Exclusive: The 'godfather of process mining' on its past and future

When Wil van der Aalst opens his passport, he often runs into problems. "My full name is Willibrordus Martinus Pancratius van der Aalst," he explained. "Whenever there is an electronic check of the passport I'm always picked out, the systems cannot handle such long names."

It is a fitting anecdote for a man who has spent his career untangling complex systems. Known internationally as the "godfather of process mining", Van der Aalst is Distinguished Humboldt Professor at RWTH Aachen University, Chief Scientist of Celonis, and one of the most influential figures in a field he himself coined.

Speaking with TechDay during a recent visit to Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, he described process mining as "a no-brainer" for modern organisations. "Any organisation of some scale has processes and they are collecting data," he said. "It is very valuable to combine these."

Originally from the Netherlands, Van der Aalst spent 30 years at Eindhoven University before moving to Germany after winning the country's most prestigious research award.

His academic work led directly to a billion-dollar software industry, but he admitted "he never saw it that way."

"I didn't think in terms of dollar moments," he explained. "I'm still surprised. I expected it to be much bigger at this stage, to be very honest." The shock value of his early demonstrations convinced him he was on to something. "Already 20 years ago, if I would show people their own processes, their jaws would drop," he said. "They were completely astonished that you could do this."

In the 1990s, workflow management technology was hyped as the future of business. Van der Aalst believed in it too. "I also wrote several textbooks on workflow management technology," he said.

But the reality of messy, non-linear processes forced him to rethink.

"When people describe their processes it all sounds very simple. But in reality, there are lots of exceptions," he said. He cited Queensland Health, which found 80,000 different ways of ordering supplies. "If people would model it by hand, it would look very simple. But if you then do it in reality, you see that there are 80,000 or even more possible ways." This gap between perception and reality was the birth of process mining: algorithms that analyse system data to show how processes really unfold. "It was always an eye opener," he said. "People are often shocked, but that is the starting point for improvement."

Van der Aalst sees Australia as an emerging market.

"If you would go to Germany or the Netherlands, the market is much more established," he explained. "Here, the market is still at the beginning." He pointed to Queensland Health's savings of $11 million in two years as proof of its potential. Yet, awareness remains low. "

If organisations do not know this possibility exists, how do they find it?" he said. "You can only accelerate that if there are companies like Celonis promoting the topic." He praised Australian universities such as QUT and University of Melbourne for their academic strength in the field but stressed that commercial uptake still has ground to cover.

One frustration is the widespread misconception that process mining is just another form of artificial intelligence. "Process mining is a super important technology to enable AI and machine learning," he said. "But the core algorithms are very different from mainstream AI."

Without process mining, he argued, organisations struggle to apply AI effectively. "If you look at most applications of AI, they are very task oriented," he explained. "But in an enterprise setting, you first need to know where your bottlenecks are. Process mining provides that MRI scan."

Celonis, where Van der Aalst serves as Chief Scientist, holds more than half the global market share. Its strength, he said, lies in accessibility and scale.

"The founders wanted to bring process mining to many users," he explained. "It's not a tool for an analyst sitting in the corner. Many people need to see the results every day." Continuous monitoring, not one-off projects, is key. "If you write a nice report and then walk away, the process reverts back," he said. "You need to do it continuously." Today, Celonis is pushing forward with Object Centric Process Mining. "If classical process mining is like an X-ray, then object centric process mining is like an MRI," he said. "You can view your organisation from any angle. That is a big differentiator."

Despite industry adoption, Van der Aalst believes education remains critical. "Many MBA students still learn about simulation but not process mining," he said. "Once they have seen it, they are enthusiastic. But if they do not know about it, they cannot ask for it." He often meets people who studied his early courses and went on to build careers in the field. "That shows the power of education," he said. "Process mining will help organisations make decisions more objectively and analytically, but that requires a new generation of people."

Asked about the future, Van der Aalst warned against everyone chasing the same trend.

"There is lots of attention for the link to AI," he said. "But I think there are opportunities to combine process mining with optimisation and operations research. Many people are doing the same thing, and I feel there is a lot of double work."

Still, he remains energised by the growth of the field he pioneered.

"It feels like planting seeds here in Australia in such a way that it starts to flourish," he said. "Of course, I hope this will really take off in the same way it did in Europe."

For the man often introduced as the king of process mining, the satisfaction lies in seeing an idea become a global industry.

"It is very rewarding," he said. "For a very long time, me and my PhDs were working on this while the rest of the world was focusing on either processes or data. We were the first to combine this, and it's great to see that now there is huge interest and we are just at the beginning."