approached with cost-effective solutions, thus saving costs and optimizing the performance of the process.

Maximises ROI

Process discovery enables process optimization as well as cost savings by fixing broken and tangled processes. This contributes to maximizing the ROI of processes, teams, operations, and the business. Hence, process discovery is a stepping stone towards maximizing business ROI.

Improves Process Performance

By enabling process task ownership, reducing risks, saving costs, and maximizing ROI, process discovery impacts the overall performance of business processes. It is a concrete step towards business process improvement. 

The insights derived from business process discovery are critical to managing, controlling, and improving business processes. With businesses looking to automate and simplify processes with the help of technology, process discovery continues to gain momentum amongst leading businesses.

Updated in August 2023

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What is Process Discovery?

Introduction To Process Discovery

The term " Business Process Discovery"  (BPD) has been around for many years, but it became very popular with the emergence of digital technology and business transformation. It is also the first step for organizations that plan to automate their processes using workflow software .

One of the catalysts for business transformation is by use of digital technology to improve business performance. This change impacts the business processes, people, and strategy of the organization.

To fully understand the organization's current business processes, we need to find out everything we can about them and be able to document the details. This makes discovering processes a key step on the journey to Business Transformation.

In this post, we will be describing, specifically, "Manual Process Discovery." However, there is also a technique called " Automated Process Discovery " which uses tools like AI and machine learning to identify processes throughout the organization.

In summary:

Process Discovery is a technique to understand and document everything about the organization’s current business processes.

This technique can be performed to construct a representation of an organizations' current business processes and its major process variations. These techniques use evidence found in the organizations:

• Manual methods of work
• Current procedural documentation
• Existing technology systems that support the business processes

Discovery Methodology

Discovering processes in your organization can be done by following a few different methodologies. Ultimately these methodologies all look something like what we describe below. 

As-Is process mapping

Conduct a series of workshops with a cross-section of staff from the current owners, users, and approvers of the existing process. The objective of these workshops will be to map out the current process. It may require a number of these workshops with each group to fully document the major process and its variations.

Follow-up one to one meetings, as required for:

• Further data collection such as lead times
• Understanding of existing technology applications
• Purpose of approvals

Develop the current process document and the variations to the main process. Ensure to obtain buy-in/agreement from the participants.

Critique the as-is business process and related information

• What works well and what are the pain points?
• Skills available, needed, and the skill gaps
• Action activities 
• Approval activities
• Value & non-value adding
• Overlaps and reworks
• The split of responsibilities between people and functions/depts
• Essential/critical (red process) - Process essential for achieving outcomes/goals
• Important/urgent (yellow process) - Process which speeds achieving outcomes/goals
• Supportive (green process) - Process not needed to achieve outcomes/goals

Identify improvement opportunities

Short-term improvements ( low hanging fruit ). Things that can be done quickly with low effort. Examples include the sharing of information or deleting an approval process by delegating responsibility further down the organization. Typically, these changes can be approved by the process owner.

Complete process re-design. This is usually a much longer-term action and can be implemented by manual methods or using digital technology as an enabler for the change. It will require investment and thus a business case must be developed before proceeding along this journey.

Who is involved in Discovery?

Discovery is not the sole responsibility of one person or department. It requires several people and skills from the organization and initially external support.

The key stakeholders are:

Process Owner . Someone who has overall responsibility for the process or sub-process. The process owner's responsibilities are likely to cut across the organization chart responsibilities, so management needs to recognize this and ensure delegation of full process responsibility. He will be the individual who ultimately has responsibility for the accuracy of process documentation and any proposed process changes. The process owner may also take on the project management role for ensuring successful process discovery outcomes.

Customer . The process has a customer (internal or external) for which you are performing the process/task. It is mandatory that we fulfill his requirements. After all, the reason you are performing the process is to satisfy his/her need. 

Performer . The persons who are conducting all or part of the process.  They can tell you the truth in terms of what is being done as opposed to what should be done. They also develop informal processes when the formal process does not work well. No accurate discovery documentation will be produced if they are not at the center.

Approver . For each process, there may be several approvers, so it’s important to understand the role of each approver. (i.e. What are they approving?).

Business or Process Analyst . This role is typically the catalyst for the discovery process and the subsequent steps in the journey. He will be well versed in the process and will have practical experience in process discovery applications. It's quite normal for organizations to bring in external expertise for this role.

Business Process Discovery Outcomes

Business process discovery creates a business process master document. The master document should contain all the details of the process.

Include detailed process maps of the current (As-Is) process showing:

• The activities, tasks being performed, 
• Who performs them, 
• Typical lead or cycle times of how long they take to perform
• Interactions and interfaces with business application software
• Data and records and forms being maintained
• Inputs and outputs from each sub-process or task

Provide a critique/analysis of the current process. This should detail what works well and where are the pain-points in the current process as well as categorizing the tasks/activities.

The BPD technique is not a business outcome itself but leads to the deployment of Business Process Analysis (BPA) which can be further supplemented by Business Intelligence (BI) for the data being created by the processes.

This combination creates an overall framework for digital transformation .

Note : To learn more about Automated Business Process Discovery visit the Gartner Glossary entry .

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• Business Process Management

Business Process Discovery: What It Is And How It’s Done

What's Inside

• Business Process Discovery: Key Challenges
• Digital Process Discovery Tools Vs. Manual Process Discovery
• How Process Discovery Contributes To Automation: An Example

A business process is a series of workplace tasks that accomplishes a goal. Companies have processes for onboarding customers, paying out invoices, receiving payments, and countless other core operations.

Odds are, those processes aren’t perfect (few things are). But to improve business processes, you have to understand them as they are , inside and out. You need to document the existing process before you can get to an optimal state that delivers lower costs, produces fewer errors, and provides a better experience for employees and the customers they serve.

The act of identifying and documenting a business process is called process discovery . A successful process discovery project typically identifies the following elements of any business process:

• Each step in the process
• Who completes each step
• How long each step takes to complete
• The systems used in each step, including digital applications and/or machinery
• How those systems integrate and interact with one another
• Procedures for turning the output of one step into the input of the next

With this information, a business process analyst can create a functional workflow map for the entire process, from start to finish. That map may become a framework for end-to-end intelligent automation, in which digital systems and human employees work hand-in-hand to complete entire processes—not just discrete tasks within those processes—more efficiently.

Struggling with an inefficient process?

Reach out to the automation experts at Nividous to get started with process discovery.

The Nividous platform enables this sort of hyperautomation —and when we implement the platform in a new environment, we always start with a process discovery phase. Without knowing how the work gets done, you can’t automate it. Process discovery is the foundation for all end-to-end process automation, and we have a lot of experience in the practice. If you’re new to the subject, here are a few things you should know.

Business Process Discovery: Key Challenges (And How To Overcome Them)

Whatever the process—payroll, shipping documentation, compliance—it’s getting done. So you’d think process discovery would be easy. All you have to do is ask the person who does the work, right?

Unfortunately, it’s not that simple. Here’s why process discovery is best pursued as a formal practice, a science of codifying exactly how work gets done—and why it’s wise to bring in an outside specialist rather than going it alone.

• No single manager has full visibility into the tasks that make up the process. If a process is a series of tasks, those tasks are usually divided between many employees—and even multiple departments. Managers see the big picture; they make sure the entire process is successful. But they can rarely get into the details of individual tasks within that process.
• No single employee has full visibility into the process beyond the tasks. An employee may engage in a handful of tasks at any given time, and each of those tasks may contribute to a different process. It’s tough to untangle each thread of work to see how it fits into the full process tapestry. Process discovery requires a comprehensive picture of the work, and most employees are too busy focusing on the task to get the broad view.
• No single task gets done the same way every time. In a department with 12 employees, you may find a dozen ways of doing the same thing. Process discovery can help streamline different techniques into a unified way of doing things. That requires a compilation of detail from multiple sources; no single interview is enough.

So how do you overcome these challenges? Bring in a specialist.

Process discovery weaves the narrow perspective into a broad view. It identifies the process at every level, from the individual tasks to work hand-offs to meeting the established goal. It documents the practice of goal-completion from beginning to end, and everything in between. It’s a specialized task, one best completed by a third-party expert with an objective viewpoint.

This argument still leaves a key question, though: What about automated process discovery tools?

With the rise of business Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the proliferation of process discovery tools it has empowered, business owners may be tempted to take a fully digital approach to process discovery.

You’ll get better results by starting with a human business analyst who knows how to observe work, talk to frontline employees, and create an accurate workflow map of an entire business process from scratch.

These tools can be extremely helpful, but we’d still recommend bringing in an experienced process analyst. Our recommendation may change as technology evolves, but as of now, human expertise still gets the best results in business process discovery. That said, digital tools can and often should work alongside human analysts. We even offer a process discovery tool within the Nividous platform (it’s in beta as we publish).

In fact, digital process discovery tools often require significant manual effort to reach production readiness. These tools draw data from computer usage: keystrokes, clicks, applications opened or closed. Then the tool tries to correlate those events into broader tasks and processes. The trouble is, there’s a lot of noise; humans don’t always work in a linear fashion. They may have 15 tasks running at once, and they may even use computers for non-work purposes. Today’s AI struggles to accurately compile all this disparate data into a clear picture of a business task, let alone process.

It usually takes human expertise to distill the tool’s findings into an actionable picture of the process. You’ll get better results by starting with a human business analyst who knows how to observe work, talk to frontline employees, and create an accurate workflow map of an entire business process from scratch. We know that’s true because we’ve seen it work again and again. Here’s an example of how automation improves business processes—in a case that began with process discovery conducted by an expert, not a software tool.

Not long ago, the leaders of a mineral-product manufacturing firm took a close look at their Accounts Payable (AP) procedures and realized they could be more efficient—significantly so.

Simply paying out invoices was a tremendous effort. The company received hundreds of invoices every month. It took four full-time employees, and sometimes more, just to transcribe invoice data from digital documents into the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system (which was SAP, for the record). Approvals had to run up the chain of management and come back down. And in the frenzy of keeping up with the paperwork, errors were common enough to frustrate the vendors—eventually leading to a loss of business.

The manufacturer reached out to Nividous, who sent in a team to document every detail of the paying out invoices . These business analysts and system architects completed an in-depth process discovery phase, documenting steps, people, and systems that made up this process. That enabled them to create a workflow map in the Nividous platform’s Business Process Management (BPM) system—a BPM implementation that became a framework for deploying AI-enhanced Robotic Process Automation (RPA) bots.

The Nividous platform deployed RPA bots to move invoice data from digital documents into SAP, ultimately delivering savings of more than 1,000 staff-hours per month , so the workforce could pivot to more valuable tasks. It also reduced the invoice processing turnaround time by 90% , and completely eliminated human error from the process .

Alan Hester

Embark On Your Automation Journey

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Process Discovery: A Comprehensive Guide

• Process Mining

Business process discovery, also called process discovery or just BPD, is the first stage in business process improvement. It involves understanding and mapping out the current state of a business process, so that improvements can be made.

Process discovery can be used to improve all sorts of business processes, from manufacturing to customer service.

As businesses become more complex, the need for accurate and up-to-date business process models becomes more acute. Business process discovery is a method used to create these models. 

In this post, we’ll take a look at what business process discovery is, why it’s important, and how it can be used to improve business operations.

What is Business Process Discovery?

Business process discovery methods: how to use process discovery, challenges with process discovery, conclusion: process discovery, faq: business process discovery.

There are many different techniques that can be used for business process discovery, but the most important part is to involve all stakeholders in the process. This will ensure that the discovered business process is accurate and reflects the needs of everyone involved.

Process discovery is 

• The first step in understanding and improving the way the business works 
• Involves mapping out all of the steps involved in a particular business process, from start to finish
• Set of tools and techniques used to define , map and analyze an organization’s current business processes

Image source: Mediamodifier at Unsplash

Why is Business Process Discovery Used? Benefits of Process Discovery

Once the current state of the business process has been discovered, the next stage is to identify areas for improvement. This can be done by looking at things like process efficiency, process effectiveness, and customer satisfaction.

There are many reasons why process discovery is used, including:

• Understanding and document the real-world processes that people use to complete a task
• It can help organizations identify inefficiencies in their current processes 
• Understand how their employees really work 
• Find new ways to improve their business
• Document as-is processes for compliance or audit purposes

Image source: Datarundown

Process Discovery in BPM 

In business process management (BPM) , process discovery is the first stage in the process improvement cycle . It is where we understand and document the current state of a business process. 

This understanding is then used to identify areas of improvement and generate ideas for process improvement. Process discovery is an important step in any BPM initiative. 

In a report on BPM, Gartner Research indicates that process discovery might be the most important skill of all

Source: Gartner Research on BPM

Process Discovery vs Process Mapping vs Process Documentation

The terms process discovery, process mapping, and process documentation are often used interchangeably, but there are some key differences between them. 

• Process discovery is the act of uncovering and understanding the steps involved in a process. Process discovery has a more bottom-up approach , where businesses start by analyzing data and then work to understand how the process works
• Process mapping is the act of visually representing the steps in a process. Process mapping , on the other hand, is typically a more top-down approach , where businesses start with a high-level understanding of the process and then map out the details.
• Process documentation is the act of creating a written record of the steps in a process. This means outlining a detailed description of how a process needs to be executed. 

There are several methods that can be used to discover business processes.

Let’s look at the most common ones a bit closer

Interviews are a great way to gather first-hand information about a business process. This can be done through one-on-one interviews with employees, customers, or other stakeholders.

Interviews are a good option if you need to gather detailed information from a small number of people.

Focus Groups

A focus group is a small, but representative, group of people who are asked about their opinions, feelings, or beliefs on a certain topic. This type of qualitative research is often used in the early stages. 

By bringing together a group of people who are familiar with a particular process, you can gain valuable insights into how the process works and identify potential improvements. 

There are a number of factors to consider, from finding the right participants to asking the right questions. But if done correctly, a focus group can be a powerful tool for process discovery.

Workshops are a good option if you need to gather detailed information from a group of people and also want to involve them in the discovery process. 

Workshops are a great way to get started. In a workshop, a group of people come together to brainstorm and map out the steps involved in a process. This can be a great way to get everyone on the same page and to ensure that no steps are missed.

Workshops are similar to focus groups, but they are usually larger and more structured. They often involve activities and exercises, and they are usually led by an expert on the topic.

Document Analysis

This technique involves analyzing documents to identify the activities that make up a process. Documents can include things like process maps, process descriptions , swimlane diagrams, Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs), and more.

Process Map 

Process mapping is a tool that can be used to discover, document, and improve business processes. It involves creating a flowchart that shows the steps in a process, who is responsible for each step, and where handoffs occur. 

This can be a helpful tool for businesses of all sizes, as it can provide a clear picture of how a process works and where improvements can be made.

Process mining is a data mining technique that can be used to discover , monitor, and optimize business processes.

Process mining techniques can be used to automatically discover process models from event logs . The algorithms take event data as input and then generate a process model that represents the events in the log.

If you are curios to learn more about process mining, we recommend our  Introduction to process mining , or check out  all of our posts related to process mining

Which Method Should You Choose For Process Discovery? 

As we just have seen, process discovery can be done manually or with the help of software. 

Manual process discovery is typically done through interviews and observation. This can be a time-consuming and error-prone process, but it’s often the best way to understand complex processes. 

Software-assisted process discovery is typically done through business process modeling notation (BPMN) tools . These tools can help you visualize and map out processes quickly and easily.

Best Practices for Business Process Discovery

The following components are often found through a good process discovery project:

• Every step in the process . The goal of process discovery is to identify every step in the process. It is essential to first understand what the current process is and how it works
• Who performs each step . Who is responsible for each step and is doing the actions that we are identifying
• How long does it take to finish each step: The time it takes to perform an action. This information is valuable when trying to identify time saving improvements 
• The systems used at each step : What are the different systems that are used to complete each action and how those systems work together and influence one another
• Methods for converting the results of one step into the input for the following one: Looking at how the different steps relate to each other and how dependent they are of each other. How is the output of step A turning into input for step B

While process discovery can be incredibly helpful, there are a number of challenges associated with it. 

• Difficult to identify all of the steps in a process . This is particularly true for complex processes that involve many different people and tasks.
• Time-consuming and Expensive.  It can be difficult to find the time and resources to conduct a thorough analysis of a process. Process discovery algorithms often require a lot of human input and supervision.
• Clearly Document all the steps . It can be challenging to clearly document a process in a way that is easy for others to understand. Many discovery algorithms struggle to cope with noise and outliers in the data, which can lead to inaccurate and incomplete results
• Explainability . It is often hard for humans to understand the discovered processes, especially if they are complex or involve many events.

Despite these challenges, process discovery can be a valuable tool for improving process efficiency and effectiveness. By taking the time to carefully analyze a process, organizations can identify ways to improve the process and make it more efficient.

We have learned about what process discovery is, how it can be used to improve business processes, and the different techniques that can be used to discover processes. We have also seen how process discovery can be used to create process models that can be used to improve the efficiency of business operations.

We hope that this article has provided you with a better understanding of process discovery and how it can be used to improve business processes.

Business Process Discovery (BPD) is a methodology used to map out and understand the workflows of an organization. It helps businesses to improve their efficiency by identifying areas where processes can be streamlined or automated.

Why is Process Discovery used?

Process Discovery can be used to discover new ways of working, to optimize existing processes, or to troubleshoot problems within an organization. It involves interviews, observations, and analysis of data to understand how work is currently being done.

What are the different methods used in process discovery?

There are many different methods that can be used to discover processes. Some of the most common methods include interviews, observations, workshops, document analysis, and process mining.u003cbru003eu003cbru003eEach of these methods has its own strengths and weaknesses, and the best method for a particular organization will depend on the specific goals of the process discovery project.

Meet Eric, the data "guru" behind Datarundown. When he's not crunching numbers, you can find him running marathons, playing video games, and trying to win the Fantasy Premier League using his predictions model (not going so well).

Eric passionate about helping businesses make sense of their data and turning it into actionable insights. Follow along on Datarundown for all the latest insights and analysis from the data world.

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Business Process Discovery

Business process discovery is a process mining technique used to create a data-based visualization of process workflows. Using data found in  event logs , process mining automatically generates a discovered model for analysis, giving users a visual and unbiased representation of their business processes. The primary goal of process discovery is to increase transparency and process knowledge for enhancement .

[ Read the Process Mining Guide for tips on getting started with process discovery. ]

How does business process discovery work?

Process discovery needs data to work. These data points include names and descriptions of the activities or events in a process, time stamps for the start and end times of activities, and other process attributes such as case IDs (depending on the available data).

Once identified, data can be exported, transformed, and imported into the process mining system for process discovery. Business process discovery outcomes are then visualized in the discovered model to uncover optimization and process automation opportunities. 

Process discovery involves these steps:

Checking for availability of data points.

Extracting and transforming data.

Importing data into the process mining system.

Generating a visualization of the discovered process, or  process model .

Thanks to the rise of process mining tools, process discovery can be completed much more quickly than with traditional, manual approaches. The result is a less biased and more data-driven process model that provides business users with an actual representation of how their processes run.

Why use process discovery tools?

Not all business processes run as expected. Riddled with bottlenecks and missed or skipped activities, inefficient processes waste companies’ time and money. Yet, without process transparency or the ability to see exactly where inefficiencies slow progress, companies are left guessing where to make improvements. Analysis is often subjective, slow, and tedious. 

Process discovery takes the guesswork out of a business process improvement project, delivering objective, data-driven insights. And it's a key part of  business process management .

The top benefits of process discovery include: 

Identified inefficiencies: With process discovery, organizations can easily identify bottlenecks, process deviations, and other inefficiencies. This insight allows them to take action and make improvements that can lead to greater efficiency and cost savings.

Data-driven insights: Process discovery uses data to provide objective insights into how a business process is functioning. This helps to remove any subjective biases that may be present when analyzing a process manually, leading to more accurate conclusions and recommendations.

Fast analysis: Compared to manual analysis, process discovery with process mining is often much faster. This means that companies can identify inefficiencies and opportunities for improvement in a shorter amount of time, allowing them to take action and see results sooner.

Collaboration: Process discovery involves stakeholders from across the organization, leading to greater collaboration and a shared understanding of the process. This can help break down silos and improve communication between teams.

• Compliance: By understanding a business process in detail, organizations can ensure they are following regulations and guidelines more effectively. This can lead to reduced risk and better compliance outcomes.
• Agility: By identifying inefficiencies and opportunities for improvement, companies can make changes to their processes more quickly and efficiently, allowing them to adapt to changing business needs and stay ahead of the competition.

Business process discovery use cases.

Nearly any type of process can be a good candidate for process discovery. Some of the most common applications of business process discovery include: 

Financial management

Risk management

Compliance management

Quality assurance and control 

Customer experience and onboarding

Employee training and development

Digital transformation

Business continuity planning

What happens after business process discovery?

After a model of the actual process has been generated, you can then compare it to the  target process . In process mining, this technique is called  conformance checking , and it helps you uncover  deviations between the actual and target process and identify areas for optimization. You can also use root cause analysis to drill deeper into the cause of unwanted process behavior. With this new visibility into your process, you can then implement and monitor changes on an ongoing basis for  continuous improvement .

Get started on your process discovery journey. Read the  Process Mining Guide for tips and best practices. 

Related terms:   Process Model , Target Model

Process Mining Glossary

Conformance Checking    |     Continuous Improvement    |     Event Log    |    Process Controlling      |     Process Deviation     |     Process Discovery    |     Process Enhancement    |      Process Management Life Cycle     |     Process Transparency     |     Process Variant     |    Target Process

Reach the optimized process with the Process Mining Guide.

Learn how process mining can provide valuable insights into your processes.

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• What is Process Discovery?

‘Process discovery’ is a systematic set of tools used to identify, map, and analyze business processes. With traditional methods posing several challenges, AI-based solutions have emerged. These AI tools, known as ‘process discovery’ or ‘task mining’, capture user data and autonomously identify and map processes, offering a data-driven approach. This is crucial for any process improvement or automation effort, helping businesses gain a thorough understanding of their current processes.

Process Discovery definition

Universally, the term ‘process discovery’ refers to a set of tools that provide a systematic way to identify, map, define, and analyze business processes and the activities and tasks they are comprised of. Discovery is the essential first step in any process improvement or automation effort because for these initiatives to be successful, businesses must first have a thorough understanding of their processes as they exist today.

Manual Business Process Discovery

Traditionally, widely employed process discovery methodologies have included:

• Anecdotal interviews with end users
• Observing employees perform work
• Conducting focus groups
• Whiteboarding
• Manual data collection and analysis

Traditional process discovery approaches present businesses with several challenges. First, they are time consuming and require significant hands-on effort, which can lead to a lengthy time to value for improvement and automation initiatives. Additionally, traditional techniques are largely subjective, relying heavily on human judgement, which can lead to inaccurate or incomplete processes being documented, implemented, or automated.

Automated Business Process Discovery

In recent years however, technological solutions have emerged to make process discovery more autonomous, and data driven. ‘Process Discovery’ has been coined as a name for a AI-based technology that captures user data then automatically identifies and maps processes and their variants. This technology is also known as task mining. For the remainder of this article, the term ‘Process Discovery’ will refer to this type of AI-powered solution.

What's the difference between Process Mining and Process Discovery?

Process Mining and Process Discovery are both ML/AI-powered solutions that surface and visualize process data. Process Mining tools have been around longer than Process Discovery and is fairly widely adopted across enterprises in a variety of industries. Process Mining uses system data such as event logs to create a high-level end-to-end view of how a process operates. Process Mining solutions provide quantitative process insight, such as process run times, and generally also provide tools such as root cause analysis to allow businesses to drilldown into bottlenecks and identify areas for optimization. However, a gap exists with Process Mining in that it does not capture human behavior, or the detailed actions and steps users take when performing a process.

Process Discovery tools on the other hand capture real-time user behavior on desktops to provide a more granular view of how users interact with each step of the process, in addition to quantitative data such as process frequency and duration. This executable process needed to build documentation and find areas of optimization at the procedural level. Output from Process Discovery can drill all the way down to users click and keystrokes, which provides an ideal blueprint for automation, particularly in the case of RPA where bots are programmed to perform the same clicks and keystrokes as humans to carry out high-volume repetitive tasks.

While the two solutions are different, Process Mining and Process Discovery can also be used together so that businesses can create top-down and end-to-end visibility into their processes.

Learn more about the differences between Process Mining and Process Discovery.

Why is Process Discovery important?

Businesses are turning to process improvement and automation to help with a variety of challenges including:

• Driving down costs in the wake of inflation
• Improving the employee experience to combat the Great Resignation
• Filling the gaps left by employee turnover
• Optimizing and re-designing processes adapted for new remote and hybrid work environments

Process Discovery is the foundation for any process improvement or automation initiative. Process Discovery can help businesses easily identify current state processes to lay the groundwork for improvement and automation projects.

Process Discover can deliver many benefits to organizations, including Increasing process visibility, accelerating and improving documentation efforts, expediting automation and process improvement time to value, and improving collaboration between line of business and IT teams.

Read more about the benefits of Process Discovery .

How does Process Discovery work?

Process Discovery bots are installed on business users’ desktops and unobtrusively record activities in specified applications as the users go about their everyday work. After 2-3 weeks, Process Discovery leverages AI to automatically identify recurring processes and generates interactive maps. Business analysts can visualize how work is being performed, and easily explore processes and their variants. Process improvement teams can define the optimal process path to standardize for documentation or for automation. Finally, process improvement teams can export their discovered processes in a variety of formats including Process Definition Documents, and BPMN and automation files.

Examples of Process Discovery

Accelerating process documentation efforts

Process Discovery not only speeds up process identification, but also streamlines documentation. Process Discovery allows users to tag and notate recorded screenshots to create Process Design Documents that can be used as “how to” documentation to for standard operating procedures. These documents can be linked to in process management tools where they can become part of a repository that facilitates enterprise-wide governance and collaboration. For example, a call center might deploy Process Discovery bots on the machines of employees with exceptional call handling time to capture and understand how those employees are executing processes. The discovered processes could be recorded, documented, and implemented as standard operating procedures so that other users consistently execute those same processes that are yielding the desired call handle time metrics.

Check out 6 key steps for effective process discovery.

Identifying what to automate, and automate at scale

Process Discovery provides a data-driven approach to identifying automation opportunities by providing automation recommendation scores rooted in metrics such as process duration, frequency, and employee utilization. Businesses can leverage this intelligence to build an automation pipeline that is prioritized to maximize impact and ROI. When a process is ready for automation, users can generate automation files of the documented process to serve as a blueprint for development, jumpstarting the automation build and giving both business and IT teams a clear definition and scope of the process that is to be automated.

Check out our webinar on how Process Discovery can identify automation opportunities within shared services.

What should organizations consider when looking at Process Discovery tools?

Process Discovery is a must-have value tool for businesses teams who are responsible for:

• Process Improvement
• Operational Excellence
• Digital Transformation
• Compliance and Governance

Process Discovery can deliver benefits to organizations in a variety of industries and functions including Financial Services, Banking, Healthcare, Telecom, Retail, and Call Centers.

It is important that companies consider that Process Discovery is just one of many tools needed to drive successful process improvement and automation initiatives at scale. Process Management, Automation, and Analytics tools are also needed to create end-to-end solutions.

At Nintex, we are process and automation experts who specialize in enabling companies to drive transformation and deliver better customer and employee experiences. We empower business users to create end-to-end solutions with an ecosystem of powerful but easy-to-use tools including Nintex Process Discovery, Process Manager, Automation Cloud, RPA, DocGen, and eSign. Learn more about Nintex Process Platform here

To learn how you can start discovering your processes with Nintex, visit our Nintex Process Discovery page.

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• A Simple Guide to Process Discovery

Shannon Flynn Managing Editor at ReHack

Process discovery is about facing the reality of a company’s processes from start to finish. Over the years, implementations to account for supply chain disruptions or inflation could have made unexpected long-term changes when they were meant simply as an adaptation to an abnormality.

However, to move forward in an ever-changing landscape , it’s crucial to understand where businesses allocate resources and where a lack of oversight may have ignored necessary process improvements.

These are the steps to efficient and illuminating the steps in process discovery.

Step 1: Map the goals

Process mapping outlines every task from every department, external and internal. You can also map based on value streams , detailing what it takes to create a product and get it to the consumer. It should describe how an entire company runs, noting the delegation of responsibilities throughout the process.

Companies undergo process discovery because they suspect something can change for the better. There are plenty of reasons behind this motivation, including:

• Attempting to find ways to incorporate more technology or automation
• Analyzing competition compared to existing vendors
• Optimizing for efficiency, whether it’s time, energy or financial
• Finding inconsistencies or redundancies between stages
• Improving resilience for specific or all steps

The motivation may reveal itself while mapping. This will guide a company to implement higher-priority changes since businesses cannot execute every process improvement immediately. Even the most minor modification could require finding resources and assigning new roles to adapt them to current processes.

Step 2: Deep dive

Once mapping reveals company priorities, it’s time to dig deeper into each department. This requires detailed knowledge, so gathering this information calls for a lot of time and research. That’s why choosing a specific area may be advantageous, especially if a business is new to manual process discovery.

This is a chance to interview employees about workflow. Don’t assume administrative staff has all the information based on metrics alone — those who know the everyday roadblocks within a department will provide the more intimate and valuable information. Welcome all feedback. Employees must be brutally honest, as the organization will use that insight to implement change.

Here are some examples of how process discovery questions a company to reveal insight:

• Recruitment: Human resources may not onboard employees promptly. Though the company’s paperwork is thorough, it requires manual data entry. Process discovery could reveal the prioritization of onboarding software to automate information into a database, freeing up time for more high-value tasks.
• Sales and marketing: A company could allocate a large budget to social media marketing because it’s so popular. Equal funding goes to running ads on TikTok and Twitter. However, TikTok is far more profitable. The process discovery here is redistributing funds — considering the need to market on Twitter altogether — to reinforce the creative team behind the TikTok account.
• Supply chain: Analyzing a current supplier reveals they are consistently late delivering a specific product, which causes frequent delays for larger clients. Process discovery reveals the supplier is great for some products, but it’s time to seek others to facilitate that specific niche.

Find what’s outdated, redundant and unproductive. Anything sparking these buzzwords will act as an alert that there may be a process discovery opportunity.

Step 3: Execute with realistic expectations

After discovering inefficiencies through process discovery, it’s time to initiate a plan. This may take time and energy, even if the solution to the issue comes to mind quickly. Easing the change into everyday operations may take meetings and more brainstorming, but the company has made the necessary steps to propel them forward — ensure realistic expectations.

To shorten this process in the future, a company may seek process discovery tools such as automation — or automated business process discovery (ABPD). Process mining could provide insights automatically, using data to uncover more chances for optimization , such as locating bottlenecks or outages.

This uses artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to collect countless data points, which can be compared to industry trends and standards. Implementing technology, such as workflow management systems , could also provide simulations if a company incorporated specific changes — from analyzing ROI for the better or revealing that it’s a massive waste of time, even in the long term.

The steps in a discovery process

Though undergoing a complete analysis of a company’s process can be overwhelming, it also fosters countless exciting moments for the development of an organization. Instead of losing sight of the objective — to improve operations — because of discovering inefficiencies, keep forward momentum. Uncovering ways to decrease costs or increase efficiency are tangible identifiers for future success.

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Shannon Flynn

Shannon Flynn is a tech journalist with experience in business technology and consumer IT. She has contributed to sites like International Policy Digest, RobotLab, Finovate and more. Visit ReHack.com for more techie reads by Shannon.

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Process Discovery in 2024: What it is & How it works

Cem is the principal analyst at AIMultiple since 2017. AIMultiple informs hundreds of thousands of businesses (as per Similarweb) including 60% of Fortune 500 every month.

Cem's work focuses on how enterprises can leverage new technologies in AI, automation, cybersecurity(including network security, application security), data collection including web data collection and process intelligence.

We adhere to clear ethical standards and follow an objective methodology . The brands with links to their websites fund our research.

The biggest problem with processes is that although businesses have full knowledge about their desired processes, they have no idea about what their actual processes look like. This situation causes companies to make suboptimal decisions in process improvement and automation.

To prevent this issue, process discovery is a vital technique to see the full picture regarding processes, including their variations. With that, businesses can have accurate insights on how they actually perform and take optimal actions for improvement. Today, there are different technology solutions to support companies for process discovery.

What is process discovery?

Process discovery is the set of different tools and techniques to discover how any process in companies is actually executed. With process discovery, businesses can have a full understanding of their processes, uncover the process steps that they are not aware of and realize process deviations. These insights can help them to identify problems and decide the best areas for process improvement.

How to discover processes?

Businesses need to benefit from raw event logs and extract relevant data to discover their actual processes. With cause-and-effect analysis, they can connect different events to create process models, including their deviations. Process discovery follows the steps below:

• Extract data: Event logs and performance metrics are collected from the company’s enterprise and departmental software systems.
• Process and map events: The collected data is analyzed and are mapped for each case from the event logs. This step is also where the process deviations become apparent. The variations mostly happen due to manual changes or errors in the process.
• Combine events to create “as-is” processes: The generated process maps are combined and visualized to see who, what, when, and where” of each process variation, including the related subprocesses.

Above is an example of process maps. Processes don’t work as desired in real-life. After conducting a process discovery analysis, businesses can understand how their “as-is” processes work. In the image, the thicker the lines are, the more frequent the process variation is. As you can see in the process map, actual processes are too complex and deviating.

How are process mining and process discovery related?

Process discovery is a sub-branch of process mining and most process mining software includes process discovery capabilities.

Why is process discovery important now?

As businesses get larger and companies strive to differentiate themselves from the competition, processes get more complex. The complexity can also cause new events to occur, and businesses might not be aware of them. Thus, process discovery techniques are vital today to understand the “as-is” pictures and become aware of process deviations. 

Process discovery is not a new term though. It has been popular since the early 2000s and now process discovery capabilities are commonly provided by process mining solutions

What are its benefits?

Reduce costs.

By discovering actual processes, companies can reduce variations and prevent errors that incur unnecessary costs for them. Process discovery can also help businesses identify the best processes for automation, which also reduces costs in the end.

For example, a process mining vendor claims that Vaisala, a Finnish company, has used a process mining tool to discover the deviations in its operational processes, including sales, technical support, and repairs. As they could have a better understanding of their operations, it is claimed that they improved their repairs processes by ~59% depending on the product and reported a significant reduction in operational costs.

Avoid common RPA/automation pitfalls

A 2020 survey by Deloitte states that 53% of their respondents started implementing some form of Robotic Process Automation (RPA), and this percentage will become 72% by 2022. Considering the growing potential of RPA, businesses should also be aware that almost half of RPA projects fail.

To choose the best processes for automation, companies need to understand their processes and discover their variations. By having the full picture of their processes, businesses can implement their RPA solution in the desired timeline and unlock their initiative’s full potential.

To read about common RPA pitfalls, feel free to read our guide .

Improve compliance

While auditing is a time-taking process, process discovery can shorten these processes by providing all process variations. Besides, companies can discover non-compliant deviations and take action against such issues faster. 

What are the main challenges?

While process discovery has critical benefits for businesses, there are several points that companies should watch out during this process: 

Businesses can see “as-is” processes but cannot see what might have happened.

The primary purpose of process discovery is to understand the actual processes. For this, companies rely on historical data in process discovery. Therefore, process discovery does not normally inform companies about events that could potentially take place.

As a solution, companies can simulate different scenarios and get prepared against possible problems that might occur in the future.

Identifying the right level of detail in process discovery

During process discovery, companies should be careful about

• not getting stuck in analyzing extremely rare variations of a process 
• skipping rare but important process variations that could be symptoms of critical problems in their processes. 

Incomplete data

For process discovery, three main pieces of data are required: event name, unique identifier, and timestamp. When one of these data is missing, businesses cannot map the event with the others. This might prevent them from discovering process variations.

What technology can be used for process discovery?

Process mining.

Process mining is a developing solution that provides actual business processes by a layer of software integrated into the company’s IT systems. This technology uses event logs and data-driven performance metrics to connect process steps in a cause-and-effect relationship.

This solution is a broader approach that is not limited to process discovery. Companies use process mining to find ways to optimize their processes. Thus, it shares factual insights about each event in the processes and helps companies to identify bottlenecks and eliminate unnecessary steps in their processes.

You can read more about process mining in our in-depth guide .

Business Process Management Software (BPMS)

Business Process Management Software (BPMS) is also a generalized tool that allows companies to define, optimize, and report on their processes. It focuses on helping companies to optimize their processes for achieving their objectives. While BPMS mostly focuses on monitoring processes rather than discovering new ones, it can still be used to understand process deviations and detect nonconforming process steps. With the insights it generates, a company can fully understand its processes by integrating BPMS into its system.

New approaches

Process mining traditionally relied on log files. However, companies are also working on collecting data from

• personal productivity applications (Microsoft Excel, Outlook, etc.)
• terminal and virtual environments by recording user’s desktop activity in real-time

This requires using a software agent to record employee transactions. The main limitation of these tools is that they have no view of what happens inside the system, they are viewing the process from an end-user perspective. These tools help discover processes to enhance process automation and identify repetitive user actions.

Discover latest solutions to discover your processes and workflows through our objective and comprehensive list of vendors:

• Workflow management software
• Business process management software
• Low-code/No-code development platform
• Onboarding software
• Process mining
• Business process automation software

If you still have questions about process discovery, we would like to help:

Find the Right Vendors

• Automation Anywhere 

Cem's work has been cited by leading global publications including Business Insider, Forbes, Washington Post, global firms like Deloitte, HPE, NGOs like World Economic Forum and supranational organizations like European Commission. You can see more reputable companies and media that referenced AIMultiple.

Cem's hands-on enterprise software experience contributes to the insights that he generates. He oversees AIMultiple benchmarks in dynamic application security testing (DAST), data loss prevention (DLP), email marketing and web data collection. Other AIMultiple industry analysts and tech team support Cem in designing, running and evaluating benchmarks.

Throughout his career, Cem served as a tech consultant, tech buyer and tech entrepreneur. He advised enterprises on their technology decisions at McKinsey & Company and Altman Solon for more than a decade. He also published a McKinsey report on digitalization.

He led technology strategy and procurement of a telco while reporting to the CEO. He has also led commercial growth of deep tech company Hypatos that reached a 7 digit annual recurring revenue and a 9 digit valuation from 0 within 2 years. Cem's work in Hypatos was covered by leading technology publications like TechCrunch and Business Insider.

Cem regularly speaks at international technology conferences. He graduated from Bogazici University as a computer engineer and holds an MBA from Columbia Business School.

To stay up-to-date on B2B tech & accelerate your enterprise:

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Discovery-Driven Planning

• Rita McGrath
• Ian MacMillan

New ventures require a new way to plan.

The Idea in Brief

You’re weighing a major strategic venture—a first-time alliance, a new market, an innovative product. Beware: business history is littered with stories about smart companies that hemorrhaged multiple millions from ventures gone bad.

Why such massive losses? Too many firms use conventional planning to manage their ventures, say McGrath and MacMillan. They make predictions about a venture’s potential based on their established businesses. And they treat the assumptions underlying those predictions—“The product will sell itself,” “We’ll have no competitors”—as facts. By the time they realize a key assumption was flawed, it’s too late to stanch the bleeding.

How to avoid this scenario? As your venture unfolds, use a disciplined process to systematically uncover, test, and (if necessary) revise the assumptions behind your venture’s plan. You’ll expose the make-or-break uncertainties common to ventures. And you’ll address those uncertainties at the lowest possible cost—so you don’t set your venture on the path to ruin.

The Idea in Practice

McGrath and MacMillan suggest this five-step process for successful venture planning:

1. Bake profitability into your venture’s plan. Instead of estimating the venture’s revenues and then assuming profits will come, create a “reverse income statement” for the project: Determine the profit required to make the venture worthwhile—it should be at least 10%. Then calculate the revenues needed to deliver that profit.

2. Calculate allowable costs. Lay out all the activities required to produce, sell, service, and deliver the new product or service to customers. Together, these activities comprise the venture’s allowable costs . Ask, “If we subtract allowable costs from required revenues, will the venture deliver significant returns?” If not, it may not be worth the risk.

3. Identify your assumptions. If you still think the venture is worth the risk, work with other managers on the venture team to list all the assumptions behind your profit, revenue, and allowable costs calculations. Use disagreement over assumptions to trigger discussion, and be open to adjusting your list. Example: 

A company has determined that it needs to sell 250 million units of a proposed new product at a particular price to generate the revenue required to meet the venture’s profit goal. It decides how many orders it’ll need to sell the 250 million units, how many sales calls it’ll take to secure those orders, how many salespeople will be required to make those calls, and how much this will cost in sales-force compensation.

4. Determine if the venture still makes sense. Check your assumptions against your reverse income statement for the venture. Can you still make the required profit, given your latest estimates of revenues and allowable costs? If not, the venture should be scrapped.

5. Test assumptions at milestones. If you’ve decided to move ahead with the venture, use milestone events to test—and, if necessary, further update—your assumptions. Postpone major commitments of resources until evidence from a previous milestone signals that taking the next step is justified.

Business lore is full of stories about smart companies that incur huge losses when they enter unknown territory—new alliances, new markets, new products, new technologies. The Walt Disney Company’s 1992 foray into Europe with its theme park had accumulated losses of more than $1 billion by 1994. Zap-mail, a fax product, cost Federal Express Corporation $600 million before it was dropped. Polaroid lost $200 million when it ventured into instant movies. Why do such efforts often defeat even experienced, smart companies? One obvious answer is that strategic ventures are inherently risky: The probability of failure simply comes with the territory. But many failures could be prevented or their cost contained if senior managers approached innovative ventures with the right planning and control tools.

• Rita McGrath is a Professor at Columbia Business School and a globally recognized expert on strategy in uncertain and volatile environments. She is the author of The End of Competitive Advantage (Harvard Business Review Press), and most recently, Seeing Around Corners (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt).
• Ian MacMillan is the Dhirubhai Ambani Professor of Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the Wharton School.

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What Is Process Discovery?

What is Process Discovery?

Following Episode 1: What is Digital Business Automation? , we wanted to introduce the first Mini-Series: What is Process Discovery? In this series, you will learn about the two capabilities within the world of process discovery: process mapping and process mining . Leveraging one or both of these Digital Business Automation capabilities will establish the foundation of your Digital Business Automation journey. You will learn about the what, why and how of both capabilities. Finally, we will share some real-life examples so that you leave this episode informed and ready to kick off your own process discovery journey!

Follow along with the episode now!

Process discovery is the practice of capturing the current state of your company’s business processes, whether looking at a single business process or all of them. We cannot improve a process (or even know where to start) until that process or set of processes has been discovered, captured and made available in a highly visual and interactive fashion. Automated business process discovery can help you make improvements to your business. 

These are important components and process discovery steps:

• Process mapping: This process creates a visual representation of common workflows. The maps help you understand procedures and all their steps more completely. In addition, process mapping allows the user to interact with the process model and discover or quantify the benefits of improving it one way versus another.
• Types: Your type of process discovery depends on your industry, division or discipline.
• Basic flow chart: This tool is a visual map that displays basic procedure steps. For instance, it uses qualifiers like outputs and inputs.
• Detailed process map: A detailed process map shows every step of a procedure and contains details around every subprocess.
• High-level process map: This map shows a process’s macro view, including crucial factors like SIPOC, which consists of suppliers, customers, inputs and outputs.
• Value stream map: This tool explains how to develop a service for the user and is a lean six sigma technique. 
• Business architecture: Business architecture discovers an end-to-end view of your business and how it works through a lens of a highly organized and interactive catalog of your business processes. It’s a growing concept in the world of process discovery.
• Process mining: During process mining, you apply data science to discover, validate and improve your workflows. Essentially, you capture and ingest your systems log data — like process ID, activity name or start time data points — and use it to evaluate the efficiency of your workflows. Then, these algorithms turn existing data into a process map. They provide insight into the root causes of deviations from the norm. If processes aren’t currently performing as intended, data visualization arms process owners with the information required to iterate to a new optimized future state.

How to Choose Between Process Mapping and Process Mining

Both process mapping and process mining are important features in process discovery. Both can bring many benefits to companies but differ in the discovery process and creation type. While process mining uses data science and algorithms to evaluate data, process mapping absorbs information from employees and business analysts. And process mining requires advanced data mining tools, while you can complete process mapping by hand or with simple software.

Choosing between these options is entirely up to you and current factors like:

• Your current position: Your existing placement in the process discovery journey can help you decide between process mapping and mining. For instance, you could consider how much process mapping or mining has already been completed. If you’ve already accomplished some mapping, think about how thorough it was.
• Your process maps’ state: Next, consider the current state of your process maps, such as their models. For instance, your process maps might have been modeled in Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN) format. While process mapping has relatively low requirements to get started, you might need a specific format to begin process mining.
• Your log data access: Lastly, consider whether you have access to log data from your systems, like enterprise resource planning (ERP) software or customer relationship management (CRM) software.

At Salient Process, we recommend using both techniques. Start with process mapping and then combine process mining later, because the two complement each other. 

Starting with process mapping is ideal due to its low-entry barriers. You would only need a BPMN-enabled process mapping platform — such as IBM Blueworks Live — to get started. Process mapping organizes workflows in an easily accessible format, making it easier to identify areas for improvement. However, process mapping’s major limitation is that it requires a human data source, which relies on a subjective experience. Because of this, you might compromise some accuracy.

By combining process mining with process mapping, you can cut through the subjectivity of a human experience and derive data from the systems being used to carry out the process under discovery. The primary drawback of process mining is that it cannot capture any task carried out outside of the system’s log data, like phone calls or text messages. However, process mapping lets you add these human behaviors to your overall process map. 

Using the two capabilities together allows the strengths of each to shine and resolves the other’s limitations. You can leverage both capabilities, regardless of which you start with, to achieve the optimal process discovery posture. Remember to complete everything in BPMN notation.

How to Approach Process Mapping

Let’s take a closer look at how to get started with process mapping. You can start this process by following these tips:

• Start with what you have: First, examine your current tools and resources. If you have any existing process maps or standard operating procedures, you can migrate them into a BPMN-enabled process mapping platform like IBM Blueworks Live . That way, you can quickly access and visualize important usage statistics. You can also access user activity and compliance details.
• Use process mapping workshops: Next, you can map out the remainder of your in-scope processes in process mapping workshops. These events typically take about one to two hours. You sit down and share your screen with a process owner or subject matter expert. This process is followed by cleanup and playback to ensure everything is correct. You can continue to iterate on the process model until you achieve concurrence.
• Utilize experts: Another important tip is to ask experts for assistance. They can augment or help take over your process mapping overhaul. Expert industrial engineers at Salient Process can complete about 3 years’ worth of work in three months. They can design a customized plan for all Digital Business Automation journeys.

How to Approach Process Mining

Once you integrate process mapping into your company, it becomes easier to begin process mining. These are suggestions for process mining implementation:

• Grab your system’s log data: First, retrieve your data from the system that captures most, if not all, of the process under discovery. The report typically looks like an Excel export with columns for process ID, activity name and start time. There may be other data points — like end time, resources or role — but these three data points are all you need to get started.
• Use model tuning: This process makes data cleanup easier. Any process analyst can complete model tuning with a bit of experimentation and training. Adjusting the percentage of activities displayed can help tame the noise of your process model and adjusting the percentage relations between activities can do more of the same.

Example Use Cases of Process Mining and Process Mapping

You can use both process mining and process mapping to optimize your workflows. For instance, here are specific use cases for process mining:

• Determine how long it takes to go from order to payment (O2C ) : ERP systems like Oracle, SAP or Microsoft Dynamics will naturally have a robust set of log data, where the order to cash (O2C) processes lie.
• Determine how long it takes to go from lead to order: By looking at CRM data, you can see what you can optimate or control along the way.
• Selling faster: You could achieve faster selling times by applying process mining to your lead-to-order CRM log data.

With process mapping, your aperture is wider. You can model any process in BPMN notation. These are a few process mapping use examples:

• New candidate interview process: You could map out your candidate interview process in an accessible format. For instance, you could map out the entire timeline from receiving applications to the final candidate selection. You could also organize the map from a human resources (HR) perspective to gain more specific insights. While evaluating the process map, you might notice areas that need improvement or removal. Then, you can rework the procedure to smooth these challenges and streamline the process.
• Client onboarding: Another process discovery example involves analyzing client onboarding procedures. For instance, you could use a wealth management perspective and identify time-consuming or wasteful factors during the onboarding process.

Here are the podcast’s major points so far:

• Process discovery: This is the practice of capturing the current state of your company’s business processes. It’s essential for process improvement and Digital Business Automation journeys. Software is getting better, more intuitive, easier to use and more powerful. It’s also featuring scenario simulation and AI-powered automation opportunity identification modules.
• Process mapping: Process mapping visually represents a workflow, allowing you to understand a process and its components more clearly. Process mapping allows the user to interact with the process model and discover or quantify the benefits of improving it.
• Process mining: This process applies data science to discover, validate and improve your workflows.
• Combining process mapping and process mining: By using the two capabilities together, you allow the strengths of each to shine and can solve the other’s limitations.

Salient Process’s Podcast, Bots & Thoughts

You can find more episodes of Bots & Thoughts on all podcast streaming platforms. If you have a topic idea, feel free to let us know . We conduct this podcast for our listeners and would love to discuss your desired topics. In addition, you can contact any member of the Salient Process team.

Start Your Process Discovery Journey With Salient Process Today

Salient Process is a leading Digital Business Automation services provider. We help clients with digital transformations by working closely with them. Our expert team can help you create a customized plan for process discovery, process mining, process mapping and more. 

Contact Sr. Automation Advisor, Jimmy Hewitt , to begin your Process Mapping and Analysis Sprint!

are there more episodes?

• https://www.salientprocess.fm/

Have a topic idea? Let us know!

We would love to hear from you. This podcast is for you, and if you have something that you want to hear, we would love to know. This form is also a place for you to ask questions or get in touch with our Salient Process team. 

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Digital Business Automation Home Page

What is Digital Business Automation?

Scaling Beyond RPA to Digital Business Automation

North Star Methodology

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Bots & Thoughts: The Hyperautomation Podcast

Salient Process is a full-service digital business automation shop and proud IBM Automation business partner. To learn more about us at our website,  request a free consultation with one of our expert automation advisors!  We look forward to guiding you and your company along your own unique Hyperautomation journey.

Process Discovery Tools and Software [2024 Complete List]

Lari numminen, march 11, 2023.

Process discovery tools can give enterprise leaders end-to-end visibility into key workflows and processes. But, with so many solutions to choose from it can be confusing to know where to begin.

We've compiled this list of process intelligence tools to help you pick the right solution for you!

What is process discovery software?

Process discovery is a series of methods and tools used to define, visualize, and analyze business processes. It provides a measurable understanding of how people carry out daily operations and processes in the workplace.

You can think of process discovery as the exploration of the as is of an organization's existing processes while process redesign is the exploration of the to be state of improved processes.

Discovering processes is one of the most critical steps in understanding how the organization works and, frankly speaking, is a prerequisite for any successful business process transformation. 

What are process discovery tools? 

Process discovery tools use a combination of different techniques, including process mining algorithms and task capture technology , to automatically map business processes. They use different methods to monitor and capture user interactions within different information systems and applications, recording the digital traces of work.

In the past, discovery happened through workshops, questionaires and as part of process analysis projects, but in recent years it has been vastly improved and automated through advanced technology.

Process discovery uses various computational and statistical methods to get valuable, applicable information from the data it gathered into actionable process analysis . You can think of it as the application of data mining methodologies to business process management.

Process discovery vs process mining

Process discovery and process mining are related terms that often get confused. Process mining is the technique to gather data related to a business process to uncover important trends and insights, while process discovery is the application of process analysis to discover the current real state of processes within an organization.

Process mining often involves mining event logs in enterprise data systems to identify bottlenecks, inefficiencies, and areas for improvement. The goal is to improve the process by making necessary changes and optimizations. Process discovery can be done manually or through dedicated process discovery tools. Many process mining tools offer process discovery functionality, but process discovery can also be done through general business process management tools that allow you to map business processes.

Process discovery vs task mining

Process discovery is also closely aligned with task mining - and is a core component of many task mining tools . While process discovery can be a key feature within task mining, not all task mining solutions include process discovery, nor do every process discovery solutions involve task mining.

The reason why task mining is a great first step in to process discovery is that many businesses leaders simply don't know the scope of all business applications and systems used within their organization. Task mining software can log and identify which tools are being used and the time spent on different applications. This can initiate process discovery as well as support in conformance checking, although some companies may have separate solutions to fulfil this need.

Benefits of process discovery software

Compared to manual or consultant-lead process discovery, process discovery software provides a number of advantages.

• Automated discovery . You can quickly and accurately map the "as-is" state of your processes based on data.
• Faster analysis . When survey or interview based process discovery can take months, software can offer real-time value in seconds.
• Repeatable and scalable . Automated process discovery can be maintained or scaled much more efficiently with software.
• Single source of truth . While surveys can contain subjective views or humar error, discovery software gives an objective truth based on data.
• Accessable for users . You don't need to be a process analyst to get access and benefit from self-service analysis or dashboards provided by process discovery tools.
• Easy configurability . Process discovery tools can be configured to accurately represent the needs of key industries or business functions based on templates and best practices.

How to pick a process discovery tool?

There are over 35 different process intelligence software solutions in the market offering different levels of process discovery. No matter what your specific needs, it’s good to keep in mind some key areas to consider:

• Ease of use - process discovery tools doesn’t need to be difficult to use. Seek screenshots or a product demonstration to see if it looks easy to use or navigate.
• Configurability - some process discovery solutions only cater for specific use-cases or require significant effort to configure or integrate with different source systems.
• End-to-end visibility (E2E) - as more work is digitalized, you need full E2E visibility of the full process journey across different tools and systems.
• Analytics and reporting - if you’re looking for enterprise grade process discovery you’re likely to need advanced and trustworthy analytics and reporting capabilities.
• Level of support - whether you are a first time process analyst or an experienced process architect you’ll likely have different needs for support and on-boarding.
• Total cost of ownership - process mining solutions come in a variety of costs and service levels. It’s smart to consider the total cost of ownership including the implementation cost as well as the cost of running on-going process analytics.

List of Process Discovery Tools

1. workfellow.

Workfellow is both a process and task mining solution, offering complimentary process discovery functionality for a cloud-first world through a method called Work API. For more information download Work API whitepaper .

Workfellow works with enterprise companies across different industries but is especially focused on knowledge-intensive digital work, such as financial operations, insurance and banking. For more information, read case-study how one medium-sized business process outsourcing (BPO) firm uncovered over € 2 million ($2.17 million) in process waste.

Key features of Workfellow

• Effortless implementation: Typically customers are able to get end-to-end visibility on key processes within 30 days of plug-and-play implementation.
• 360 degree discovery: Through Work API Workfellow is able to track tasks and process flows across different business apps, allowing for end-to-end analysis of workflows.
• Automated insights: Workfellow includes ready-made dashboards and provides automated monitoring and insights within its analytics.
• Privacy first: Workfellow is a GDPR-free solution that does not process personally identifiable data.

Who is it for?

Workfellow is a good option for any organization that doesn’t have extensive data science and process mining resources in-house looking for an effortless and fast way to gain process intelligence without data mining hassle.

UiPath is a major process automation and orchestration platform. It provides a suite of tools to help automate processes, including an easy-to-use visual workflow designer, a powerful robotic automation platform, and an AI-powered document understanding component. 

UiPath is a pioneer in robotic process automation used by over 10,000 customers ranging from independent developers to large enterprise businesses such as Verizon, Coca-Cola and Takeda Pharmaceuticals. UiPath’s process mining solution has been developed based on the acquisition of ProcessGold in 2019.

Key features of UiPath

• Automation suite : All-in-one platform for automation including RPA, low-code app development and integrations.
• Accessible and scalable : UiPath is relatively quick to start to use, starting from free-to-try UiPath Cloud Platform. ‍
• Trainings : Broad set of training materials for intelligent automation, including the UiPath Academy and certifications

UiPath is well suited for an enterprise with a strong focus on RPA looking to advance their intelligent automation through a single-suite platform.

Celonis is a process mining and intelligent automation suite that allows companies to improve their business processes through a platform called the “Execution Management System” (EMS). It gives users visibility and insights into the performance of their processes through extracting and analyzing event logs from different data sources, for example, ERP or CMS systems. Celonis EMS also allows users to discover bottlenecks, discover inefficiencies, and optimize processes. 

Celonis is one of the first commercially available process mining solutions and is today a recognized market leader in the category. Since 2011 the company has grown rapidly and now has a market valuation over $13 billion. Celonis has over 1000 customers, mostly in North America and Europe.

Key features of Celonis

• Enterprise focus : Celonis provides a deep level of service, security and process data management for the needs of large enterprise organizations.
• Event log extraction : Celonis have a large customer base and broad experience in extracting event logs from different source systems, especially popular  ERPs such as SAP and Oracle. ‍
• Partner network : Celonis has over 170 partner agencies that provide implementation consulting services.

Celonis can be a good fit for a large enterprise with in-house data science resources with most of their workflows and processes within a single ERP system, such as SAP or Oracle.

The Fujitsu Automated Process Discovery (APD) service helps organizations visualize their existing business processes using an evidence-based approach with analytical and actionable insight to maximize the value of process improvement initiatives. Unlike traditional business process discovery efforts, where models are created after a multitude of interviews with task or process owners, the APD service relies on facts and evidence within company application log files to trace the process and render the flow “as it really happens”.

Key features of Fujitsu APD

• Out of the box metrics : ability to measure compliance, inefficiency cost and process optimization opportunities.
• Consulting focus : as part of the Fujitsu APD service experience clients get advisory on areas of improvement and implications.
• Aligned with BPM : aligned with standards-based process modelling techniques.

Global 1000 companies that have working relationship with Fujitsu or are looking for a integrated consulting + software experience to process discovery.

Nintex is a leader in end-to-end process intelligence and workflow automation with over 10,000 customers. Nintex expanded their process discovery and mining functionality in 2022 through the acquisiton of Kryon.

Kryon's Process Discovery solutions were considered best-of-breed solutions at the time of the acquisition, especially with unique computer vision features for event capture on user interfaces. In addition,  Kryon offered robotic process automation (RPA) functionality under Kryon RPA. ‍

Key features of Nintex Process Discovery

• End-to-end visibility. The process discovery element is based on computer vision task capture from users computers and workstations.
• Automation capabilities . The Kryon suite offers complimentary process discovery and RPA functionality to identify and execute automation projects.
• Long-established suite : Nintex has the stability and stature of a long-established automation suite tracing back to the early days of enterprise automation in 2006.

Nintex has a broad customer base in services, manufacturing and retail industries and can be a good option for any business considering an automation focused, established vendor.

If you’re a believer in “you won’t get fired for buying IBM,” you’ll be glad to know the Big Blue offers its own process discovery and intelligence solution. Added to IBM’s portfolio in 2021 through an acquisition of MyInvenio, IBM Process Mining discovers, monitors and optimizes business processes by extracting system data from enterprise systems.

Key features of IBM Process Mining

• Easy to use . IBM Process Mining has advanced process enhancement features which discovers business rules based on event log data and adds them to a standard BPMN model.
• Visualizations . IBM Process Mining offers a variety of visualization options relevant to process discovery, including process graphs, process variants and conformance analysis.
• Process simulation . IBM Process Mining has process simulation features enabling to-be processes and what-if scenarios.

IBM Process Mining is a good option for companies looking to build on IBM's data and consulting expertise, especially with the interest to align business process management and design models with standard practices, such as BPMN models.

7. SAP Signavio

For organizations with an SAP ERP landscape Signavio is a process discovery and mining solution to consider. In the past you may have been more familiar with SAP’s Intelligent Business Process Management Solution or the integration of Celonis Process Mining within the SAP solution. SAP acquired Signavio in 2021 and has worked on integrating Signavio as a prime process intelligent offering.

Key features of SAP Signavio

• Integration to SAP . Signavio has deepened integrations to the SAP data ecosystem and partner network.
• Process management . in addition to process mining Signavio offers broader process design and management capabilities'
• Collaboration Hub. Signavio includes unique functionality to share process models, which is especially helpful to create the should-be state of processes.

SAP Signavio’s Process Transformation suite can be used for a variety of purposes, including process insights, process automation, process management and process modelling. It's especially valuable for enterprise looking to implement a broad business process management (BPM) approach on the SAP data stack.

8. Avo Discover

Avo Discover is a niche process discovery solution that enables businesses to transform end-to-end processes into documentation and automation opportunities. The company is based in Cincinatti and is especially growing in the APAC and Middle East region.

Key features of Avo Discover

• Process recording and discovery . Avo Discover includes activity tracking functionality that allows you to discover processes related to a key activity.
• Process documentation . You can combine individual tasks in to end-to-end enterprise processes.
• Integration to automation . Avo Discover is integrated to Avo Automation suite, including automation testing functionality.

Avo Discover is especially relevant for automation specialists looking for a solution for automated software testing and test automation.

9. Microsoft Minit

Microsoft is an enterprise software provider that needs no introduction. What’s less well known is that Microsoft has an increasing solution offering in enterprise automation through it’s Power Platform.

In 2022 Microsoft acquired Minit , a best-of-breed process mining solution based in Bratislava, Slovakia. As of 2023 Microsoft has signaled plans to integrate Minit into it’s service offering.

Key Features of Minit

• Out of the box templates: Minit has capabilities to offer faster-than-average process mining implementation through ready-made integration and visualization templates.
• User friendly solution : According to customer feedback Minit is a relatively easy to implement solution without the typical need for data science and data mining expertise.
• Integration to Microsoft ecosystem : the opportunity ahead is for Minit process mining capabilities to be deeply integrated into Microsoft’s other intelligent automation capabilities.

If you are a true believer in the Microsoft ecosystem and are looking to build your process intelligence stack on Microsoft’s track record in integrating best-of-breed solutions, Microsoft Minit may be for you.

Appian is an established enterprise software vendor founded in 1999. Its business process management suite traces back to 2004. Appian is known for being an end-to-end workflow management solution with service-focused enterprise organizations, including BFSI and government agencies.

Appian’s process mining solution was developed through the acquisition of Berlin-based Lana Labs in 2021. The software utilized Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) technologies to analyze data from various sources such as ERP systems and log files, to provide a visual representation of the process flow.

Key features of Lana Labs / Appian Process Mining

• End-to-end BPM : Through the integrated BPM and process mining solution Appian can provide the tools to analyze and manage business process improvement.
• Focus on services : Appian specializes in service based enterprise, such as banking, financial services and government institutions.
• BPMN integration : ability to align process design with business process modelling standards.

11. Fluxicon Disco

Disco is a process mining solution offered by Fluxicon, a company with a background in academic research into process and data mining. Fluxicon first started to explore process mining technology in the late 1990s and are one of the first process mining solutions available on the market.

12. Mehrwerk ProcessMining (MPM)

Mehrwerk is a process mining solution built on the Qlik Sense business intelligence platform. It offers comprehensive pocess mining capabilities combines self-service functionality process visualizations.

QPR Software is one of the first vendors to offer process mining functionality. The QPR ProcessAnalyzer offers broad analytical functionality, customizable dashboards and enhanced BPMN modeling.

14. BusinessOptix

BusinessOptix is a US-based Process Transformation suite offering end-to-end process transformation tools including process mining functionality. BusinessOptix process mining is offered as part of a cloud-based platform for transforming business processes in areas such as customer experience (CX).

15. Apromore

Apromore is a process mining solution with deep links to the academic sector founded by university professors. Apromore offers a free version of it's software for education and research purposes.

16. DCR Process Mining

DCR Solutions is also another emerging process mining vendor with strong links to the academic world. Based out of Denmark, DCR offers a suite of solutions for business process management, including process mining and process discovery modules.

18. BusinessOptix

The iGrafx Business Process Optimization platform helps to identify and analyze processes, model processes, and ultimately automate them. iGrafx offers process intelligence solutions through the acquisition of Logpickr - a process mining vendor based in France.

20. Inverbis

Inverbis is a process mining and value stream mining company based in Spain. InVerbis is developed as part of an incubation and technology transfer from CiTIUS, the Research Center on Intelligent Technologies at the University of Santiago.

More comparisons

Process discovery q&a.

Process discovery tools empower enterprise leaders and operational excellence professionals to make data-driven decisions and enhance their process management capabilities. By automating the process discovery and analysis tasks, these tools save time and resources that can be redirected to other high-value activities.

Traditional process mapping methods, such as manual flowcharts and swimlane diagrams, rely on human input and are prone to errors and subjectivity. Process discovery tools, on the other hand, automatically generate process models based on actual data, ensuring accuracy and objectivity. Additionally, these tools provide advanced analysis and visualization capabilities, making it easier to identify areas for improvement and make data-driven decisions.

Implementing process discovery tools in an organization typically involves the following steps aligned with process analysis cycles:

• Set goals . Define the scope and objectives of the project, including the processes to be analyzed and the desired outcomes.
• Select tool . Choose a process discovery tool that meets your organization's requirements and objectives.
• Decide data sources . Identify and prepare the necessary data for analysis, ensuring it is accurate and complete.
• Configure tool . Configure the process discovery tool, inputting the collected data and setting up any required integrations.
• Visualize and analyze . Generate process models and perform analysis to identify areas for improvement.
• Take action . Develop an action plan to address the identified inefficiencies and optimize processes.
• Review and repeat . Monitor the results and make any necessary adjustments to the process models and optimization strategies.

The implementation timeline varies depending on factors such as the complexity of the organization's processes, the quality of the data, and the chosen tool. However, organizations can typically start seeing results within a few weeks to a few months. See case-study how one medium-sized business process outsourcing (BPO) firm uncovered over € 2 million ($2.17 million) in process waste within 30 days with Workfellow.

Some challenges and limitations of process discovery tools may include:

• Data quality : Process discovery tools rely on accurate and complete data to generate process models. Inaccurate or incomplete data can lead to misleading results.
• Complexity : Some tools may have a steep learning curve or be difficult to configure and use, especially for non-technical users.
• Integration : Integrating process discovery tools with existing systems and platforms may require additional effort and resources.
• Resistance to change : Some employees may be resistant to adopting new tools and changing established processes, which can hinder the successful implementation of process discovery tools.

Understand Your Processes Through Process Discovery and Identification

Does your organization have a good understanding of their business processes?  If not, consider embarking on Business Process Discovery and Identification.

Business Process Discovery and Identification is the first step in the Business Process Management cycle.  

This step is crucial because it helps organizations analyze their business processes to identify improvement opportunities.

Business Process Discovery and Identification starts with uncovering all the business processes within an organization and categorizing them based on their importance, complexity, and impact on the overall business performance.  

This categorization is a Level 1 view of your company's processes.  Learn more about process levels and the business process framework .   

You may then choose a specific process from the categorization list and capture the information required to create a detailed process map, sometimes called the As-Is process map.

Data Collection

Creating the As-Is process starts with collecting data from various sources, such as interviews, workshops, observations, and existing documentation.

Process Interviews

Process interviews are a great way to get to know the process.  Here are some recommended steps for conducting the process interviews.

Identify the key stakeholders

Prepare your questions, schedule interviews, conduct interviews, document insights, prepare findings, process observations.

This step in Business Process Discovery and Identification involves a first-hand look at how the existing process functions.   You should observe the process in action, either through direct observation or by shadowing employees as they go about their tasks.  It's essential to take note of the sequence of steps, any potential bottlenecks or delays, and how different departments or individuals interact during the process.   You should also attend process management meetings to understand how the process is governed and managed.  Documenting all observations and insights gathered from the process observations is crucial as you can use the information to document the As-Is process and analyze the process.

Process Documentation

Gather and review all existing process documentation.   This review should include procedures, work instructions, and other related documents.   Take note of such things as the comprehensiveness of the documentation, the clarity of the documentation, and the last revision date of the documentation.   Other things to look for include whether the documentation was easy to find, whether there was a centralized process repository, and whether there were multiple versions of the same document, leading to confusion.  This documentation will play an essential role in developing an up-to-date As-Is process.

Process Workshops

Process workshops, in the context of business process discovery and identification, are collaborative sessions where stakeholders map out existing processes.   These workshops often involve cross-functional teams and use visual tools like process maps to illustrate the flow of activities and decision points.  

Workshops can be instrumental in fostering a shared understanding of current processes and generating innovative ideas for optimization. Conduct the workshop using a "straw model" process map of the existing process.  Create the straw model using information gathered during your interviews, observations, and reviews of existing process documentation.

Use the process map to walk the participants through the current process to clarify understanding or identify areas for improvement.

Creating the As-Is Process

Now that you have completed all your information gathering, it is time to create the As-Is process. The term "as-is process" refers to the current state or existing workflow of a particular system or business process.   The As-Is process is much more than a simple process flow chart.  The As-Is process should include the process description, goal, objectives, roles, responsibilities, supporting automation systems, metrics, policies, controls, and a process map.  

Other diagrams, such as a RACI chart or SIPOC diagram , could also be included.

The As-Is process reflects the current state and serves as a baseline for comparison when redesigning or optimizing processes.

Check out these Resources on Process Documentation:

• Webinar: Best Practices in Process Design and Documentation
• Introduction to Process Mapping  
• An Introduction to Process Mapping

Process Analysis and Recommendations

Analyzing the As-Is process is crucial in any business process improvement initiative.  The primary objective behind this analysis is to gain a comprehensive understanding of the existing processes, workflows, and activities that are currently in place.   By doing so, businesses can identify inefficiencies, bottlenecks, or areas of improvement within their processes before initiating any changes or implementing new systems.   This analysis helps identify the root cause of any issues that may be hindering the efficiency of the process and provides insights into how to optimize the process for better results.   It also helps identify areas where your company can leverage business process automation or digital transformation to streamline the process and reduce manual efforts.  

Process Maturity Assessments

Conducting a process maturity assessment can supplement your process identification efforts.   A Process Maturity Assessment is a systematic evaluation of an organization's processes and practices to determine their level of maturity.  Maturity in this context refers to the organization's ability to reliably and consistently achieve its goals by effectively implementing its processes. We measure maturity on a 1-5 scale, where level 1 represents an ad-hoc or non-existent process, and level 5 is a mature process that continuously undergoes improvement.   Here are some resources for conducting a process maturity assessment.

• The Importance of a Process Maturity Assessment
• Webinar:  ITSM Process Maturity Assessment

Business Process Discovery Tools Process discovery and identification has traditionally been time-consuming and complex, requiring significant manual effort, expertise, and experience.  However, with the advent of Process Discovery tools, this task has become more streamlined and efficient. 

Process Mining Tools

Process mining software is highly useful in analyzing data from multiple sources within an organization.

These tools source data from multiple areas including logs, databases, and various other systems used by the organization.  The main objective of process mining is to provide insights into how data flows through these systems and identify areas where improvements can be made to streamline the process.

By analyzing the data, process mining software can help organizations identify bottlenecks, inefficiencies, and other obstacles that may be hindering their business processes.  The insights provided by process mining software can help organizations optimize their workflows, reduce costs, and improve overall efficiency.

Examples of Process Mining Tools

There are a growing number of tools in the market.  These tools offer robust capabilities for process discovery, analysis, and optimization, leveraging AI and machine learning to drive insights and improvements within business processes.

Here is a sampling of some of the available tools. 

Celonis  

Celonis offers an Execution Management System that provides process mining and process excellence solutions. It leverages AI and machine learning to analyze event data and offer insights into business processes.

UiPath Process Mining

UiPath's Process Mining tool is part of its Business Automation Platform, offering capabilities to automatically capture and analyze business processes. It provides visibility into process execution and identifies improvement opportunities.

IBM Process Mining

IBM offers process mining solutions that utilize advanced analytics to discover, monitor, and improve business processes based on event log data. It helps organizations enhance their operational performance through actionable insights.

Engage Process

Engage Process is a process mining tool focused on providing visual representations of process flows, making it easier for stakeholders to understand complex processes and identify opportunities for optimization.

LANA Process Mining

LANA Process Mining is known for its AI-driven approach to process discovery and analysis. It helps organizations gain deeper insights into their operational workflows and drive continuous optimization.

Process Mining Tools Considerations

It's important to note that business process mining software focuses on automated processes and how data flows through the various systems in the organization.  Getting out and talking to the people involved in the manual process steps remains essential.

AI for Business Process Discovery

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become a game-changer in the field of Business Process Discovery. AI algorithms are designed to analyze large amounts of data and identify patterns, trends, and anomalies that may not be immediately visible to the human eye. This capability makes AI-powered process mining tools ideal for analyzing complex business processes that involve multiple systems and data sources.

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• A step-by-step guide for conducting better product discovery

Coding features is hard and expensive. Yet many teams learn they’ve made a false assumption about what users really need once their new feature goes live – only to go underutilized. Well, life is too short for that. And any business that operates in such a way won’t be around for long .

Fortunately, there’s a better way.

The standard process for prioritizing what the delivery team works on looks like this:

What if we invested more in researching and validating ideas upfront before we ever sent them to delivery?

We call this second track “product discovery” and it complements and precedes product delivery.

Here’s how the legendary Marty Cagan describes it:

“First, you need to discover whether there are real users out there that want this product… Second, you need to discover a product solution to this problem that is usable, useful, and feasible.”

In short, product discovery is a process that helps product teams refine their ideas by deeply understanding real user problems and then landing on the best way to solve them. At Productboard, we are big proponents of this approach and will walk through the product discovery process we follow in the steps below.

The product discovery process is about building the right products and features for your customers

There is always uncertainty when it comes to making product decisions. We conduct product discovery because we want to reduce the risks around what we decide to build. Sacrificing discovery usually leads to a disconnect between user needs and the products that are built. 

Marty Cagan identifies four big risks in product management:

• Value risk (whether customers will buy it or users will choose to use it)
• Usability risk (whether users can figure out how to use it)
• Feasibility risk (whether our engineers can build what we need with the time, skills, and technology we have)
• Business viability risk (whether this solution also works for the various aspects of our business)

Essentially, conducting product discovery mitigates these risks and ensures that we are building the right products for users. It helps your team laser-focus on the problems and needs of users and sets them up to obtain deep user insights through continuous learning. 

It’s important to note that the goal of product discovery is not necessarily to ship features. Rather, it’s to promote an environment of learning that will help you improve your product incrementally and consistently.

The goal of product discovery is not necessarily to ship features. Rather, it’s to promote an environment of learning that will help you improve your product incrementally and consistently.

A step-by-step guide for conducting product discovery

Productboard uses the Double Diamond approach for conducting product discovery, structured as follows:

Let’s break down each piece step-by-step.

Uncover the underlying user need

The product discovery process starts with identifying broad challenges that you are trying to solve with your product. This is the time for your product team to take a look at the big picture — high-level objectives or themes — not at specifics.

In Productboard’s case, a challenge could look like the following:

How can we enable mid-market companies to better use Productboard?

Defining the right types of challenges is sometimes tricky. There are new product challenges , where you work on an open-ended blank slate. There are value and need-oriented challenges , which revolve around the current needs and pain points of your users. Then there are growth vs. technical challenges . Growth challenges are usually quantitative — maybe you are trying to improve a metric within your product, like user retention. Technical challenges are often related to product performance. 

During the challenge identification stage, you understand and define what you are trying to solve. 

To correctly identify challenges, you must understand the underlying user needs you want to solve with your product. At this stage, product teams rely heavily on quantitative and qualitative research to find answers. Some useful tools and techniques to use include user research, focus groups, observation, customer interviews, data analytics, competitive research, empathy mapping, and more.

After you understand the user needs you are trying to address, you must then clearly define them . There are a few steps to take to do this:

• Nail down the problem: Aim to nail down one sentence that covers the entire problem you are trying to solve. This helps you communicate clearly to your team and aligns them around a common cause. If you formulate the problem loosely, it will be difficult to keep everyone focused.
• Validate the problem: Make sure that you are actually working on problems that need to be solved. How big is the pain that your users are experiencing? How much value will tackling the pain truly add? 
• Prioritize : Essentially, you must figure out which of the identified problems you should tackle first. There are several popular frameworks that are used by product teams to do this. At Productboard we favor value vs. complexity, but there are others, like the RICE method, ICE, and more.

To clearly define problems, many product teams employ journey mapping, dive into the Five Whys or other similar techniques , or conduct a SWOT analysis.

Identify the optimal solution

After you isolate specific user problems, it is best to reframe them into chunks that can be attainably solved.

For Productboard, the broad challenge listed above can be re-framed and narrowed down into the following:

Mid-market companies experience limitations with Productboard’s public Portal because they want to communicate with multiple audiences at once.

During the reframing stage, you ideate, prototype, and test potential solution ideas that you have prioritized with your team. All this is due diligence to validate products and features before they go into delivery.

You ideate to figure out how you plan to solve your users’ problems. This is where your team can get really creative with innovation exercises and other ideation techniques like team brainstorming, mind mapping, storyboarding, and running design sprints.

After ideas are proposed, your team can gauge their potential impact and feasibility, then prioritize which to prototype and present to customers.

Prototypes enable teams to demonstrate their ideas and bring them to life.

There are many different types of prototypes , including but not limited to sketches, mockups, clickable prototypes, MVPs , or even using competitive/similar products . 

The type of prototypes teams choose to build depends on what they are trying to learn, what needs to be tested, and what open questions they still have. 

Learn more about prototypes:

• Why every product manager should be able to prototype 
• 8 examples of prototypes to build for your MVP

Testing determines whether or not the proposed solutions are actually capable of solving the problem. Popular tools and techniques here include A/B testing, customer interviews, user testing, distributing surveys, and product beta testing.

Present solutions

Nothing is built yet at the solution stage, but you are ready to present ideas to stakeholders and users. Note that solutions don’t necessarily equal features. 

Going back to the example from Productboard, here is a viable solution: 

Let’s enable customers to build multiple Portals so they can communicate with each of their audiences differently.

Getting to a solution can take numerous iterations . After all, the product team wants to be sure that they deliver the right thing to users. Presenting the solution to stakeholders (in Productboard’s case, product leadership, delivery teams, and cross-functional teams) will be crucial for earning buy-in and alignment . 

At this stage, it is likely you will move into delivery, though not with a finalized design. Your solution is still rough around the edges.

Helpful tip

Product teams should codify best practices for how solutions should be used so internal teams and customers can get the most out of them. 

Intercom has an excellent product principle when it comes to this: stay opinionated but flexible. You can build a solution and have an idea of the best way your customers can use it, but also build in flexibility so your customers can use it in the way that best suits their needs. 

Build excellence into your product discovery process

Here is a summary of how Productboard evolved through this product discovery process:

• Challenge: How can we enable mid-market companies to better use Productboard?
• Re-frame the problem: Mid-market companies experience limitations with Productboard’s public Portal because they want to share/validate their ideas with multiple audiences at once.
• Identify a viable solution : Let’s enable customers to build multiple Portals so they can share/validate their ideas with each of their audiences differently.

(In case you were wondering, you can now create multiple Product Portals in Productboard. Go check it out!) 

We wanted to share this framework because many product teams spend most of their time working on solutions rather than working on problems. And it makes sense. It is a tempting shortcut with far fewer steps involved. However, skipping the discovery process can lead to teams shipping the wrong things, resulting in products and features that miss the mark and go unused. 

By using this framework and following its steps, our team has built an environment of continuous learning that benefits both our teams and users, increased transparency into our entire product management process, and involved a diverse set of stakeholders. We hope you find as much value in it as we have. 

Download the essential guide to product discovery e-book

Looking to improve the way your product team conducts product discovery? Check out Productboard’s free new e-book: The product discovery playbook .

In it you’ll find information on all of the following:

• How to measure the impact of product discovery
• Advice for tailoring product discovery to your organization
• How to build a continuous discovery practice in your organization

Get your free e-book

You might also like

10 Essential Product Management Skills You Need for Success

Who Owns the Product Backlog? A Comprehensive Guide 

How to Craft an Effective Enterprise Product Strategy

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Asking the Right questions-Process Discovery

• Identification of roles of those involved
• Responsibilities for actions/tasks and decisions in the process
• Outcomes and results from the processes in hand
• Known problems with existing processes
• Goals from management required from the Discovery project
• The expertise level of the intended audience
• Access to quality standards for the existing process
• Clear separation of “current state” from “future state” questions
• Identification of resources, guidelines and instruction locations and usage

This list can go on, but you get the idea. Unless you identify, who, what, how and when before you start the interview or information gathering process, you many need to re-interview staff because of your unpreparedness. Not a good idea. Plan your questions carefully, particularly when it comes to the interview stage of your Process Discovery project.

Original posted at Michael Cunningham's BPM Blog

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The Discovery Phase: The Key to Successful Product Development

What is Product Discovery?

Discovery: new products and updating existing products, what are the steps of product discovery, discovery phase deliverables, benefits of product discovery, successful discovery.

Starting a new business can feel like you’re diving into the great unknown. The statistics speak for themselves: as many as 90% of all startups will fail, with 10% of them crashing and burning within their first year. A key factor behind these grim stats is the inability to accurately gauge market demand and what your core audience needs, which accounts for about 42% of the failures.

As the market changes and customers become more discerning, the process of product discovery before any actual development has never been more crucial. Those who have experienced product failures understand the value of vetting ideas before committing to weeks of development time and allocating additional team resources. It’s essential to determine the problem you’re solving and how it can improve your customers’ lives before investing thousands of dollars on design and development.

Despite being a crucial first step of product development, the discovery phase is often swept under the rug. In this article, we’ll discuss what product discovery is and why it’s a vital step in the development process. Let’s see firsthand how running a product discovery phase before development can improve your product’s success.

The discovery phase, also known as the research or analysis phase, is all about coming to terms with business needs, user pain points, and requirements. It helps development and product teams curb uncertainty and hone in on solutions to customer issues. Discovery allows teams to determine whether the problem exists for consumers, what kind of product to create, and whether it’s worth creating at all. Through research and discovery, we gain useful insights into what users really need.

Product discovery is a process that focuses on the needs and wants of customers to determine whether or not a product or feature should be developed. Each team or company will have their own approach to product discovery, but the ultimate goal is always the same: to create products that meet the needs of customers and solve their problems. Anna Yazvinskaya, Chief Business Architect in Business Analysis, Spiral Scout

Why Is Product Discovery Important?

During the discovery phase, the main goal is to validate the business idea and determine if it’s worthwhile to invest time and resources into the project. It’s essential to ensure that the product addresses a real problem for actual people.

After all, a lack of market demand is the top reason for startup failure. By conducting thorough research during the product discovery phase, you’ll have the answers you need to make informed decisions about whether to proceed with product development. But that’s not all – without a well-defined product discovery process, precious resources could be squandered on products that don’t effectively meet user needs.

At Spiral Scout, we know that starting development without a clear vision of the product’s scope and goals is a recipe for mismanaged expectations and project overruns. That’s why we always recommend creating a product discovery blueprint that outlines the target audience and primary problems that the new product or service should address and an initial set of requirements that define success for phase 1.

Discovery Types

Problem discovery starts with a preliminary problem or challenge and ends with a validated problem, commonly called an “opportunity” in the product discovery world. The goal of problem discovery is to understand the primary issues to create superior solutions. At Spiral Scout, we achieve this by conducting primary research, such as user interviews and surveys, as well as secondary research on competitors, product reviews, and so on.

Solution discovery starts by identifying the ultimate problem and concludes with validating the proposed solution. The goal of solution discovery is to develop an optimal first version of the solution that can be delivered to the users. To achieve this, teams engage in initial solution iteration activities such as wireframing, storyboarding, prototyping, and user story mapping. You also see at times that designers will design and build clickable prototypes in tools like Figma to share with potential users and investors without doing any development work in order to get immediate feedback. This feedback from users and stakeholders is then used to refine the solution until it meets the needs of the users.

The approach you take to product discovery depends on whether you’re launching a new product or improving an existing one. For new products, your focus should be on understanding potential customers and their problems and identifying the solutions that your product can offer. For existing products, your attention should be on identifying changes that can increase customer satisfaction and overall product market fit if you have not attained it yet. Insights gained from getting your product into the marketplace can provide valuable information for what should be built next.

Continuous Product Discovery

To thrive in this dynamic landscape, top organizations understand that the improvement of their products is fundamental and constant. New technologies and trends are always emerging, so evaluating and refining digital products must be an ongoing process. This is where continuous discovery comes in. This approach, popularized by Teresa Torres , helps teams understand how their product solves specific problems for customers, how it assists customers in accomplishing their jobs to be done (JTBD), and how it can evolve and continue to serve customers. Put simply, continuous product discovery involves collecting product learnings as we communicate with customers throughout the entire development cycle, and on a continuous basis.

Customer-Centric Approach to Discovery

At the heart of product discovery is understanding your users. Listening to feedback and building empathy with your users are key components to becoming more customer-centric. However, true customer-centricity requires asking deeper questions about their needs and experiences. Understanding the context in which customers will use your product, their interactions with similar/competitors’ products, and whether they’ve tried alternatives can provide invaluable insights into their pain points. Additionally, knowing what your users struggle with and dislike doing or what manual work they are repeating over and over can help you make important improvements to your product.

By adopting a customer-centric approach to the product discovery process, your business will actually build a product that helps and delights a user because of the benefits. This ultimately buys you more time with that user and allows you to build stronger relationships with your end-users.

The discovery phase of product development is unique and tailored to the project’s specific requirements. However, there are typical discovery phase steps that are generally followed to ensure success in the discovery phase and can be adjusted based on the specifics of the project:

Step 1: Identifying User Needs. Whether you are building a new solution or enhancing an existing product, start by asking important questions: Who are the users? What challenges does the product solve and what words do they use to describe those challenges? Who are the major competitors and how do they solve the problem? Are the users willing to move to a new product because their needs are not satisfied? Determine the unique value proposition that differentiates your product or service from the competition.

Step 2: Brainstorming Solutions. Once you have gathered user feedback, pulled together additional points data, and identified their core problems, it’s time to brainstorm different solutions and then pick the best solutions and set up a plan to test it with a prototype in the market. The brainstorming phase is where you can experiment with the ideas and be comfortable knowing you will make mistakes and some ideas will be bad but the good ones should be further discussed. The aim is to determine to the best of your knowledge what path will deliver the most initial value to the customer, buy yourself credibility enough in the marketplace to gather feedback from your users, and then use that feedback to introduce additional features or products to the market if you find yourself on the correct path.

Step 3: Aligning with stakeholders. It’s critical to maintain transparency, clarity, and trust from stakeholders regarding the product’s ability to meet their expectations and deliver desired outcomes. Using a user story map to validate ideas and receive feedback from stakeholders can help identify the product’s right direction. A user story map helps teams visualize the user journey and prioritize features and functionality.

By prioritizing user needs, goals, and activities into user stories, the team creates an intuitive, visual backlog that is easy to understand for everyone. This is called a user story map.

Typically, a user story map consists of two main parts: the horizontal axis and the vertical axis. The horizontal axis represents the product’s features and functionality, while the vertical axis represents the user’s journey. Each feature or functionality is broken down into smaller user stories, which are then mapped onto the user journey.

Step 4: Prototyping. After you have a portion of ideas and roughly evaluated them based on time and budget, it’s essential to validate them with prototypes to visualize and test the user experience (UX) before creating the UI.

Prototyping is the process of creating a preliminary version or model of a product, service, or system to test and evaluate its functionality, usability, and user experience. It is a crucial step in the design and development process as it helps identify potential issues and refine the product design before moving to the final stages of production.

In the early stages of product discovery, a clickable prototype can be a valuable asset to the design process as it allows the team to test and refine the product concept before development. A visual representation of the final product idea allows users to interact with the product as if it were real, without the need for actual development. Moreover, a clickable prototype can be used to test different user scenarios, such as user flows and user journeys. This can help the team to understand how users will interact with the product and what steps they will take to accomplish their goals.

Step 5: Validating Ideas. Before implementing, review ideas and hypotheses to ensure you’re on the right track so as not to invest too much time, money, and effort. Building a product roadmap and interacting with stakeholders to get their feedback and validate ideas can help.

Step 6: Refining Results. In this step, it’s important to focus on all the increments that you must deliver as a team. Using the most pressing user problems as a guideline for priority, rather than personal opinions about favorite features, can help refine the results.

Product Discovery Activities

It’s a time to focus on problems, rather than solutions, and utilize qualitative data to validate the need for the product. This process is typically led by experts such as product managers, business analysts, UI/UX designers, or researchers, and involves rapid experimentation.

To achieve the goal of product discovery, the following factors should be considered:

• Research should be done
• Focus on problems, not solutions
• Utilize primarily qualitative data
• Validate the need
• Conduct rapid experimentation

Common activities in product discovery process include:

• Interviewing users and exploring problems is a fundamental method to understanding user needs and challenges.
• Sending out surveys to identify problem areas worth solving and to gather data at scale.
• Creating low-fidelity prototypes and conducting usability tests can help validate product ideas and identify design issues.
• Designing experiments and running brainstorming sessions with stakeholders can help generate new ideas and test assumptions.
• Researching and analyzing competitors with a SWOT diagram can help identify gaps in the market and potential opportunities.
• Facilitating workshops can help identify internal challenges and align teams on what metrics to use to define product goals and if they were met successfully.
• Sharing research findings and insights is essential to ensuring that everyone involved in the product development process is well-informed and aligned.

These discovery methods are used to gain a better understanding of user needs, pain points, and preferences. By using a variety of methods, product teams can gather diverse perspectives and identify patterns. The rise of AI and AI-based tools can significantly enhance the product discovery process and its output. By leveraging AI in product discovery , teams can gain a competitive edge and develop products that better meet the needs of their users.

Now let’s move on and take a closer look at some of the key discovery phase deliverables that set the foundation for your product’s success:

• A customer journey map helps the team understand the user’s pain points, goals, and needs at each stage of the journey.
• Feature list helps the team prioritize features based on user needs and business goals.
• Information architecture ensures that the product is intuitive and user-friendly.
• Wireframes and clickable prototypes help the team identify design and usability issues early on in the process.
• A product roadmap provides a clear understanding of what will be delivered, when it will be delivered, and why it is important.

For solution discoveries teams deliver also:

• An estimate is a rough calculation of the resources and time required to complete the project to understand the scope of the project and plan accordingly.
• Tech stack (a list of technologies to build the product) helps the team identify any potential technical challenges and ensure that the product is built using the most appropriate technologies.

The product discovery phase serves as a compass for the product development team, guiding them through the development process, and ensuring that the final product meets the desired standards. The most beneficial things to come out of a product discovery are:

• Empowering Teams: The process of product discovery empowers teams by providing them with a structured approach to evaluate and choose ideas for delivery, that are more likely to succeed in the market, leading to better outcomes.
• Customer-Centric Approach: By understanding user problems, product discovery helps teams focus on developing products that solve real issues and not just another mousetrap. This provides a deep understanding of user needs, desires, what language they use, how they view the current products in the market, and their pain points.
• Defining the Scope: Product discovery defines the project’s scope and desired outcomes. It sets achievable goals within the given time frame and resources, leading in most cases to better planning and execution.
• Understanding Your Market: Product discovery provides valuable insights into customer behavior, preferences, and buying patterns. This helps teams develop a better understanding of their target audience and the competitive landscape.
• Validating Your Ideas: Product discovery validates your ideas against the market state, ensuring that your product meets the needs of your target audience. This approach helps mitigate the risk of developing products that are not marketable.
• Mitigating Risks: By identifying potential risks, product discovery helps teams plan for challenges and develop contingency plans resulting in reducing the risk of unforeseen issues arising during the development process.
• Prioritizing Features: Product discovery helps teams prioritize features critical to the success of their product, laying out the MVP scope, and preventing costly changes during the development phase.

Product Discovery Risks

When it comes to product development, consider the potential risks that could arise. As pointed out by Marty Cagan , there are four major risks that product development teams should keep in mind:

• Solving the Wrong Problem could lead to wasted efforts and resources.
• Building the Wrong Thing could result in an ineffective or inefficient solution and wasted time.
• Failing to Achieve User Adoption leads to a product that fails to meet the intended user’s needs.
• Not Delivering the Product on Time or Within Budget could be caused by poor planning, communication, or unforeseen challenges during the development process.

The product discovery process is all about gaining deep insights into the problems and needs of users. By continuously learning and focusing on user needs, product development teams can create solutions that truly address user needs and mitigate the risks of building the wrong thing or failing to achieve user adoption.

Successful product development comes from effective product discovery. And remember that this isn’t a one-and-done process. It’s an ongoing activity because the market changes and the customer’s needs are constantly evolving. To ensure your business stays ahead of industry movements keeps customers happy, and maximizes profits, it’s crucial to reevaluate your ideal customers and the products you’re offering them on a regular basis.

It’s important to note that ‘discovery’ isn’t just another term for the analysis, research, and design phases. In fact, until you’ve built part of your solution, put it in the hands of your users, and received feedback, you can’t fully understand it.

To put it all together, the discovery phase is a key aspect of agile product development. It sets the groundwork for the final product, reduces risks, and provides valuable insights that can aid in creating a successful product that meets users’ needs. This phase is akin to being an architect or more specifically laying a firm foundation for a house; without it, the house won’t stand sturdy, and likewise, the product has less chance to succeed.

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Project Management

Discovery Phase in Project Management: What it is, why it’s important, and how to navigate it.

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As a project manager, you may be tempted to rush through the discovery phase or entirely skip it. After all, it can feel like a lot of extra work with no immediate payoff.

But this would be a mistake. The discovery phase is one of the most important parts of project management, and it’s essential to navigate it properly in order to ensure a project’s success.

What is the discovery phase?

The discovery phase is the initial stage of a project, during which the project team identifies and defines the project’s goals and objectives. This phase is where lots of learning and research takes place. Because the project manager and team need to understand the project’s scope, requirements, and constraints.

During the discovery stage, you collaborate with clients to collect data on their organization, goals, barriers, resources, and present position. In this phase, industry research, user research, competitor research, and a thorough assessment of relevant business processes and prior work by the organization should be conducted. Data-gathering may include reviewing company archives, examining documentation or groundwork, or interviewing stakeholders.

It’s important to spend the necessary time and effort in this phase to make sure that everyone is on the same page and that everyone understands what the project is trying to achieve.

Broadly speaking, the discovery phase is important because it allows project managers to precisely answer two important questions: What are we trying to achieve? and How can we achieve it?

The first question is about the project’s objectives. By taking the time to identify and define these objectives, project managers can ensure that everyone is on the same page and that everyone is working towards a common goal. This clarity is essential for a successful project.

The second question is about the project’s approach. By understanding the project’s objectives, project managers can figure out the best way to achieve them. This involves figuring out the necessary steps and resources, and it allows project managers to plan for potential roadblocks and setbacks.

Where things go wrong

There are a lot of mistakes that can be made in relation to the discovery phase. As mentioned above, the most notable problems are either the phase is completely rushed or altogether neglected.

There are two primary reasons why discovery phases may be rushed. The first is human psychology, and the second is the demands of the work. Alternatively, it might be said that there are both internal and external forces at play.

Internal pressures are ones you place on yourself. If you’re like most managers, you’re probably your own worst critic, and you may be quite harsh on yourself to get things done quickly. It’s only natural for you to want to see concrete results as soon as possible. It can be frustrating to devote time to something that doesn’t pay off right away.

External pressures come from our environment and the people around us. Colleagues, clients, and superiors might all be putting pressure on us to get things done quickly. They may not understand the importance of a well-done discovery phase and may not see the value in taking the time to do it properly.

On the other hand, sometimes project managers neglect the discovery phase altogether. There are a number of potential reasons for this but the most notable are the feeling that you already know what the project is supposed to achieve, or you underestimate the importance of the discovery phase, for the success of your project.

What it leads to…

When the discovery phase is rushed, it can lead to a lack of clarity about the project’s objectives and goals. This often creates confusion and conflict among team members, and can make it extremely difficult to move forward with the project.

Also, when the discovery phase is neglected, it can lead to problems further down the line. The project may get off to a rough start, lacking clear goals or objectives, and this can lead to wasted time and resources as the project team struggles to figure out what they’re supposed to be doing.

In either scenario you run the risk of project failure.

Why the discovery phase is important for your projects

The discovery phase is important because it lays the foundation for the rest of the project. During this phase, the project team identifies what needs to be done and determines how best to do it.

Because this phase is easy to neglect, it’s important for you to see a solid list of advantages to the discovery process. The benefits of a well-executed discovery phase include:

• As the project progresses into the implementation stage , the chances of having to make major changes diminish
• The project team is able to stay on track and avoid costly mistakes
• Communication among team members improves, leading to a more cohesive team
• The project is completed on time and within budget
• There are fewer surprises and setbacks during the project
• Increased chances for project success
• Cohesion with client before project begins
• Increase in confidence for your team and clients

How to navigate the discovery phase.

The key to successfully navigating the discovery phase is to take things slow and steady. This means taking the time to properly assess the project and its objectives, and then developing a plan of action that will achieve these goals.

There are a number of steps you can take to make sure the discovery phase is a success:

1. Assemble a discovery team

The discovery team is responsible for conducting the research and analysis necessary to define the project’s objectives. This team should include representatives from all key areas of the project, including management, design, engineering, marketing, and operations.

It’s not absolutely crucial to have a team. You could just complete this phase with information offered to you by your client. This of course would limit the accuracy of the project and could have unforeseen consequences further down.

2. Conduct research (analyze, and make adjustments)

The research stage in the project discovery process is very important. It aids in giving managers and employees a better understanding of the work that must be completed on each project component.

There are four different areas you’ll want to research in order to get a complete understanding of the project.

For one your research should be directed at your client.

Understanding your clients business and what they want to achieve is an absolute must in project discovery. You should also look at what your company does best and try to match that with what the client is looking for.

This is where queries are asked and concerns are addressed. Customer interviews are crucial for establishing project expectations and ensuring that the project’s general aims are dialed in.

Second, your research should be directed at your overall market environment.

What does your project aim to change or improve within a given industry? How are other agencies tackling similar projects? It’s important to review the market and see what others are doing. This will help you set expectations for your project, as well establish benchmarks that can be used during development if necessary.

Third, your research should be directed at your clients or your competitors.

What do they offer that is similar to your project? What are their strengths and weaknesses? What can you learn from them and apply to your project for the betterment of it.

What are their price points? Where are they promoting? What is the project messaging?

It’s important to have a comprehensive understanding of not only what you want to do with the project, but what others are doing as well. This will help in the long run when trying to differentiate your product or service from what else is out there.

Fourth, your research should also be conducted on project risks.

Risks can come in many different shapes and sizes, but knowing about potential risks before they become an issue can help mitigate them. What are the risks associated with this project? What could go wrong and how will we handle it? This is an important part of project discovery and should not be taken lightly.

A good analysis of the project starts with a good understanding of the problem or opportunity that needs to be addressed. The discovery team should gather as much information as possible about the project, including the business goals behind it, the stakeholders involved, and the current state of the market.

3. Checking back in with client to present potential solutions

Once your project team has a pretty good understanding of the problems and potential solutions, you should reinitiate a meeting with your client to communicate your findings.

At this point, it’s important to check in with the client to see if any of their suggested solutions match up with what the project team is thinking. If not, the project team can continue to brainstorm until they come up with solutions that meet your client’s needs.

Once a potential solution is identified, the project team will need to do a more in-depth analysis of the project to see if it’s feasible. This includes things like cost analysis, timeline planning, and risk assessment. If everything looks good, the project team can move on to the next step.

4. Construct a preliminary budget and timeline

The project team will also need to create a preliminary budget and timeline for the project during the discovery phase. This isn’t a final budget and timeline, but it’ll give you a good idea of what the project might cost and how long it might take to complete.

This information can then be used to help get buy-in from stakeholders and to set expectations for the project.

5. Finalize project goals and objectives

The project team should also finalize the project goals and objectives during the discovery phase. These are the specific outcomes that the project is hoping to achieve and should be measurable so that you can track and report on them later.

6. Draft a project plan

Once all of this information is gathered, the project team can start drafting a project plan. This document will outline how the project will be executed, who is responsible for each task, and what the timelines look like.

This document will be updated and revised as the project progresses, but having a solid plan in place during the discovery phase is essential for a successful project.

7. It’s time to begin

Once everything is finalized, the project team can start working on putting the project plan into action. This can be a daunting task, but with a good project plan and team in place, it can be done.

Final thoughts on discovery phase

The discovery phase is an important part of project management and should not be taken lightly. This is the time when your project team does all of the research and planning necessary to successfully execute the project. There are a lot of things that need to be done during this phase, but if it’s done correctly, the project will be off to a good start.

A well-executed project discovery phase doesn’t just make things easy for you and your project team, but it also helps create a good experience for your clients. They’ll appreciate the fact that you took the time to do your homework and that you’re being proactive in finding solutions to their problems.

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How to Write a Business Plan: Your Step-by-Step Guide

So, you’ve got an idea and you want to start a business —great! Before you do anything else, like seek funding or build out a team, you'll need to know how to write a business plan. This plan will serve as the foundation of your company while also giving investors and future employees a clear idea of your purpose.

Below, Lauren Cobello, Founder and CEO of Leverage with Media PR , gives her best advice on how to make a business plan for your company.

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What is a business plan, and when do you need one?

According to Cobello, a business plan is a document that contains the mission of the business and a brief overview of it, as well as the objectives, strategies, and financial plans of the founder. A business plan comes into play very early on in the process of starting a company—more or less before you do anything else.

“You should start a company with a business plan in mind—especially if you plan to get funding for the company,” Cobello says. “You’re going to need it.”

Whether that funding comes from a loan, an investor, or crowdsourcing, a business plan is imperative to secure the capital, says the U.S. Small Business Administration . Anyone who’s considering giving you money is going to want to review your business plan before doing so. That means before you head into any meeting, make sure you have physical copies of your business plan to share.

Different types of business plans

The four main types of business plans are:

Startup Business Plans

Internal business plans, strategic business plans, one-page business plans.

Let's break down each one:

If you're wondering how to write a business plan for a startup, Cobello has advice for you. Startup business plans are the most common type, she says, and they are a critical tool for new business ventures that want funding. A startup is defined as a company that’s in its first stages of operations, founded by an entrepreneur who has a product or service idea.

Most startups begin with very little money, so they need a strong business plan to convince family, friends, banks, and/or venture capitalists to invest in the new company.

Internal business plans “are for internal use only,” says Cobello. This kind of document is not public-facing, only company-facing, and it contains an outline of the company’s business strategy, financial goals and budgets, and performance data.

Internal business plans aren’t used to secure funding, but rather to set goals and get everyone working there tracking towards them.

As the name implies, strategic business plans are geared more towards strategy and they include an assessment of the current business landscape, notes Jérôme Côté, a Business Advisor at BDC Advisory Services .

Unlike a traditional business plan, Cobello adds, strategic plans include a SWOT analysis (which stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) and an in-depth action plan for the next six to 12 months. Strategic plans are action-based and take into account the state of the company and the industry in which it exists.

Although a typical business plan falls between 15 to 30 pages, some companies opt for the much shorter One-Page Business Plan. A one-page business plan is a simplified version of the larger business plan, and it focuses on the problem your product or service is solving, the solution (your product), and your business model (how you’ll make money).

A one-page plan is hyper-direct and easy to read, making it an effective tool for businesses of all sizes, at any stage.

How to create a business plan in 7 steps

Every business plan is different, and the steps you take to complete yours will depend on what type and format you choose. That said, if you need a place to start and appreciate a roadmap, here’s what Cobello recommends:

1. Conduct your research

Before writing your business plan, you’ll want to do a thorough investigation of what’s out there. Who will be the competitors for your product or service? Who is included in the target market? What industry trends are you capitalizing on, or rebuking? You want to figure out where you sit in the market and what your company’s value propositions are. What makes you different—and better?

2. Define your purpose for the business plan

The purpose of your business plan will determine which kind of plan you choose to create. Are you trying to drum up funding, or get the company employees focused on specific goals? (For the former, you’d want a startup business plan, while an internal plan would satisfy the latter.) Also, consider your audience. An investment firm that sees hundreds of potential business plans a day may prefer to see a one-pager upfront and, if they’re interested, a longer plan later.

3. Write your company description

Every business plan needs a company description—aka a summary of the company’s purpose, what they do/offer, and what makes it unique. Company descriptions should be clear and concise, avoiding the use of jargon, Cobello says. Ideally, descriptions should be a few paragraphs at most.

4. Explain and show how the company will make money

A business plan should be centered around the company’s goals, and it should clearly explain how the company will generate revenue. To do this, Cobello recommends using actual numbers and details, as opposed to just projections.

For instance, if the company is already making money, show how much and at what cost (e.g. what was the net profit). If it hasn’t generated revenue yet, outline the plan for how it will—including what the product/service will cost to produce and how much it will cost the consumer.

5. Outline your marketing strategy

How will you promote the business? Through what channels will you be promoting it? How are you going to reach and appeal to your target market? The more specific and thorough you can be with your plans here, the better, Cobello says.

6. Explain how you’ll spend your funding

What will you do with the money you raise? What are the first steps you plan to take? As a founder, you want to instill confidence in your investors and show them that the instant you receive their money, you’ll be taking smart actions that grow the company.

7. Include supporting documents

Creating a business plan is in some ways akin to building a legal case, but for your business. “You want to tell a story, and to be as thorough as possible, while keeping your plan succinct, clear, interesting, and visually appealing,” Cobello says. “Supporting documents could include financial projects, a competitive analysis of the market you’re entering into, and even any licenses, patents, or permits you’ve secured.”

A business plan is an individualized document—it’s ultimately up to you what information to include and what story you tell. But above all, Cobello says, your business plan should have a clear focus and goal in mind, because everything else will build off this cornerstone.

“Many people don’t realize how important business plans are for the health of their company,” she says. “Set aside time to make this a priority for your business, and make sure to keep it updated as you grow.”

More From Forbes

Seven steps to consider when thinking about chapter 11 bankruptcy.

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Stephen Nalley is the Founder & CEO of Black Briar Advisors .

Leaders should always be prepared to navigate the potential complexities of financial distress. As a final recourse, Chapter 11 bankruptcy can be a lifeline for companies facing insurmountable debts, allowing them to reorganize and emerge stronger .

However, filing for Chapter 11 is a significant decision that requires careful consideration and planning. Here are the seven essential steps to consider when contemplating Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

1. Assess your financial health.

It is important to conduct a thorough assessment of your company's financial health. This involves a detailed review of your assets, liabilities, cash flow and profitability.

For example, consider a luxury resort chain facing declining revenues due to a downturn in tourism. Before considering Chapter 11, the leadership team should conduct a comprehensive financial analysis to understand the extent of their financial difficulties. This assessment might then reveal significant short-term liabilities and a need for restructuring.

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I recommend that you use tools like financial statement analysis, cash flow analysis and profitability ratios to assess your financial health. Key indicators include current and quick ratios for liquidity, debt-to-equity for leverage and EBITDA for profitability. Focus on assets versus liabilities to gauge solvency and cash flow statements to ensure ongoing operational viability.

2. Consult with legal and financial advisors.

You should seek advice from experienced legal and financial advisors who specialize in bankruptcy and corporate restructuring. Their expertise is crucial in navigating the complexities of Chapter 11 and ensuring that you understand the legal requirements, potential risks, and benefits of Chapter 11.

When selecting legal and financial advisors, consider their experience in handling Chapter 11 cases, track record of successful restructurings and industry knowledge. Key questions to ask potential advisors include:

• What is your experience with Chapter 11 bankruptcy and corporate restructuring?

• Can you provide case studies or references from similar companies you've assisted?

• How do you approach developing a reorganization plan?

Consulting with the right advisors helps ensure a well-informed and strategic approach to navigating Chapter 11, ultimately increasing the chances of a successful restructuring.

3. Develop a reorganization plan.

Leaders should always develop a detailed reorganization plan that outlines how the company will address its financial challenges and return to profitability. Make sure your plan includes reducing operational costs, renegotiating supplier contracts, and selling non-core assets. The plan can also focus on enhancing marketing efforts.

Overall, a well-crafted reorganization plan demonstrates to creditors and the court that the company has a viable path to recovery, increasing the chances of a successful restructuring.

To avoid common pitfalls, ensure your reorganization plan is based on accurate and realistic financial projections. Watch out for overly optimistic revenue forecasts and ensure that your cost-cutting measures are practical and sustainable. You can engage stakeholders early in the process to gain their support and input. Lastly, regularly review and adjust the plan based on actual performance and changing circumstances.

4. Communicate with your stakeholders.

It is important to maintain open and transparent communication with all stakeholders, including employees, creditors, investors and customers. Keeping stakeholders informed helps build trust and support for the reorganization efforts.

I recommend that you hold regular meetings with stakeholders to explain the reasons for considering Chapter 11 and how your reorganization plan would benefit all parties. This transparency can help mitigate concerns and foster a collaborative environment. When stakeholders are aware of the company’s situation, they are more likely to support the reorganization process.

5. File for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

Once the decision to file for Chapter 11 is made, you should prepare and submit the necessary paperwork to the bankruptcy court. This includes filing a petition, schedules of assets and liabilities and a statement of financial affairs.

The filing will initiate an automatic stay, which halts all collection activities and provides your company with breathing room to implement its reorganization plan. This immediate relief from creditor actions allows you to focus on restructuring and recovery.

6. Negotiate with creditors.

Leaders should always engage in negotiations with creditors, including banks and bondholders, to gain their support for the reorganization plan. Successful negotiations can lead to favorable terms that facilitate the company's recovery.

Effective negotiation tactics include:

• Transparency : Provide clear, honest and comprehensive information about your company's financial situation and the necessity of the reorganization plan.

• Common ground : Identify mutual interests and emphasize how the reorganization plan benefits both the company and the creditors in the long run.

• Concessions : Be prepared to offer concessions, such as equity stakes or improved terms to gain creditor support.

Overall, I've found that creditor support is essential for the approval of a reorganization plan by the bankruptcy court. On top of this, successful negotiations can significantly improve your company’s financial position.

7. Implement and monitor the reorganization plan.

You should diligently implement the reorganization plan and continuously monitor progress to ensure its success. This involves executing cost-cutting measures, improving operational efficiency, and achieving revenue targets. Continue to look into cutting unnecessary expenses, optimizing your workforce, and launching new marketing campaigns. Regularly monitor key performance indicators to track progress and make adjustments as needed.

The most important metrics to monitor include:

• Cash flow : Ensuring sufficient liquidity to meet operational needs and debt obligations.

• Revenue growth : Tracking sales and revenue increases to measure the effectiveness of marketing and sales strategies.

• Profit margins : Monitoring gross and net profit margins to ensure cost-cutting measures are improving profitability.

• Operating expenses : Keeping an eye on fixed and variable costs to ensure expenses are being managed effectively.

By focusing on these metrics, leaders can gauge the success of their reorganization plan and make necessary adjustments to stay on track toward recovery and profitability.

Considering Chapter 11 bankruptcy is a complex and challenging process, but it can offer a path to recovery for companies facing financial distress. By following steps like assessing your financial health, consulting with advisors and negotiating with creditors, I believe you can be better prepared and navigate the bankruptcy process successfully.

The information provided here is not investment, tax, or financial advice. You should consult with a licensed professional for advice concerning your specific situation.

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Boots chief James quits after owner's £5bn sale plan stalls

Sebastian James, who has run the Nottingham-based retail giant since 2018, will step down in November amid continuing doubt about its future ownership, Sky News learns.

City editor @MarkKleinmanSky

Saturday 29 June 2024 13:48, UK

The chief executive of Boots, Britain's biggest high street pharmacy chain, is quitting after its owner's plans for a £5bn sale or stock market listing stalled.

Sky News has learnt that Sebastian James, who has run Boots since 2018, will leave the company in November.

City sources said this weekend that he had accepted a new role in the healthcare industry.

Money blog: How to split housework fairly

His exit comes soon after it emerged that New York-listed Walgreens Boots Alliance (WBA), the British retailer's owner, had decided for the second time in two years against pursuing a sale or stock market flotation of the chain.

An announcement about Mr James's departure is expected in the coming days.

WBA is not yet thought to have lined up a successor.

Mr James, who previously ran the electricals retailer Dixons (now named Currys), recently endorsed Sir Keir Starmer - a notable move because of his long friendship with Lord Cameron , the foreign secretary.

His departure from Boots will come during the Nottingham-based company's 175th year.

Boots employs about 52,000 people and trades from roughly 1,900 stores.

Its recent trading performance has been strong, with WBA this week saying that like-for-like sales at Boots during the quarter to the end of May rose by 6% and 5.8% across its retail and pharmacy operations respectively.

An insider said Mr James had overseen a successful turnaround, with market share having grown for 13 successive quarters.

Read more on Sky News: Energy supplier OVO to explore options Four major banks hit by glitches Ex-Fujitsu engineer denies 'protecting the monster'

It has been a rare bright spot for WBA, which has had a torrid time and has seen its shares slump.

A WBA spokesperson said this week: "As Walgreens Boots Alliance continues a strategic review of the Company's assets, we took a critical look at Boots.

"While we believe there is significant interest in this business at the right time, Boots' growth, strategic strength and cashflow remain key contributors to Walgreens Boots Alliance.

"We are committed to continuing to invest in Boots UK and to find innovative ways for this business to fulfill its potential."

Keep up with all the latest news from the UK and around the world by following Sky News

During a previous auction in 2022, only one bidder - a consortium of Apollo Global Management and Reliance Industries - tabled a formal offer worth about £5.5bn.

However, growing concerns about the global economy had triggered severe doubts among large banks which help finance leveraged buyouts, with Boots among the biggest such deals in Europe.

Among the other challenges facing prospective acquirers at the time was finding an adequate solution for Boots' £8bn pension scheme - one of the largest private retirement funds in the UK.

This issue has now been resolved through an insurance deal struck with Legal & General.

Like many retailers, Boots had a turbulent pandemic, announcing 4,000 job cuts in 2020 as a consequence of a restructuring of its Nottingham head office and store management teams.

Shortly before the COVID pandemic, Boots earmarked about 200 of its UK stores for closure, a reflection of changing shopping habits.

Boots' heritage dates back to John Boot opening a herbal remedies store in Nottingham in 1849.

It opened its 1000th UK store in 1933.

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In 2006, Boots merged with Alliance Unichem, a drug wholesaler, with the buyout firm KKR acquiring the combined group in an £11bn deal the following year.

In 2012, Walgreens acquired a 45% stake in Alliance Boots, completing its buyout of the business two years later.

Boots declined to comment on Mr James's exit on Saturday.

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Process for Determining That an Individual Shall Not Be Deemed an Employee of the Public Health Service

A Rule by the Justice Department on 07/05/2024

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Department of Justice.

Final rule.

This rule sets forth a process by which the Attorney General or a designee may determine that an individual shall not be deemed an employee of the Public Health Service for purposes of medical malpractice coverage under the Public Health Service Act. The process described in this rule applies to individuals who are deemed to be Public Health Service employees, as well as any other individuals deemed to be Public Health Service employees under different statutory provisions to which the procedures set out in the Public Health Service Act have been made applicable.

This rule is effective on August 5, 2024.

James G. Touhey, Jr., Director, Torts Branch, Civil Division, Department of Justice, Washington, DC 20530, (202) 616-4400.

This rule finalizes, with some changes, a proposed rule that the Department of Justice (“Department”) published on this subject on March 6, 2015, at 80 FR 12104 . In brief, the following changes were made to the text of the proposed rule:

In § 15.11, a sentence was added to clarify that an individual who is no longer “deemed” to be an employee of the Public Health Service pursuant to section 224(i) of the Public Health Service Act, 42 U.S.C. 233(i) , is excluded from medical malpractice protections otherwise available to individuals “deemed” to be Public Health Service employees under the Start Printed Page 55512 statute that conferred the “deemed” employee status.

In § 15.12, the definition of “Attorney General” for purposes of the rule was deleted as vague and unnecessary in light of the more specifically defined roles and responsibilities of the initiating official, the adjudicating official, and the administrative law judge involved in proceedings under this subpart.

In § 15.13, a change was made to clarify that the initiating official's notice to an individual is intended to comply with the Administrative Procedure Act (“APA”), 5 U.S.C. 551 , et seq., by furnishing a statement of the factual allegations and law asserted in support of the proposed action.

In § 15.14, a change was made to clarify that the administrative law judge assigned to conduct a hearing under this subpart must, consistent with the APA, conduct proceedings in an impartial manner. In addition, § 15.14 now incorporates the grounds and procedure for seeking disqualification of an administrative law judge set forth in 5 U.S.C. 556(b) .

In §§ 15.16 and 15.20, a change was made to clarify that the administrative law judge, consistent with the APA, must certify the record to the adjudicating official for a final determination.

A change was made to § 15.17 to clarify that the adjudicating official will consult with the Secretary of Health and Human Services (“Secretary”) in making a final determination. A subsection (d) was added to clarify that the Attorney General, consistent with the traditional authority of agency heads, possesses discretion to review any final determination within 30 days of its issuance.

In addition, minor clarifications were made to § 15.19 to make clear that final determinations, whether upholding or rejecting the initiating official's proposed action, will be distributed to the parties in the same way.

Changes were also made to the reinstatement procedures in § 15.20. Petitions for reinstatement must be submitted to the initiating official, who is responsible for forwarding the petition, along with a recommendation on whether the petition makes a prima facie case for reinstatement, to the adjudicating official. The adjudicating official is responsible for determining whether a prima facie case for reinstatement has been made. If the adjudicating official determines that a prima facie case has been made for reinstatement, an administrative law judge is appointed to conduct such proceedings as are deemed necessary to make a formal recommendation to the adjudicating official. This procedure was revised to avoid having the initiating official—who might be viewed as the adverse party in an original proceeding to de-deem an individual—exercise an unfettered gatekeeping role in determining whether that same individual's petition for reinstatement should receive a hearing.

Finally, the Department notes that since the date of publication of the proposed rule on March 6, 2015, the Supreme Court held in Lucia v. SEC, 138 S. Ct. 2044 (2018), that administrative law judges assigned by the Securities and Exchange Commission to preside over enforcement proceedings are inferior officers of the United States who must, consistent with Article II, sec. 2, cl. 2 of the United States Constitution, be appointed by the President, a court of law, or a department head. Administrative law judges appointed to preside over proceedings under this rule are to be appointed pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 3105 , which authorizes each agency to appoint as many administrative law judges as are necessary for proceedings to be conducted in accordance with 5 U.S.C. 556 and 557 . Administrative law judges appointed to preside over proceedings under this rule will be appointed in a manner consistent with Lucia, that is, appointed by an agency head.

The Federally Supported Health Centers Assistance Acts of 1992 (Pub. L. 102-501) (“FSHCAA”) and 1995 ( Pub. L. 104-73 ) amended section 224 of the Public Health Service Act ( 42 U.S.C. 233 ) to make the Federal Tort Claims Act (“FTCA”) ( 28 U.S.C. 1346(b) , 2672 ) the exclusive remedy for medical malpractice claims for personal injury or death brought against qualifying federally supported health centers and certain statutorily identified categories of individuals, to the extent that the centers and these individuals, as the case may be, have been “deemed” by the Department of Health and Human Services to be eligible for FTCA coverage and the conditions for such coverage have been satisfied. 42 U.S.C. 233(g) .

In 1996, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act ( Pub. L. 104-191 ) amended section 224 of the Public Health Service Act to provide that, subject to certain conditions, a “free clinic health professional” providing “a qualifying health service” for the free clinic may be “deemed” to be a Public Health Service employee eligible for FTCA coverage to the same extent as persons “deemed” to be Public Health Service employees under 42 U.S.C. 233(g) . In 2010, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act ( Pub. L. 111-148 ) further amended section 224 of the Public Health Service Act to add “an officer, governing board member, employee, or contractor of a free clinic . . . in providing services for the free clinic” to the statutorily identified categories of eligible individuals for this purpose. 42 U.S.C. 233(o)(1) .

And in 2016, the 21st Century Cures Act ( Pub. L. 114-225 ) amended section 224 of the Public Health Service Act to provide that, subject to certain conditions, a “health professional volunteer” at an entity “deemed” to be a Public Health Service employee by virtue of 42 U.S.C. 233(g) may be “deemed” to be a Public Health Service employee eligible for FTCA coverage to the same extent as persons “deemed” to be Public Health Service employees under 42 U.S.C. 233(g) . 42 U.S.C. 233(q) .

This rule will apply to any individual “deemed” to be a Public Health Service employee, regardless of the statutory provision under which the deemed status is obtained, provided that Congress has made the individual's “deemed” Public Health Service employee status subject to the procedures set out in 42 U.S.C. 233(i) .

Section 233(i) of title 42 provides that the Attorney General, in consultation with the Secretary, may, on the record, determine, after notice and an opportunity for a full and fair hearing, that an individual physician or other licensed or certified health care practitioner who is an officer, employee, or contractor of an entity described in 42 U.S.C. 233(g)(4) shall not be deemed to be an employee of the Public Health Service for purposes of 42 U.S.C. 233 if “treating such individual as such an employee would expose the Government to an unreasonably high degree of risk of loss” based on one or more of the following enumerated statutory criteria: (1) the individual does not comply with the policies and procedures that the entity has implemented pursuant to 42 U.S.C. 233(h)(1) ; (2) the individual has a history of claims filed against him or her as provided for under 42 U.S.C. 233 that is outside the norm for licensed or certified health care practitioners within the same specialty; (3) the individual refused to reasonably cooperate with the Attorney General in defending against any such claim; (4) the individual provided false information relevant to the individual's performance of his or her duties to the Secretary, the Attorney General, or an applicant for or recipient Start Printed Page 55513 of funds under chapter 6A of title 42; or (5) the individual was the subject of disciplinary action taken by a State medical licensing authority or a State or national professional society. 42 U.S.C. 233(i)(1) .

A final determination by the Attorney General under 42 U.S.C. 233(i) that an individual physician or other licensed or certified health care professional shall not be deemed to be an employee of the Public Health Service is effective when the entity employing such individual receives notice of such determination, and the determination applies only to acts or omissions occurring after the date such notice is received. 42 U.S.C. 233(i)(2) .

This rule establishes a process for creating the record and providing the full and fair hearing before the Attorney General makes a final determination under 42 U.S.C. 233(i) .

The first step, pursuant to § 15.13(a), is a finding by the “initiating official,” in consultation with the Secretary, that treating an individual as an employee of the Public Health Service may expose the Government to an unreasonably high degree of risk of loss for one or more of the statutorily enumerated reasons in 42 U.S.C. 233(i) . Under § 15.12(d), the initiating official is a Deputy Assistant Attorney General of the Department of Justice's Civil Division or a designee of a Deputy Assistant Attorney General.

Section 15.13(a) requires the initiating official to provide notice to the individual in question that an administrative hearing will be held to determine whether treating the individual as an employee of the Public Health Service would expose the Government to an unreasonably high degree of risk of loss based upon one or more of the statutory criteria enumerated in 42 U.S.C. 233(i) . Following a period for discovery and depositions, to the extent determined appropriate by an administrative law judge under § 15.15, the hearing is then conducted by the administrative law judge in the manner prescribed in § 15.14. After the hearing is conducted and the record is closed, § 15.16 requires the administrative law judge to certify the record and submit written findings of fact, conclusions of law, and a recommended decision to the “adjudicating official,” who is the Assistant Attorney General for the Department of Justice's Civil Division or a designee of the Assistant Attorney General. Section 15.16 provides that copies of the findings of fact, conclusions of law, and recommended decision are made available to the parties and to the Secretary. Section 15.17(b) then gives the parties 30 days to submit certain additional materials, including exceptions to the administrative law judge's recommended decision, to the adjudicating official, who then must, in consultation with the Secretary, make a final determination whether treating the individual as an employee of the Public Health Service for purposes of 42 U.S.C. 233 would expose the Government to an unreasonably high degree of risk of loss based on one or more of the criteria specified in 42 U.S.C. 233(i) . The Attorney General may exercise discretion to review any final determination within 30 days of its issuance.

Section 15.18 provides that an individual who is dissatisfied with the final determination may seek rehearing within 30 days after notice of the determination is sent, and § 15.20 allows individuals who have been determined to expose the United States to an unreasonably high degree of risk of loss to apply for reinstatement after a period of time. Consistent with 42 U.S.C. 1320a-7e(a) and 45 CFR 60.3 , 60.5(h) and 60.16 , the rule also provides that the Department will notify the National Practitioner Data Bank (“NPDB”) of the issuance of the Attorney General's final determination that an individual provider shall not be deemed to be an employee of the Public Health Service under this rule. The NPDB, which is maintained by the Health Resources and Services Administration within the Department of Health and Human Services, is a confidential information clearinghouse created by Congress with primary goals of improving health care quality and protecting the public.

The Department received ten public comments on the proposed rule during the comment period, which closed on May 6, 2015. Several commenters generally supported the proposed rule as providing adequate notice and process to reach fair decisions on whether to de-deem individual practitioners who pose an unreasonably high degree of risk of loss to the Government. The Department is grateful for the feedback.

Several comments were received from membership organizations of federally supported health centers that receive Federal grant money under 42 U.S.C. 254b , as well as one federally supported health center that offered comments on its own behalf. These comments generally sought additional guidance on how the rules and criteria set forth in 42 U.S.C. 233(i)(1) would be applied. A few other commenters expressed more general concerns about the consequences of de-deeming determinations. Summaries of these comments and the Department's responses to them are set forth below.

1. Some commenters requested that the Department provide additional guidance on how the statutory criteria for determining whether treating an individual physician or certified health care provider as a Public Health Service employee exposes the Government to an “unreasonably high degree of risk of loss” will be applied. These commenters requested that clearer definitions be adopted and that specific examples be provided for how each of the criteria set forth in 42 U.S.C. 233(i)(A)-(E) will be weighed and considered.

Response: The Department does not adopt the changes suggested in these comments. The purpose of these regulations is procedural: to establish the process and procedures used to create a record and provide an individual medical provider the opportunity for the “full and fair hearing” required by section 233(i)(1) before the Attorney General makes a “final determination” that an individual “shall not be deemed to be” an employee of the Public Health Service for purposes of 42 U.S.C. 233 . The Department is not undertaking, at this time, a regulatory effort to interpret or re-interpret the statutory criteria that Congress established more than 20 years ago to govern such determinations.

Section 233(i) requires a full and fair hearing to determine whether any one of these factors or combination of factors supports a determination that treating an individual physician or certified health care provider as a Public Health Service employee poses an “unreasonably high degree of risk of loss” to the Government.

The commenters recognized that “strict definitions” for these criteria would be impracticable. The Department agrees with the commenters. In addition to the impracticality of adopting strict definitions, the Department also observes that the application of the criteria set forth in the statute will necessarily depend on the specific facts and circumstances of each individual case.

2. Some commenters requested that the Department expand the scope of the regulations to specify the form and substance of the consultation that the Attorney General undertakes with the Secretary before finding that an individual should be provided notice of a hearing to determine whether treating Start Printed Page 55514 that individual as an employee of the Public Health Service poses an unreasonable risk of loss to the Government.

Response: The Department does not adopt the change suggested in these comments. The statute does not require that the Department's regulations specify the form and substance of the Attorney General's consultation with the Secretary. Moreover, a requirement for public disclosure of such consultations would not be warranted given the predecisional, deliberative nature of the consultation process between agencies.

3. Some commenters requested that the Department, when notifying an individual that a proceeding has been initiated under 42 U.S.C. 233(i) , be required to provide both the specific information upon which the Department will rely and the standards that will apply for evaluating the criteria set forth in 42 U.S.C. 233(i) . The commenters suggested that providing such information in the hearing notice would reduce discovery costs and increase efficiency of the hearing process.

Response: In response to these comments, the Department has added language in § 15.13(c) to clarify that the notice provided to individuals will set forth the factual allegations supporting the initiating official's proposed action, consistent with the requirements for notice under 5 U.S.C. 554(b) . Thus, in addition to providing a statement of the nature and purpose of the hearing, the name of the administrative law judge who will preside, a statement of the nature of the action proposed to be taken, and a statement of the time, date, and location of the hearing for the individual to be heard, the notice will also provide a statement of the facts and, where appropriate, the law asserted in support of the proposed action. 28 CFR 15.13(c) . The administrative law judge is vested with all powers necessary to reduce discovery costs and increase the efficiency of the process through exchanges of information and narrowing of issues. 28 CFR 15.14 -.15. As for the further comment requesting additional information about the standards that will apply for evaluating the criteria set forth in 42 U.S.C. 233(i) , the Department does not adopt the change requested in this comment for the reasons already expressed above.

4. One commenter requested that the Department state the period of time after which a de-deemed practitioner may apply for reinstatement.

Response: The final rule provides that a de-deemed practitioner may apply for reinstatement not sooner than five years after the time for seeking rehearing of the initial determination to de-deem a practitioner has expired. 28 CFR 15.20(a) .

5. One commenter requested that the Department clarify the events and informational exchanges that will or could set into the motion the de-deeming process.

Response: The statute and final rule provide this information. When the Department's initiating official, in consultation with the Secretary, finds, based upon a review of available information, that treating an individual as an employee of the Public Health Service may expose the Government to an unreasonably high degree of risk of loss based on one or more of the criteria enumerated in 42 U.S.C. 233(i) , the de-deeming process is initiated by issuing a notice for an administrative hearing to determine whether that individual should be de-deemed. 42 U.S.C. 233(i)(1) ; 28 CFR 15.13 . The notice will set forth the facts, and where applicable, the law upon which the proposed action is based.

6. A few commenters expressed concern that the de-deeming process could be initiated to rescind FTCA coverage while a lawsuit was pending and requested that the rule allow only for prospective de-deeming. Another commenter suggested adoption of a “safety period”—a designated period of time during which a “deemed” employee cannot be subject to “de-deeming”—that would apply where litigation is anticipated involving acts or omissions of a practitioner who has been deemed to be an employee of the Public Health Service.

Response: The Department agrees that de-deeming should be prospective only (as the statute requires) but does not adopt the “safety period” suggestion. The statute provides that the Attorney General's decision to de-deem an individual shall apply only to acts or omissions occurring after the date that notice of the Attorney General's final determination that an individual not be deemed to be a Public Health Service employee is received. 42 U.S.C. 233(i)(2) . The final regulations therefore provide in § 15.19(c) that a final agency determination that an individual provider shall not be deemed to be an employee of the Public Health Service shall apply to all acts or omissions of the individual occurring after the date the adverse final determination is received by the relevant entity or free clinic. The final regulations similarly provide in § 15.20(f) that a determination that an individual is reinstated pursuant to this section . . . shall apply only to acts or omissions of the individual occurring after the date of the final reinstatement determination. There is no need to adopt the suggested “safety period.” If a lawsuit is pending, or even anticipated, then the acts or omissions giving rise to that pending or anticipated suit will already have occurred. The Attorney General's “de-deeming” determination does not apply to acts or omissions that occurred before the de-deeming determination becomes final, and reinstatement determinations similarly apply only to acts or omissions that occur after reinstatement.

7. One commenter expressed concern that the proposed rule might have untoward consequences, such as difficulty in securing quality replacement personnel or loss of liability coverage while a lawsuit is pending.

Response: The Department does not adopt further changes in response to these comments. There should be no loss of liability coverage while a lawsuit is pending, as the Attorney General's final determination that a practitioner is de-deemed is effective only as to acts or omissions that occur after such a determination is received by the entity employing that practitioner. 42 U.S.C. 233(i)(2) . Moreover, a final de-deeming determination is applicable only to the individual who was subject to the hearing and final determination.

The Attorney General's de-deeming determination does not require or compel a health center to terminate a practitioner. Entities may choose to employ “de-deemed” practitioners, but they can no longer rely on the protections of 42 U.S.C. 233(g) or similar statutes, as the case may be, as a substitute for medical malpractice liability coverage for that practitioner if that practitioner is subject to a medical malpractice claim for acts or omissions occurring after receipt of a final de-deeming determination, for so long as the final determination remains effective. Congress's decision to authorize the Attorney General to de-deem individual practitioners reflects a policy judgment that, if an individual practitioner exposes the Government to an unreasonably high degree of risk of loss based on any of the statutory criteria enumerated in 42 U.S.C. 233(i) , insuring against that risk or finding a suitable replacement should fall upon the entity responsible for hiring and retaining the practitioners or the sponsoring free clinic, not the United States. Qualifying health centers that receive Federal grants pursuant to 42 U.S.C. 254b may purchase “tail,” “gap,” or “wrap-around” insurance to cover claims for which liability protections under 42 U.S.C. 233(g) or similar Start Printed Page 55515 statutes, as the case may be, are inapplicable.

8. One commenter expressed concern that final determinations are vested in the Attorney General or the Attorney General's designee and suggested that the recommendations of the presiding administrative law judge be binding or that three-judge panels be established for purposes of making final determinations.

Response: The Department does not adopt the changes requested in this comment. Under 42 U.S.C. 233(i) , the “final determination” on whether to de-deem an individual “under this subsection” is vested in the “Attorney General.” The Department is not free to re-write the statute. Moreover, because section 233(i) provides that the Attorney General's final determination shall be made “on the record” “after notice and an opportunity for a full and fair hearing,” the provisions of sections 554, 556, and 557 of the APA are applicable to these hearings. See 5 U.S.C. 554(a) , (c)(2) (section 554 applies “in every case of adjudication required by statute to be determined on the record after opportunity for an agency hearing”; such hearings and decisions on contested issues are to be conducted “in accordance with sections 556 and 557”). This rule provides for a hearing and recommended decision by an administrative law judge and a final determination by the agency, consistent with the foregoing provisions of the APA. Any review of the Attorney General's “final determination” is governed by the APA, so further review of that final determination by an Article III court is possible. The Department also declines to render the presiding administrative law judge's decision binding. Providing for a recommended decision that is further reviewed by the adjudicating official, with discretionary review by the Attorney General, adds further layers of review and therefore reduces the risk of an erroneous determination.

The Attorney General, in accordance with the Regulatory Flexibility Act, 5 U.S.C. 605(b) , has reviewed this final rule and, by approving it, certifies that it will not have a significant economic impact on a substantial number of small entities because it pertains to personnel and administrative matters affecting the Department. This rule merely sets forth the process for a hearing used to determine whether certain individual health care providers should no longer be “deemed” to be “employees of the Public Health Service,” thus excluding such individual health care providers from eligibility for the medical malpractice liability protections under 42 U.S.C. 233(g) , (o), or (q). The rule does not adopt substantive standards and therefore will not have a significant impact on regulated parties.

This final rule has been drafted and reviewed in accordance with Executive Order 12866 , “Regulatory Planning and Review,” Executive Order 13563 , “Improving Regulation and Regulatory Review,” and Executive Order 14094 , “Modernizing Regulatory Review.” The Office of Management and Budget has determined that this final rule is a “significant regulatory action” under Executive Order 12866 , section 3(f), and accordingly this final rule has been reviewed by the Office of Management and Budget. Executive Orders 12866 and 13563 direct agencies to assess all costs and benefits of available regulatory alternatives and, if regulation is necessary, to select regulatory approaches that maximize net benefits (including potential economic, environmental, public health and safety, and other advantages; distributive impacts; and equity). Executive Order 13563 emphasizes the importance of quantifying both costs and benefits, of reducing costs, of harmonizing rules, and of promoting flexibility.

The Department has assessed the costs and benefits of this final rule and believes that its benefits justify its costs.

As an initial matter, this final rule only establishes a process for removing a statutorily conferred deemed status applicable to an individual provider who is determined to expose the Government to an unreasonably high degree of risk of loss for one or more statutorily enumerated reasons. As further explained below, Congress expressly granted the Attorney General the authority to de-deem certain individual physicians or other licensed or certified health care practitioners, provided that certain procedural safeguards were in place. This rule establishes those safeguards. The process will impose some costs on both the government and the individuals who are subject to proceedings under 42 U.S.C. 233(i) . But the net benefit is to reduce the potential for incorrect de-deeming decisions, to ensure that a de-deeming decision is based upon a developed record, and to provide the individual provider an opportunity to participate in the process. On balance, the Department believes these benefits outweigh the costs and will contribute to just decisions.

Congress expressly provided the Attorney General with the authority to exclude individuals who expose the Government to an unreasonably high degree of risk of loss based upon one or more statutory criteria from the malpractice protections afforded under 42 U.S.C. 233(g) and similar statutes. A statutory provision granting the Attorney General authority to exclude an individual provider has existed since the FSHCAA was first enacted in 1992. This provision was specifically designed to “assure that FTCA coverage is not extended to individual practitioners that do not provide care of acceptable quality” when the Attorney General determines that such individuals “expose the U.S. to an unreasonably high degree of risk of loss.” H.R. Rep. No. 102-823, pt. 2, at 8 (1992).

When the FSHCAA was amended and extended in 1995, Congress continued to include the provision authorizing the Attorney General to exclude an individual provider, adding language to clarify that an individual provider's “coverage” under the FSHCAA would be removed only after receiving notice and an opportunity for a full and fair hearing, with all decisions to be made “on the record.” H.R. Rep. No. 104-398, at 13 (1995); Public Law 104-73 , sec. 9, 109 Stat. 777, 781 (1995).

In light of the foregoing, this final rule assures the procedural protections Congress intended, without altering Congress's objective that certain individual providers be subject to exclusion from the malpractice liability protections under 42 U.S.C. 233 if they expose the Government to an unreasonably high degree of risk of loss based on the enumerated statutory criteria. Congress already has established that the benefits of excluding certain providers outweigh the costs if procedural protections are afforded and the final decision is supported by one or more of the criteria specified in 42 U.S.C. 233(i) .

The Department does not expect that the process created by the final rule will have systemic or large-scale costs because it is only the rare individual provider who would be subject to the procedures under this rule based on the statutory criteria of 42 U.S.C. 233(i) ; proceedings against an individual provider under this rule are expected to be infrequent and will, therefore, affect only a small fraction of providers, health centers, or, potentially, their patients.

The majority of costs associated with the final rule, then, would come in the individual instances of its application, which are not feasible to predict. The Start Printed Page 55516 administrative process will impose some defense costs on the particular individual who is the subject of the hearing, but §§ 15.14 and 15.15 provide flexibility that may enable the parties and administrative law judges to avoid unduly burdensome costs when those costs are unnecessary.

While it is not feasible to estimate these costs with precision, the Department notes that the litigation costs incurred in defending medical malpractice suits in court frequently exceed $100,000 per case. The potential costs associated with a section 233(i) proceeding, by contrast, are expected to be a small fraction of the cost of litigating malpractice actions brought against individual providers. If even one provider is excluded from malpractice protections under 42 U.S.C. 233(g) or similar statutes, potentially resulting in at least one fewer malpractice action that the United States otherwise might have been required to defend, the potential cost savings to the United States will be tens of thousands of dollars on litigation expenses alone.

The Department also observes that losses in covered medical malpractice actions against deemed centers and their personnel are borne by the public fisc through the payment of judgments and settlements and other expenses. Each year, the Department transmits to the Secretary and Congress an estimate of the dollar amount of claims and litigation for which payments are expected to be made during the upcoming fiscal year, along with related fees and expenses. Although in 1996, it was estimated that only 14,234 individual providers were deemed to be Public Health Service employees for purposes of malpractice claims, that number has steadily risen, reaching in excess of 250,000 “deemed” providers as of April 2022.

In addition to the increasing numbers of providers eligible for malpractice protections under 42 U.S.C. 233(g) and similar statutes, the amount of money paid by the United States as a result of judgments and settlements and litigation expenses has steadily increased as well. Since fiscal year 2014, the average annual amount sought by claimants in malpractice losses against deemed providers has been approximately $35 billion. To be sure, the United States pays substantially less than the amount claimed in the majority of cases, but it still paid in excess of $100 million in fiscal years 2017, 2018, and 2019, respectively, including a then-record amount of $135,047,091 in 2019 alone. Fiscal years 2020 and 2021 saw a slight downturn in the number of claims paid, likely the result of delays in court proceedings during the COVID-19 pandemic and related restrictions. In fiscal year 2022, with restrictions largely lifted, the United States paid $158,338,182.79 in judgments and settlements, a new record amount.

Neither the criteria set forth in 42 U.S.C. 233(i) nor the final rule contemplates that an individual provider subjects the Government to an unreasonably high degree of risk of loss merely by subjecting the United States to suit on malpractice claims that result in losses. That is a potential basis for de-deeming only to the extent that a single provider's care has resulted in claims outside the norm for a licensed or certified practitioner in the same specialty. If a single provider, for example, exposed the United States to several meritorious claims, each costing the United States $1 million, and that provider's history of claims was outside the norm for a practitioner in the same specialty, then excluding that provider from the malpractice liability protections of 42 U.S.C. 233(g) or another statute, as the case may be, may result in substantial savings to the United States in the future. That is because de-deeming the provider will reduce the number of claims and the amount of losses the United States would otherwise have incurred as a result of that provider's care and treatment.

The Department further notes that, unlike with actual Federal employees, over whom Federal agencies exercise plenary control and have various means of addressing risk through disciplinary action or termination, individual providers deemed to be Public Health Service employees for purposes of covered malpractice claims remain under the exclusive control and supervision of the public or non-profit private entity that employs them. The Government has no role in the day-to-day operations of health centers or free clinics and no involvement in the employment or disciplinary decisions of such entities.

The Attorney General's authority to exclude an individual provider who poses an unreasonably high degree of risk of loss through a section 233(i) proceeding provides the United States some small measure of risk control. Moreover, the authority granted to the Attorney General under section 233(i) is, in practice, no different from the authority that a private insurance carrier could exercise to refuse to insure an individual provider who poses an unreasonably high degree of risk of loss. A section 233(i) proceeding to exclude an individual provider from coverage under 42 U.S.C. 233(g) or similar statutes, if it is determined that the individual provider poses an unreasonably high degree or risk of loss, is similar to the ability that a private insurer possesses to exclude from coverage individual providers for the same reasons.

In the event that treating an individual provider as a Public Health Service employee is ultimately determined to expose the United States to an unreasonably high degree of risk of loss, the Department acknowledges that there will be certain costs to that provider. An individual provider who is no longer deemed to be an employee of the Public Health Service for purposes of malpractice claims may, for example, be required to obtain personal medical malpractice insurance to continue practicing. The provider may also experience negative employment consequences as a result of the Attorney General's determination.

For several reasons, it is not feasible to estimate the costs to specific, individual providers of having to procure malpractice insurance in lieu of relying on deemed Public Health Service employee status for malpractice protection. Malpractice insurance rates vary greatly depending on factors like specialty and location, insurance provider, loss history, coverage requirements, policy limits, and policy type. [ 1 ] Even within States, coverage costs can vary from county to county depending on factors like population density and the density of the physician population in a given area.

For example, State-filed malpractice premiums, before applied insurer discounts, average between roughly $2,486 and $15,949 in Nebraska, but between roughly $10,560 and $161,942 in New York, with higher premiums for higher-risk specialties. [ 2 ] Compared to the average loss to the United States in malpractice actions brought under 42 U.S.C. 233(g) and related statutes, which in the first half of fiscal year 2022 averaged $1,064,767 per claim paid, the net benefit to the United States of excluding an individual provider who poses an unreasonably high degree of risk of loss to the United States justifies Start Printed Page 55517 the potential costs to that provider of procuring personal insurance.

The Department further observes that, while premiums may vary by location or specialty, an individual provider subject to a proceeding governed by this rule could come from any location or specialty; the only factor common to a provider subject to a proceeding under this rule will be a threshold finding, triggering the process under this rule, that the provider may expose the United States to an unreasonably high degree of risk of loss. Any provider who is excluded from coverage by a final determination made under 42 U.S.C. 233(i) would merely be placed in the position that provider would have occupied but for the existence of these statutes—that of a provider who must procure personal insurance. If a provider turns out to be uninsurable in the private insurance market, that provider's inability to procure insurance merely underscores that the provider poses an unreasonably high degree of risk of loss. Congress conferred upon the Attorney General the authority to de-deem certain individuals in order to protect against such an unreasonably high risk of loss. 42 U.S.C. 233(i) ; H.R. Rep. No. 102-823, pt. 2, at 8 (1992).

The Department acknowledges as well that if an individual provider is no longer deemed to be an employee of the Public Health Service and leaves the practice, the health center or free clinic may incur costs to find a new provider. Replacing providers, however, may occur even absent this final rule establishing a process for de-deeming individual providers, and the costs to entities of filling positions may not be readily traceable to the process established by this final rule.

In any event, the Department expects that substantial benefits will justify any costs incurred in finding replacements, as any individual who is replaced after being excluded from coverage following a proceeding under this rule will be one who has been determined to create an unreasonably high degree of risk of loss on claims for malpractice. It is anticipated that, in the usual case, the individual's replacement will provide reduced risk of loss for the United States and better care for patients. While there may be instances in which an individual who presented such a risk of loss cannot be replaced, the Department believes that these costs are justified by the benefits of implementing this rule to carry out Congress's stated objectives. Congress enacted 42 U.S.C. 233(i) “to assure that FTCA coverage is not extended to individual practitioners that do not provide care of acceptable quality” by providing a process whereby the Attorney General may exclude individuals based on a determination that such individuals “expose the U.S. to an unreasonably high degree of risk of loss.” H.R. Rep. No. 102-823, pt. 2, at 8 (1992). Implementing the process for section 233(i) proceedings through this final rule is a procedural step toward effectuating Congress's purpose in enacting section 233(i).

Based on the expectation that the process will be used sparingly and only for an individual provider who exposes the United States to an unreasonably high degree of risk of loss on medical malpractice claims for personal injury or death, the Department has concluded that the net benefits of improved patient care and reduced losses to the United States traceable to malpractice claims justify the potential costs of implementing a process to carry out 42 U.S.C. 233(i) .

This final rule will not have substantial direct effects on the States, on the relationship between the national government and the States, or on the distribution of power and responsibilities among the various levels of government. Therefore, in accordance with Executive Order 13132 , the Department of Justice has determined that this final rule will not have sufficient federalism implications to warrant the preparation of a federalism summary impact statement.

This final rule meets the applicable standards provided in sections 3(a) and 3(b)(2) of Executive Order 12988 .

This final rule will not result in the expenditure by State, local, and Tribal governments, in the aggregate, or by the private sector, of $100 million or more in any one year, and it will not significantly or uniquely affect small governments. Therefore, no actions are deemed necessary under the provisions of the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act of 1995, 2 U.S.C. 1501 et seq.

This final rule is not a major rule as defined by section 251 of the Small Business Regulatory Enforcement Fairness Act of 1996, 5 U.S.C. 804 . This final rule will not result in an annual effect on the economy of $100 million or more; a major increase in cost or prices; significant adverse effects on competition, employment, investment, productivity, or innovation; or significant adverse effects on the ability of United States-based enterprises to compete with foreign-based enterprises in domestic and export markets.

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For the reasons set forth in the preamble, the Attorney General amends part 15 of title 28 of the Code of Federal Regulations as follows:

1. The authority citation for part 15 is revised to read as follows:

Authority: 5 U.S.C. 301 , 554 , 556 , 557 , and 8477(e)(4) ; 10 U.S.C. 1054 , 1089 ; 22 U.S.C. 2702 , 28 U.S.C. 509 , 510 , and 2679 ; 38 U.S.C. 7316 ; 42 U.S.C. 233 , 2212 , 2458a , and 5055(f) ; and sec. 2, Pub. L. 94-380, 90 Stat. 1113 (1976).

2. The heading for part 15 is revised to read as set forth above.

3. Designate §§ 15.1 through 15.4 as subpart A under the following heading:

4. Add reserved §§ 15.5 through 15.10 to newly designated subpart A.

5. Add subpart B to read as follows:

(a) The purpose of this subpart is to implement the notice and hearing Start Printed Page 55518 procedures applicable to a determination by the Attorney General or the Attorney General's designee under 42 U.S.C. 233(i) that an individual health care provider shall not be deemed an employee of the Public Health Service for purposes of 42 U.S.C. 233(g) or any other statute that confers deemed Public Health Service employee status to which 42 U.S.C. 233(i) has been made applicable. Under 42 U.S.C. 233(i) , an individual health care provider who is no longer deemed to be an employee of the Public Health Service is excluded from any malpractice protections otherwise made statutorily available to individuals deemed to be Public Health Service employees.

(b) Section 233(i) of title 42 provides that the Attorney General, in consultation with the Secretary of Health and Human Services, may on the record determine, after notice and an opportunity for a full and fair hearing, that an individual physician or other licensed or certified health care practitioner who is an officer, employee, or contractor of an entity described in 42 U.S.C. 233(g)(4) shall not be deemed to be an employee of the Public Health Service for purposes of 42 U.S.C. 233 if treating such individual as such an employee would expose the Government to an unreasonably high degree of risk of loss.

As used in this subpart:

Adjudicating official means the Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Division of the Department of Justice or a designee of the Assistant Attorney General.

Entity means an entity described in 42 U.S.C. 233(g)(4) .

Individual means an individual physician or other licensed or certified health care practitioner who is or was an officer, employee, or contractor of an entity described in 42 U.S.C. 233(g)(4) ; a health professional, officer, employee, or contractor of a free clinic as described in 42 U.S.C. 233(o) ; or a health professional volunteer as described in 42 U.S.C. 233(q) .

Initiating official means a Deputy Assistant Attorney General of the Civil Division of the Department of Justice or a designee of a Deputy Assistant Attorney General.

Parties means an individual, as defined in paragraph (c) of this section, and the initiating official, as defined in paragraph (d) of this section.

Public Health Service means the Public Health Service or an operating division or component of the Public Health Service.

Secretary means the Secretary of Health and Human Services or the Secretary's designee.

Unreasonably high degree of risk of loss is a determination based on consideration of one or more of the following statutory criteria—

(1) The individual does not comply with the policies and procedures that the entity or the sponsoring free clinic has implemented pursuant to 42 U.S.C. 233(h)(1) ;

(2) The individual has a history of claims filed against him or her as provided for under 42 U.S.C. 233 that is outside the norm for licensed or certified health care practitioners within the same specialty;

(3) The individual refused to reasonably cooperate with the Attorney General in defending against any such claim;

(4) The individual provided false information relevant to the individual's performance of his or her duties to the Secretary, the Attorney General, or an applicant for or recipient of funds under title 42, chapter 6A, United States Code; or

(5) The individual was the subject of disciplinary action taken by a State medical licensing authority or a State or national professional society.

(a) Whenever the initiating official, in consultation with the Secretary, finds, based upon available information gathered or provided, that treating an individual as an employee of the Public Health Service may expose the Government to an unreasonably high degree of risk of loss, the initiating official shall notify the individual that an administrative hearing will be conducted for the purpose of determining whether treating the individual as an employee of the Public Health Service for purposes of 42 U.S.C. 233 would expose the United States to an unreasonably high degree of risk of loss.

(b) The notice of hearing shall be in writing and shall be sent by registered or certified mail to the individual at the individual's last known address, or to the individual's attorney in the event the Attorney General has received written notice that the individual has retained counsel.

(c) The notice shall contain:

(1) A statement of the nature and purpose of the hearing;

(2) The factual allegations and, where appropriate, the law asserted in support of the proposed action;

(3) The name of the administrative law judge;

(4) A statement of the nature of the action proposed to be taken; and

(5) A statement of the time, date, and location of the hearing.

(d) The hearing shall be initiated not sooner than 60 days of the date on the written notice of hearing.

(a) An administrative law judge appointed in accordance with 5 U.S.C. 3105 shall preside over the hearing.

(b) Pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 556(b) , the administrative law judge is to conduct all proceedings in an impartial manner. The administrative law judge may disqualify himself at any time. An individual may move to disqualify the appointed administrative law judge only upon the filing, in good faith, of a timely and sufficient affidavit of personal bias or other ground for disqualification of the administrative law judge, such as conflict of interest or financial interest. If such affidavit is timely filed, the adjudicating official shall determine the matter as part of the record and final determination in the case.

(c) The administrative law judge shall have the following powers:

(1) Administer oaths and affirmations;

(2) Issue subpoenas authorized by law;

(3) Rule on offers of proof and receive relevant evidence;

(4) Take depositions or have depositions taken when the ends of justice would be served;

(5) Regulate the course of the hearing;

(6) Hold conferences for the settlement or simplification of the issues by consent of the parties or by the use of alternative means of dispute resolution;

(7) Inform the parties as to the availability of one or more alternative means of dispute resolution, and encourage use of such methods;

(8) Dispose of procedural requests or similar matters;

(9) Make or recommend decisions;

(10) Require and, in the discretion of the administrative law judge, adopt proposed findings of fact, conclusions of law, and orders;

(11) Take any other action that administrative law judges are authorized by statute to take; and

(12) All powers and duties reasonably necessary to perform the functions enumerated in paragraphs (c)(1) through (11) of this section.

(d) The administrative law judge may call upon the parties to consider:

(1) Simplification or clarification of the issues;

(2) Stipulations, admissions, agreements on documents, or other understandings that will expedite conduct of the hearing; Start Printed Page 55519

(3) Limitation of the number of witnesses and of cumulative evidence; and

(4) Such other matters as may aid in the disposition of the case.

(e) At the discretion of the administrative law judge, parties or witnesses may participate in hearings by video conference.

(f) All hearings under this subpart shall be public unless otherwise ordered by the administrative law judge.

(g) The hearing shall be conducted in conformity with 5 U.S.C. 554-557 (sections 5-8 of the Administrative Procedure Act).

(h) The initiating official shall have the burden of going forward with the evidence and shall generally present the Government's evidence first.

(i) Technical rules of evidence shall not apply to hearings conducted pursuant to this subpart, but rules designed to assure production of the most credible evidence available and to subject testimony to cross-examination shall be applied where reasonably necessary by the administrative law judge. The administrative law judge may exclude irrelevant, immaterial, or unduly repetitious evidence. All documents and other evidence offered or taken for the record shall be open to examination by the parties, and opportunity shall be given to refute facts and arguments advanced on either side of the issues. A transcript shall be made of the oral evidence except to the extent the substance thereof is stipulated for the record.

(j) During the time a proceeding is pending before an administrative law judge, all motions shall be addressed to the administrative law judge and, if within the administrative law judge's delegated authority, shall be ruled upon. Any motion upon which the administrative law judge has no authority to rule shall be certified to the adjudicating official with a recommendation. The opposing party may answer within such time as may be designated by the administrative law judge. The administrative law judge may permit further replies by both parties.

(a) At any time after the initiation of the proceeding, the administrative law judge may order, by subpoena if necessary, the taking of a deposition and the production of relevant documents by the deponent. Such order may be entered upon a showing that the deposition is necessary for discovery purposes and that such discovery could not be accomplished by voluntary methods. Such an order may also be entered in extraordinary circumstances to preserve relevant evidence upon a showing that there is substantial reason to believe that such evidence could not be presented through a witness at the hearing. The decisive factors for a determination under this subsection, however, shall be fairness to all parties and the requirements of due process. A deposition may be taken orally or upon written questions before any person who has the power to administer oaths and shall not exceed one day of seven hours.

(b) Each deponent shall be duly sworn, and any adverse party shall have the right to cross-examine. Objections to questions or documents shall be in short form, stating the grounds upon which objections are made. The questions propounded and the answers thereto, together with all objections made (but not including argument or debate), shall be reduced to writing and certified by the person before whom the deposition was taken. Thereafter, the person taking the deposition shall forward the deposition and one copy thereof to the party at whose instance the deposition was taken and shall forward one copy to the representative of the other party.

(c) A deposition may be admitted into evidence as against any party who was present or represented at the taking of the deposition, or who had due notice thereof, if the administrative law judge finds that there are sufficient reasons for admission and that the admission of the evidence would be fair to all parties and comport with the requirements of due process.

Within a reasonable time after the close of the record of the hearings conducted under § 15.14, the administrative law judge shall certify the record to the adjudicating official and shall submit to the adjudicating official written findings of fact, conclusions of law, and a recommended decision. The administrative law judge shall promptly make copies of the findings of fact, conclusions of law, and recommended decision available to the parties and the Secretary.

(a) In hearings conducted under § 15.14, the adjudicating official shall, subject to subsection (d), make the final determination on the basis of the certified record, findings, conclusions, and recommendations presented by the administrative law judge.

(b) Prior to making a final determination, the adjudicating official shall give the parties an opportunity to submit the following, within thirty days after the submission of the administrative law judge's recommendations:

(1) Proposed findings and determinations;

(2) Exceptions to the recommendations of the administrative law judge;

(3) Supporting reasons for the exceptions or proposed findings or determinations; and

(4) Final briefs summarizing the arguments presented at the hearing.

(c) The adjudicating official shall, within a reasonable time after receiving the parties' submissions, consult with the Secretary and then make a final determination. Copies of the final determination shall be served upon each party to the proceeding. Subject to paragraph (d) of this section, the final determination made by the adjudicating official under this rule shall constitute the final agency action.

(d) Within 30 days of any final determination made by the adjudicating official, the Attorney General may exercise discretion to review the final determination. In the event the Attorney General exercises discretion to review a decision, the Attorney General's final determination shall constitute the final agency action.

(a) An individual dissatisfied with a final determination under § 15.17 may, within 30 days after the notice of the final determination is sent, request the adjudicating official to re-review the record.

(b) The adjudicating official may require that another oral hearing be held on one or more of the issues in controversy, or permit the dissatisfied party to present further evidence or argument in writing, if the adjudicating official finds that the individual has:

(1) Presented evidence or argument that is sufficiently significant to require the conduct of further proceedings; or

(2) Shown some defect in the conduct of the adjudication under this subpart sufficient to cause substantial unfairness or an erroneous finding in that adjudication.

(c) Any rehearing ordered by the adjudicating official shall be conducted pursuant to § § 15.14 through 15.16.

(a) A final determination under § 15.17 shall be provided to the Department of Health and Human Services and sent by certified or registered mail to the individual and to the entity employing or sponsoring such individual if the individual is currently Start Printed Page 55520 an officer, employee, contractor, or health professional volunteer of an entity described in 42 U.S.C. 233(g)(4) or a health professional, officer, employee, or contractor of a free clinic described in 42 U.S.C. 233(o) . In the event the individual is no longer an officer, employee, contractor, or health professional volunteer of an entity described in 42 U.S.C. 233(g)(4) , or a health professional, officer, employee, or contractor of a free clinic described in 42 U.S.C. 233(o) , the determination shall be sent by certified or registered mail to the individual and to the last entity described in 42 U.S.C. 233(g)(4) or free clinic described in 42 U.S.C. 233(o) at which such individual was an officer, employee, contractor, health professional volunteer, or health professional.

(b) A final determination shall be effective upon the date the written determination is received by such entity or free clinic.

(c) A final determination that an individual provider shall not be deemed to be an employee of the Public Health Service shall apply to all acts or omissions of the individual occurring after the date the adverse final determination is received by such entity or free clinic.

(d) The Attorney General will inform the National Practitioner Data Bank of any final determination under § 15.17 that an individual shall not be deemed to be an employee of the Public Health Service for purposes of 42 U.S.C. 233 .

(a) Not sooner than five years after the time for rehearing has expired, and no more often than once every five years thereafter, an individual who has been the subject of a final determination under § 15.17 may petition the initiating official for reconsideration of that determination and for reinstatement. The individual bears the burden of proof and persuasion.

(b) In support of the petition for reinstatement, the individual shall submit relevant evidence relating to the period since the original proceedings under this subpart and a statement demonstrating and explaining why treating the individual as an employee of the Public Health Service for purposes of 42 U.S.C. 233 would no longer expose the United States to an unreasonably high degree of risk of loss.

(c) Upon receiving a petition for reinstatement, the initiating official shall forward the petition, together with an evaluation and recommendation on whether the petition makes a prima facie case for reinstatement, to the adjudicating official. The adjudicating official shall determine, in the adjudicating official's discretion, whether the petition makes a prima facie case that the individual provider no longer would expose the United States to an unreasonably high degree of risk of loss. The adjudicating official's determination that a petition does not make a prima facie case for reinstatement is not subject to further review.

(d) If the adjudicating official determines that a prima facie case has been made for reinstatement, an administrative law judge shall be appointed in accordance with 5 U.S.C. 3105 and shall conduct such proceedings pursuant to §§ 15.14 through 15.16 as the administrative law judge deems necessary, in the administrative law judge's discretion, to determine whether the individual has established that treating the individual as an employee of the Public Health Service for purposes of 42 U.S.C. 233 would no longer expose the United States to an unreasonably high degree of risk of loss. After conducting such proceedings as the administrative law judge deems necessary, the administrative law judge shall certify the record to the adjudicating official and shall submit written findings of fact, conclusions of law, and a recommended decision to the adjudicating official pursuant to § 15.16.

(e) Following proceedings conducted under paragraph (d) of this section, the adjudicating official shall make the final determination on the basis of the record, findings, conclusions, and recommendations presented by the administrative law judge, which shall include the record from the original determination and any petition for rehearing. Copies of the adjudicating official's final determination shall be furnished to the parties. The adjudicating official's final determination shall constitute the final agency action.

(f) A determination that an individual is reinstated pursuant to this section shall be distributed in the same manner as provided in § 15.19 and shall apply only to acts or omissions of the individual occurring after the date of the final reinstatement determination.

Dated: June 28, 2024.

Merrick B. Garland,

Attorney General.

1.   See Gallagher Healthcare, How Much Does Medical Malpractice Insurance Cost? (March 19, 2020), https://www.gallaghermalpractice.com/​blog/​post/​how-much-does-medical-malpractice-insurance-cost .

2.   Compare Gallagher Health Care, Nebraska Medical Malpractice Insurance, https://www.gallaghermalpractice.com/​state-resources/​nebraska-medical-malpractice-insurance (last visited January 26, 2024), with New York Medical Malpractice Insurance, www.gallaghermalpractice.com/​state-resources/​new-york-medical-malpractice-insurance (last visited January 26, 2024).

[ FR Doc. 2024-14696 Filed 7-3-24; 8:45 am]

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An unsteady debate performance by President Biden has scrambled the thinking among some donors about whether the party needs to find an alternative.

By Andrew Ross Sorkin ,  Ravi Mattu ,  Bernhard Warner ,  Sarah Kessler ,  Michael J. de la Merced ,  Lauren Hirsch and Ephrat Livni

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