PAFnow

Germany-based Process Analytics Factory (PAF) offers PAFnow, the only Process Mining solution built on Power BI, Microsoft’s business analytics and intelligence software. The powerful symbiosis of Process Mining and Business Intelligence capabilities allows users to harness the full power of both disciplines in one solution. On top of traditional process discovery and conformance checking capabilities, the tool offers various pre-configured reports such as loop/rework analysis, automation report and benchmarking. Custom Power BI visuals include Lead Time Calculator, Document Flow, Case Viewer, Root Cause Analyzer and more. While pre-configured reports are available, the solution boasts with Power BI’s nature of highly customizable dashboards. PAFnow offers a comprehensive set of deployment options and supports more than 100 Power BI data sources as well as pre-defined content packs for SAP R/3 Purchase-to-Pay and Order-to-Cash processes.

Tool Name

PAFnow

Vendor

Process Analytics Factory GmbH (Darmstadt, Germany)

Company Size

11-50 employees

Free Trial

Immediate access

Licenses

Free, Commercial

Deployment

Cloud

, Hybrid, On-Premises

, Standalone

Mobile access possible via Power BI app

Embedded In

Microsoft Power BI

Tested Version

PAFnow Premium (SaaS) + PAFnow Process Mining 2019.2.0 (Power BI) - Tested in 06/2020

Import File Types

CSV, TXT, Excel formats

Database Connections

Various connectors available

Adapters/Connectors

SAP R/3, SAP S4 HANA, ServiceNow, Salesforce, MS Dynamics and many more

Integrated ETL Functionality

Data Anonymization & Pseudonymization

Data Loading

Data Refresh: Incremental data loading, appending new data to an existing set of data
Scheduled Jobs = Automatic data loading in defined time intervals

Data Refresh

, Scheduled Jobs

Character Encodings

UTF-8 compatibility tested with special characters and various languages: Korean, Japanese, Trad. & Simplif. Chinese, Hebrew, Arabic, Russian

UTF-8 (verified

) + various more encodings

Attribute Types

Case-level

, Event-level

Specify Business Hours

Working week

, Multiple shifts/day

, Exclude days

, Holiday calendar

Define Event Order

Manual definition of event ordering in case of identical timestamps. This criterion does not consider automatic ordering by the tool.

By selected column

Start/End Timestamp

2 timestamps

» Process Graph

As-Is Process Visualization

Directly-Follows Graph (horizontal, vertical)

Export As-Is Process Graph

For data exports (e.g. CSV) see “Export Reports” criterion

Performance Highlighting

Visual highlighting of process bottlenecks

Active time

, Idle time

Process Animation (Replay)

Adjust speed

, Adjust timeframe

, Switch time mode

, Zoom in case

Search and Filter in Graph

Search and find activity names (relevant for spaghetti-like graphs)
Filter activities/transitions directly from graph

Search

, Filter

Graph Abstraction

Frequency Metrics

Activity frequency, Case frequency; Customizable

Time Metrics

The term “duration” is used when both active and waiting/idle times can be displayed

Min/max/avg duration; Customizable

Additional Graph Metrics

Cost metrics

, Custom metrics

» Process Analysis & Analytics

Process Benchmarking

Visual comparison

, Metric comparison

Process Benchmarking (Different Logs)

Visual comparison

, Metric comparison

Root Cause Analysis

Variant Breakdown by

“Duration” refers to the case throughput time

By case count; Customizable

Case and Activity List

Activity List

, Case List

, Case List for Variants

View Case Details

Rework Analysis

Dedicated rework dashboard available (pre-configured)

Edge/Transition Details

From-to activities: List of ingoing and outgoing activities for any selected activity

List of all transitions

, From-to activities

Compare As-Is and Target Process

Target Model Creation

Import model

, Auto-create from as-is

, Create new

BPMN model can be imported via Visio

In-Graph Conformance Visualization

List of Compliance Violations

Four-Eyes Principle

Can be manually configured

Sequence Filtering

“(Not) Directly followed by” filtering

Conformance Root Cause Analysis

Alert Generation

Predictive Analytics

Technically possible, but requires configuration

Recommendations (Prescriptive Analytics)

Organizational Mining

Scenario Simulation

Not out-of-the-box. What-if simulation can be configured in Power BI

Decision Rule Mining

Export Reports

Events (CSV), Cases (CSV), Variants (CSV)

Export Charts and Tables

Tables only

Custom Dashboards

Custom charts

, Custom tables

Custom Metrics/KPIs

KPI Thresholds

Deviation from defined thresholds can be detected through color differentiation

Advanced Charts

Dashboard offers >5 different chart types

World Map

Latitude & longitude coordinates

, Location by attribute (e.g. country codes, city names)

Save Filter Settings

UI Languages

see Power BI languages

Share & Collaborate

Share selection

; Project sharing, Comment function; Connectors for Microsoft Teams, SharePoint, Jira, Asana and more

Role-Based Access

User Authentication

Integrated Windows Authentication (Active Directory); Row-level security (RLS)

Audit Logs

Distinctive Focus and Features

Symbiosis of Process Mining and Business Intelligence: PAFnow is built on Power BI and hence enjoys the full spectrum of the platform’s Business Intelligence capabilities, combined with self-developed Process Mining features.
Leveraging Microsoft’s ecosystem: Dashboards and reports can be easily distributed using Microsoft Office 365 and accessed with mobile devices via Power BI app. In addition, users can utilize SharePoint/Teams for collaboration, Quick Insights for AI, Power Automate for workflow automation and RPA, PowerApps for production-ready business solutions and many more tools offered by Microsoft.
Data Connectivity: Data can be sourced from over 100 different connectors, including SAP R/3, SAP S4 HANA, ServiceNow, Salesforce, MS Dynamics and many more.

Explore PAFnow

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Disclaimer: The timeliness of provided information is based on the tested version and date as stated under “Tested Version”. No guarantee can be given about the correctness and accuracy of the information contained.

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