Are your SOPs built from interviews and best guesses? Then you're probably writing fiction. Documentation created from memory is outdated before you even hit publish.
Process intelligence lets you build procedures based on how work actually happens—captured across every system and user in real-time.
Stop documenting assumptions and start documenting truth. Sound impossible? Keep reading....
Most SOPs are fiction.
They document what should happen, not what is does happen. They're created through interviews, workshops, and best guesses—then immediately become outdated as processes evolve.
The result? Documentation nobody trusts, training nobody follows, and process improvement built on fantasy.
The right technology changes this. Instead of documenting what people think happens, capture what actually happens—automatically, continuously, objectively.
Here's how to build SOPs that reflect reality.
Traditional SOP creation follows a predictable pattern:
Interview subject matter experts. Reconcile conflicting accounts. Create documentation. Distribute for review. Revise based on feedback. Publish. Watch it become outdated within weeks.
This approach has fundamental flaws:
Memory is unreliable. People forget steps, omit exceptions, and conflate different process versions.
Perspective is limited. Each team member sees only their part of the process.
Documentation is static. Processes evolve, but SOPs rarely get updated.
Compliance is assumed. You document the ideal path, not actual behavior.
The gap between documented and actual processes isn't just annoying—it's expensive. Training fails. Automation breaks. Compliance audits reveal violations nobody knew existed.
Process intelligence is key to powering agentic AI because it captures how work actually flows through your organization.
Unlike task mining (which records individual desktop activity) or traditional process mining (which analyzes system logs), process intelligence combines both approaches with AI to create a complete operational picture.
It captures every action users take across all applications, how data moves between systems, where humans make decisions, when exceptions occur and how they're handled, and which workarounds exist and who uses them.
This isn't sampling or surveying. It's comprehensive, continuous observation of actual work.
Deploy process intelligence to observe how work actually happens across all applications—not just what's logged in your ERP or CRM, but everything: copy-paste between systems, manual data entry, spreadsheet workarounds, email confirmations, shadow IT applications.
What to capture:
Duration matters. Capture at least 30 days of activity to account for monthly cycles, end-of-quarter processes, and regular exceptions. For highly variable processes, extend to 90 days. Include all users who touch the process—front office, back office, exceptions teams.
Process intelligence AI identifies the "happy path" (most common successful flow), major variants (legitimate alternative paths), outliers (unusual execution that may indicate problems), bottlenecks (where work accumulates), and rework loops (where work gets sent backward).
Focus on frequency and impact. A variant used by 30% of cases matters. A variant used once doesn't belong in your SOP—it's an exception to document separately.
You'll often discover that what you thought was one process is actually three different processes executed under the same name. Or that teams have developed unofficial workarounds that work better than the official process.
Now create your SOPs—but work backward from reality, not forward from assumptions.
Start with the most common path. If 70% of cases follow a particular flow, that's your SOP baseline.
Document major variants. If 20% of cases take a different legitimate path (e.g., international orders vs. domestic), create a variant procedure or branch in your documentation.
Surface decision criteria. Process intelligence shows you where decisions happen. SME interviews tell you why. Combine them to document decision logic explicitly.
Include timing and SLAs. You now know actual cycle times for each step. Set realistic targets based on observed performance, not aspirational goals.
Capture system dependencies. Your documentation should explicitly show which applications are used for each step—critical for training and troubleshooting.
Traditional SOPs are dead the moment they're published. Process intelligence keeps them alive.
Set up drift detection. Configure alerts when actual execution deviates significantly from documented procedures. This tells you when processes have genuinely changed (time to update the SOP), new workarounds have emerged (investigate why), or compliance violations are occurring (enforce or adjust).
Schedule regular reviews. Quarterly, re-analyze process execution. Compare current patterns to documented SOPs. Update documentation to reflect legitimate changes.
Version control matters. Treat SOPs like code. Track changes, maintain version history, document why procedures changed. This is critical for compliance and institutional knowledge.
Traditional approach: Give new hires the SOP binder. Hope they figure it out.
Process intelligence approach: Show them recordings of actual process execution by top performers. Let them watch real work, not read theoretical documentation.
Impact: Reduce time-to-productivity by 40-60%. New hires see exactly how work flows, including unwritten rules and system quirks.
Traditional approach: Document your processes. Hope auditors don't find gaps between documentation and reality.
Process intelligence approach: Prove your SOPs match actual execution. Demonstrate continuous compliance monitoring.
Impact: Pass audits faster. Reduce findings. Show auditors objective evidence of process adherence.
Traditional approach: Create one SOP. Mandate adoption. Watch each team continue doing their own thing.
Process intelligence approach: Capture how each team actually works. Identify which approaches perform best. Create SOPs based on proven excellence, not theoretical ideals.
Impact: Standardize on what works, not what sounds good in workshops. Achieve actual consistency.
Traditional approach: Base automation on documented SOPs. Discover during development that reality differs. Start over.
Process intelligence approach: Build automation based on actual process execution. Handle real variants, real exceptions, real system interactions.
Impact: Reduce automation development cycles by 50%. Deploy bots that actually work in production.
A major insurer had 47-page SOPs for claims processing. Process intelligence revealed reality looked nothing like the documentation.
What the SOP said:
What process intelligence showed:
The rebuild:
They created new SOPs based on actual execution: documented all five systems and the data required from each, created decision trees based on how experienced assessors actually classified claims, built realistic training showing actual system interactions, and set achievable SLAs based on observed performance.
Results:
Start with one high-impact process that involves multiple systems or applications, has significant manual components, lacks clear documentation or has outdated SOPs, causes frequent training challenges, or shows high variation in execution time or quality.
Run a 30-60 day capture covering all users who touch the process.
Analyze for the happy path and major variants. Look for patterns, not outliers.
Create your first reality-based SOP. Include actual system interactions, real decision points, observed timing.
Deploy and monitor. Train new hires using the new SOP. Set up drift alerts. Measure impact on training time and execution consistency.
Once you've proven the approach on one process, expand systematically to other critical workflows.
SOPs built on assumptions become shelf-ware. SOPs built on process intelligence become operational truth.
The difference isn't philosophical—it's practical. Reality-based documentation trains faster, automates easier, and audits cleaner.
Stop documenting what should happen. Start capturing what does happen.
Your SOPs should reflect your actual business, not an idealized version that exists nowhere but in your process binder.
Process intelligence makes that possible—automatically, continuously, objectively.
Build SOPs that match reality. Because fiction belongs in novels, not in your operational documentation.