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Continuous Process Monitoring means you keep an eye on your processes every day, not just at reporting time. It uses data solutions to provide insight into process execution on ongoing basis. This is not new as most business already have real-time dashboards and some level of active control monitoring. However, the technology has changed from application-based reports and controls monitoring to real-time process execution insight and prediction.
First, you waited for monthly reports. Then you used GRC (Governance, Risk and Compliance) tools to manage policies and controls. Today, Process Mining and Process Intelligence show the actual process flows in real time, trigger actions, and produce compliance and audit evidence. That’s a big shift. It changes risk, compliance, and audit work for the better.
For years, organisations relied on reports exported from ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning), CRM (Customer Relationship Management) and other apps. These static reports or BI (Business Intelligence) dashboards told you what happened (totals, averages, and charts). Useful, yes. But they rarely showed how work really moved, where it deviated, or who skipped an approval yesterday. BI answers “what”, it struggles with “how” and “why.” For detail see Process Mining vs Analytics.
Process problems live in the process flow: rework loops, detours, and delays. Those details hide inside event logs, the time-stamped clicks and status changes your system already records. See Process Mining Handbook by Wil van der Aalst Josep Carmona.
As regulation and expectations grew, organisations adopted Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC) platforms, as an integrated way to set objectives, manage uncertainty (risks), and act with integrity (controls). As defined by the OCEG (Open Compliance and Ethics Group). In practice, GRC tools centralise policies, risk registers, controls, attestations, and issues, with workflows and reporting. It's the system of record for assurance.
Modern GRC and IRM (Integrated Risk Management) suites like ServiceNow IRM, Archer, and MetricStream excel at ownership, documentation, and governance workflows. Some products also include CCM (Continuous Control Monitoring) to schedule automated tests and gather evidence (for example, SAP Process Control in SAP GRC; MetricStream CCM for cloud control checks).
What GRC changed:
What GRC didn’t fully solve: GRC manages risks and controls. It doesn’t continuously observe the live process flow across systems. While some tools can use system data to assess the effectiveness of configuration controls. Monitoring is commonly scheduled and rule-based, not providing full transparency into the actual process execution. When process paths deviate beyond pre-configured control checks the impact is missed, something that has changed with Process Mining and Process Intelligence products.
Process Mining reads full event logs and auto-reconstructs the true workflow with every variant, bottleneck, and deviation. Process Intelligence builds on that with continuous analytics, correlations, and actions. Think of it as a digital twin of your processes that never sleeps.
KRIs and KPIs you can act on: Key Risk and Key Performance Indicators tracked in real-time. Showing where an SLA was breached, an approval was missed, a change was unauthorised, a tolerance or match wasn't working a SoD issue occurred. Now where this has really changed is root cause analysis, with the process flows and people involved, and with the first AI assistents guiding the way.
Real-time alerts: Pick instant alerts via SMS for high-risk triggers (e.g., bank account changes) or a daily email for the slightly less urgent. Implement escalation paths and automatically monitor follow-up. Modern platforms support configurable notifications and workflows out of the box. Some even come with predefined actions to take.
Evidence that writes itself: Automated testing and scheduled runs or event-driven actions each record time-stamped results, perfect for audit and regulator conversations. Configure automated compliance and assurance reporting based on what has gone as expected (per process variants without triggering alerts), and what has been done about what wasn't automatically determined as compliant. With automation and configurable risk appetite, compliance monitoring and audit will see a big impact.
Application reports helped us see. GRC systems helped us govern. Process Mining & Intelligence helps us grow with confidence. We can finally see reality, predict, and timely intervene. AI will have a massive impact with automated root cause analysis, solution development, and actions for improvement.
Gain full process transparency, spot inefficiencies instantly, and drive automation with real-time analytics and AI-powered monitoring across your business operations.
