Towards Leveraging Process Mining for Sustainability: An Analysis of Challenges and Potential Solutions

Sustainability is one of the grand challenges of our society, but organizations struggle to take a data-driven approach to identify and realize tangible value with sustainability initiatives. Due to its ability to measure and visualize actual business processes and their outcomes based on trace data, process mining (PM) can be positioned as a solution to tackle those problems. However, organizations currently lack the understanding of how to effectively leverage the technology regarding its impact and effect on sustainability initiatives’ success. We apply a qualitative approach involving 28 experts to understand the crucial challenges and potential solutions in implementing PM for sustainability. Most challenges can be attributed to sustainability as an organization-wide, cross-departmental focus area, and correspondingly complex organizational setting. Our paper provides novel insights into understanding PM implementations for sustainability, especially in strategic alignment with the overall organization.