After observing thousands of workflows across different enterprises, we’ve noticed the same costly pattern: teams rely on gut feeling or scattered reports to optimize processes, but miss the hidden inefficiencies draining productivity.
Manual process analysis is where good operations often fail. For example, your team invests weeks in mapping out a “standard” workflow for invoice approvals, only to discover later that employees were navigating six additional clicks in Excel to format data correctly. Multiply that by hundreds of employees, and you’re bleeding hours you didn’t even know you were losing.
The real problem is understanding what actually happens in day-to-day work.
That’s where task mining enters. It minutely examines your business operations, drilling into the tiny details, clicks, wait times, and copy-paste loops that quietly eat hours every week.
You’re basically watching every task unfold frame by frame. You see exactly how a document gets created, who touches it, how long each step takes, and what edits happen along the way.
In this blog, we’ll walk through:
By the end, you answer: Should I invest in task mining? And more importantly: Where will it give me the biggest wins?
Task mining observes how work is actually done by capturing the keystrokes, mouse clicks, and data entries employees make day in and day out. This mining technique reveals the real way tasks get done, rather than following a process doc version.
According to Gartner Peer Insights, “task mining tools capture low-level user interactions such as clicks and keystrokes, then apply technologies like OCR and NLP to create actionable insights.”
It incorporates smart tech features like OCR (to read on-screen text), NLP (to understand context), and machine learning (to identify patterns). The result is more than raw data. You get insights on where work slows down, where people take detours, and which steps to streamline or automate.
Instead of knowing “how long an approval process takes,” you can see:
The result is visual and easy-to-digest task flows, heatmaps, and dashboards that indicate inefficiencies, bottlenecks, and repeated work. To leaders, it offers a factual means of responding:
In short, task mining closes the gap between how processes are supposed to work and how they actually happen, down to the human level.
Task mining works in the following way:
It begins with gathering user interaction history on the workstations of employees using lightweight agents. Key captures include:
This runs in real time and is designed to show users real task execution.
The second step makes your data analysis-ready by:
With clean data, algorithms look for meaningful patterns:
It helps you identify deviations, redundant steps, and opportunities for process improvement.
Analysis is converted into easy visuals, like flowcharts, heatmaps, and dashboards, so stakeholders can quickly grasp complex task structures and pinpoint trouble spots.
Finally, the system suggests concrete next steps, such as:
For mid-sized businesses, task mining delivers the biggest impact. Large companies can throw money at consultants and automation pilots; smaller startups can pivot quickly without layers of legacy processes. But mid-sized organizations? They’re in the messy middle, big enough to feel the weight of inefficiencies, yet lean enough that wasted hours hit the bottom line hard.
For example, a finance team of 40 people is processing invoices. If every employee spends an extra 10 minutes per day hovering around poorly designed software quirks, that’s 400 minutes lost daily. That’s more than 130 hours every month, basically the same as losing an extra employee to busywork. Task mining highlights hidden leaks, so leaders see exactly where time is slipping away and patch the holes.
By recording real user actions, you know about wasted keystrokes, redundant copy-pastes, or awkward system hops. Suddenly, those “small” inefficiencies like switching between three systems to enter the same data become visible targets for elimination.
Ever map out a “perfect workflow” only to find reality is messier? Task mining gives you visibility into how tasks actually happen: all the detours, back-and-forths, mess-ups, delays. You stop relying on “gut feel” or someone’s theory and start making changes based on what people say.
Employees hate performing menial and low-value jobs, thereby reducing productivity. Why? Employees hate to spend hours on copy-paste or operate with clunky systems. Freeing them from such tasks encourages them to focus on what’s important.
A Harvard Business Review Analytic Services report confirms that digitizing workflows reduces errors but significantly improves employee and customer satisfaction.
The more additional clicks or handoffs your team experiences, the more money you waste. Task mining identifies areas of inefficiency, cleans them up, eliminates waste, and manages your resources better.
Task mining offers logs of what actually happens, proving process adherence, passing audits, or showing you follow standards. This adds a layer of trust and consistency.
You don’t want to build bots or tools on shaky ground. Task mining identifies repetitive, rules-based, and high-frequency tasks, automating only those. You invest in automating the right processes irrespective of their difficulty level.
Most automation projects fail because they start on shaky ground. Companies rush to build bots, only to find that the underlying processes are inconsistent, messy, or not even worth automating. Task mining brings a change to that.
By capturing the real way tasks are done, every click, copy-paste, and delay, it highlights which steps are repetitive, stable, and rule-based. Those are your best candidates for automation. It highlights where human judgment is crucial, preventing you from wasting effort on automating processes that shouldn’t be automated.
McKinsey’s 2025 AI report highlights that organizations which prioritize automation based on accurate process data see stronger ROI and scalability than those relying on assumptions.
As a result, you avoid short-lived fixes and build an automation pipeline that lasts. Instead of patching together bots that break whenever the process changes, you create a sustainable and scalable roadmap for automation. This process gives you the data to streamline first, automate second, and grow with confidence.
For example, a global bank used task mining before rolling out RPA in its accounts payable process. They discovered that staff spent nearly 25% of their time reformatting invoices in Excel before approvals. By focusing on it first, they reduce processing time and then focus on automation.
Task mining magnifies in, and process mining zooms out. The former records the keystrokes, clicks, and on-screen behaviors of the employees, revealing how operations execute in the real world.
Conversely, the latter examines the event log of business systems (ERP, CRM, etc.) to follow complete workflows until the end.
Task mining and process mining are complementary. One of them brings out a large-scale picture, the other brings out the details.
Task mining is suitable if you are attempting to repair minor, recurring issues, such as copy-pasting between systems, manual data entry, or never-ending clicks. Process mining provides you with the end-to-end perspective of the order-to-cash or the procure-to-pay process.
But most companies find the real value in combining them. Start broad with process mining to spot the issues, then drill down with task mining to uncover the root cause.
Take Accounts Payable as an example. Process mining might show that approvals are slowing down the workflow. Task mining reveals that employees are toggling between ERP and Excel, reformatting PDFs, and manually entering data. Put together, you get both the “where” and the “why,” and that clarity leads to real change.
| Situation | Use task mining | Use process mining | Combine them |
| You want to fix repetitive, manual work inside tasks (data entry, formatting, toggling between tools) | ✅ | ❌ | Process mining shows where in the overall flow the delay happens, and task mining shows why. |
| You need to see end-to-end flows, e.g. order-to-cash, procure-to-pay, or customer journey from first contact to resolution | ❌ | ✅ | To understand both the high-level path and the detailed friction inside every step. |
Here’s a table showing how process mining is different from task mining:
| Feature | Task mining | Process mining |
| Focus | Focuses on the individual work tasks of the employees (keystrokes/clicks/data entry). | Focuses on end-to-end workflows across systems and departments. |
| Data source | User interaction data from desktops and apps (keystrokes, mouse clicks, on-screen activity). | Event logs and system data (ERP, CRM, HR systems, etc.). |
| Perspective | Microscope. Detailed human-level actions. | Map. High-level process flows. |
| Best for | Gathering task-level inefficiencies, automating tasks (RPA). | Mapping the entire processes, identifying the bottlenecks, and compliance. |
| Output | Task flows, heatmaps, and dashboards of user actions. | Process models, visual workflows, performance metrics. |
| Complementary strength | Explains the why behind bottlenecks (extra clicks, detours, rework). | Shows where bottlenecks happen in the overall process. |
| Example use case | Discovering that employees spend 10 minutes reformatting invoices in Excel before uploading. | Revealing that invoice approvals take 5 days due to multiple manager handoffs. |
Paxray is designed for mid-sized businesses that want actionable insights without long deployment cycles. The tool goes live in a single day, which makes it one of the fastest tools to implement. The platform captures work across all applications, including ERP systems, custom tools, Excel, and browser software. The reason why top companies choose Paxray is its emphasis on privacy. It does not capture screens or keystrokes, and the tool anonymizes and encrypts all the information. Processing is either in a cloud environment or on a fully on-premise system, making it appealing to companies operating within regulated industries.
UiPath is a leader in robotic process automation, and its task mining solution reflects that focus. The tools focus on gathering data and user interactions and identifying tasks you can automate. The tool is an integral part of the UiPath automation suite, which is why it’s a logical choice for firms already using UiPath.
Skan AI is designed to minimize disruption during deployment. It applies computer vision and machine learning to monitor user interactions across applications, helping businesses gain a detailed view of work patterns without requiring large-scale IT projects.
Process Advisor belongs to the Power Automate family of Microsoft, making it a convenient point of entry to those already within the Microsoft ecosystem. It enables users to log their work and workflow, and visualize it and bottlenecks. The tool detects redundant tasks and where automation can have the best effect.
Mimica identifies repetitive jobs that are good candidates for automation. The tool logs user interactions, uses machine learning to identify patterns, and automatically generates process maps. Mimica minimizes the number of man-hours required for identifying automation opportunities. Automating the discovery phase helps teams speed up the design and implementation process of robotic process automation.
Paxray focuses on the needs of mid-sized businesses that want quick insights, affordable pricing, and complete trust in data privacy. Here’s how it fits the market:
There are two ways to understand business processes: through systems or through people. Process mining takes the system view. It follows cases, such as purchase orders, through system logs to show the end-to-end flow. This answers where problems occur, but not why.
Task mining focuses on the employee’s perspective. Analyzing fundamental user interactions during process execution reveals how tasks are actually performed. This provides leaders with a clear understanding of where operational potential lies and why inefficiencies exist.
Process mining projects often need months of preparation to clean and harmonize event data. Costs can quickly rise into six- or seven-figure budgets. Paxray task mining serves to collect data directly, eliminating the need for heavy integration work. Projects usually take weeks and stay within your budget.
Process mining depends heavily on the quality of system logs, which vary and even derail projects. Task mining avoids this risk by capturing user actions directly across all applications. The result is consistent, independent data of reliable quality.
Paxray is up and running in a single day. There is no need to wait before teams can realize the value of long-term integration projects. The dashboards and process maps are for business users and technical experts. As a result, insights are simple to comprehend
Built in partnership with European data privacy experts, Paxray is GDPR-compliant. It doesn’t record sensitive data such as screenshots or keystroke logs. All data on activities is anonymized and encrypted, which makes the employees feel safe and minimizes the obstacles to adoption.
Unlike heavy enterprise platforms, Paxray keeps costs manageable and features focused. It identifies manual workarounds, plans ERP migrations, and automates projects with a clear ROI. The outcome is a solution that provides an impact without the extra complexity.
Task mining examines the actions users take (e.g., clicks, keystrokes), while process mining reconstructs end-to-end workflows from system logs.
Paxray is a strong option for mid-sized firms due to its user-friendliness, affordability, and full GDPR compliance.
Process mining does not consider manual steps and workarounds that can only be identified with task mining.Process mining does not consider manual steps and workarounds that can only be identified with task mining.
Use task mining tools to identify and capture repetitive tasks, identify inefficiencies, and prioritize them based on ROI.
Task mining platforms, such as Paxray, provide direct insight into user activity.
Task mining provides a front office view of how employees do their work. You no longer make decisions based on some gut feeling or process charts because you can see each step, each click, and each unknown path.
This clarity will do away with unproductive effort, enhance employee satisfaction, and create a better base of automation.
The payoff is immense for mid-sized companies, as you understand inefficiencies that impact productivity and are not apparent in traditional process mining. You optimize finance processes, enhance your IT support, and are better prepared for an ERP migration. This helps you make better decisions about where to allocate your time, energy, and automation.
Do you want to see the hidden inefficiencies in your workflows? Schedule a demo to know how Paxray can help.
No integrations. No development. Live in 1 day.
The first time to really understand the workflows behind your own processes. Have you ever wondered what the limitations of process mining are? Have you ever questioned the level of detail that Process Mining (PM) analyses represent? Well say, questions I have never thought about before – why should I? After we developed the first
Learn more
