The University of Leeds is hosting a free masterclass in process mining featuring an introduction to research and the opportunity to gain hands-on experience.
Through a series of practical exercises, participants will learn the basic steps in process mining of an event log and explore how process mining can reveal insights into business processes.
The masterclass will use a case study with easy-to-follow steps suitable for technical and non-technical users. Attendees will also have the chance to dive into the Celonis toolset to explore advanced features used by data analysts and process improvement consultants to make recommendations for process enhancements.
Last week, Uruguay hosted the International Conference on Process Mining 2025, an annual event where leaders gather to discuss ideas, share insights, foster innovation, and explore new frontiers in the field of process mining.
University of Leeds gets hands-on with process mining
The day-long masterclass is organized by Leeds Institute for Data Analytics (LIDA), the home of data science at the University of Leeds. It will be conducted by Owen Johnson, associate professor, School of Computer Science at University of Leeds and Keisha Natalia, associate partner manager – academic alliance at Celonis.
Speaking to PEX Network, Johnson explained that the course is designed to set the scene by connecting process mining, process modeling, improvement, and simulation as a toolset before diving in to process mining with one of the market leading products.
“Celonis is flying a trainer over from Germany to run the hands-on section of the course and are providing software for free. It will be reasonably accessible to business leaders and process improvement analysts and consultants with plenty of scope for discussion and debate as well as lots of (hopefully good) content.”
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UK “woefully behind” other nations in process mining
Johnson suggested that the UK is “woefully” behind other countries in exploiting process mining. “My personal view is that we, in the UK, seem to have a disconnect between our enthusiasm for data mining and a desire to improve processes.”
Process mining is simply the link between the two – applying a process perspective to data and bringing a data-driven perspective to process improvement, he added.
“Done as a one-off exercise, process mining can help spot process improvement opportunities and surface a sensible discussion of a business’ real processes as evidenced in their own data. Done well, process mining can be embedded within business control systems (dashboards etc.) to provide real time monitoring of process flows and outcomes.”
As the world rushes towards artificial intelligence (AI) and agentic technologies, process mining can provide ‘guardrails’ that will monitor new AI inserted within processes to keep the process on track, ensuring fair and desirable outcomes, Johnson said.
“We can expect modern organizations to keep flexing and innovating their processes to react to increasingly competitive and volatile markets. The successful organizations will be the ones that use process mining and related technologies to manage their process improvements intelligently using systems and data.”