What is the difference between Process Intelligence and Process Mining?

Process Mining is an analysis method: it reconstructs how a process actually runs from the event data in IT systems. Process Intelligence is the wider discipline that combines this process data with business context, metrics, domain knowledge, and AI to explain why a process runs the way it does and to derive decisions from it. Process Mining supplies the factual basis; Process Intelligence turns it into understanding and action.

Why does this matter?

The market is reorganizing along this distinction: in May 2026 Gartner published its market report as the "Magic Quadrant for Process Intelligence Platforms", whereas earlier editions carried "Process Mining" in the title. Anyone selecting tools should therefore check whether a vendor only visualizes flows or also delivers causes, context, and actions – that is the real difference behind the two terms.

What does this look like in practice?

Process mining shows that in order-to-cash 18% of orders pass through a credit block lasting four days on average. Process intelligence links that to customer segment, credit limit and revenue, finds that almost all blocks hit existing customers with an outdated limit, quantifies the working capital tied up as a result, and proposes reviewing that group’s limits specifically.

Not to be confused with

Not a rivalry: process intelligence does not replace process mining but builds on it. Nor the same as business intelligence, which condenses metrics into reports, whereas process intelligence explains the flows behind those metrics.