ICPM Industry Days Europe 2026 in Karlsruhe brought together vendors, practitioners, and researchers to discuss the future of Process Mining and Process Intelligence.
Beyond the usual buzzwords, one thing was clear: the field is entering a new phase of maturity.
This is no longer just about discovering processes.
It’s about making process intelligence usable, scalable, and embedded in daily operations.
One of the strongest themes across the event was the need to democratize process intelligence.
A major theme at ICPM 2026 was the need to make process intelligence accessible beyond experts.
Historically, process mining has been:
That model is changing.
The emerging vision is different: Process Intelligence should be directly usable by operations managers and value stream leaders.
The goal is simple but transformative: people running the business should be able to understand their processes and act on them in real-time without intermediaries.
A powerful analogy shared by Leonardo captures this shift.
On several highways, electronic toll systems allow drivers to pass through without stopping, eliminating queues and friction.
Process Intelligence should work the same way.
Instead of:
users should be able to:
In this sense, Process Intelligence is moving toward becoming a frictionless capability embedded in daily work.
Unsurprisingly, AI was everywhere in the discussions.
But the tone was more grounded than in previous years.
The consensus is shifting from:
to:
In practice, this means:
not replacing process understanding.
The real value lies in combining AI with strong process expertise and data foundations.
Another clear direction is the evolution toward simpler and more intuitive interfaces.
Historically, process mining tools required:
Apromore is a no code platform by design and allows
The reason is straightforward:
if process intelligence is to be widely adopted, it must be easy to use for non-experts.
A recurring message throughout the event:
Insights alone are not enough.
Organizations don’t need more dashboards — they need:
This means shifting from:
to:
Process Intelligence is increasingly expected to drive operational outcomes, not just provide visibility.
The experience shared by Leonardo Aircraft offered a practical perspective on adoption.
Their journey highlighted several key lessons:
Most importantly, they showed that success is not about the tool alone: it's about building the capability within the organization.
A clear conclusion from ICPM 2026:
“Process Intelligence should become a standard capability for every organization.”
Just like companies rely on:
they also need solutions to:
Because every business process impacts cost, performance, and customer experience.
ICPM 2026 confirmed that Process Mining is evolving into something bigger:
The shift is clear:
from a specialist tool → to an everyday operational capability
And that shift is what will define the next phase of the market.
Photo Credit: Featured image of Karlsruhe Palace (crpperd) is used under CC BY-SA 4.0, attribution to the author, Gerd Eichmann.