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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.

PAFnow Process Mining
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
Data Management
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 Discovery
» 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
Conformance Checking
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
Operational Support
Alert Generation
Predictive Analytics
Technically possible, but requires configuration
Recommendations (Prescriptive Analytics)
Advanced Enhancement Capabilities
Organizational Mining
Scenario Simulation
Not out-of-the-box. What-if simulation can be configured in Power BI
Decision Rule Mining
Views, Monitoring and Reporting
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
Security & Compliance
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.

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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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