Process mining reads system event logs to map big processes top-down. Task mining watches desktop activity to surface patterns bottom-up. Workflow automation discovery has one person record one task on purpose and outputs a ready-to-run automation. Mining tells you where work happens; discovery gives you something you can actually run.
These three terms get used interchangeably in automation conversations, and they shouldn't be. They sit at different altitudes, cost wildly different amounts to set up, and produce different outputs. Choosing the wrong one wastes months. Here's the clean breakdown.
What is process mining?
Process mining analyses event logs from large enterprise systems — ERP, CRM, ticketing — to reconstruct how a process actually flows across an organisation, including all the variants and bottlenecks. It's powerful for understanding sprawling, cross-department processes like order-to-cash or procure-to-pay.
The trade-off: it needs deep system access and clean logs, takes significant time and budget to set up, and outputs diagrams and analytics — a map of the process, not a built automation. You still have to act on what it shows you.
What is task mining?
Task mining works at the level of the individual. It observes user activity — clicks, keystrokes, application switches — across many people to surface patterns: which repetitive tasks are common, where time goes, what's ripe for automation. It fills the gap process mining misses, because a lot of real work never touches a central log.
The trade-off: it's observational and broad, which makes it noisy and raises privacy questions (you're monitoring how people work). Like process mining, it's a prioritisation tool — it points at candidates rather than producing automations.
What is workflow automation discovery?
Workflow automation discovery is intentional and task-level. Instead of passively analysing logs or activity, one person deliberately records one recurring task once. The output isn't a chart or a heatmap — it's a clean, editable workflow you can export and run. It answers "what should we automate?" and "here's the automation" in the same motion.
Mining observes work to tell you where to look. Discovery captures work so you can build. One produces insight; the other produces an automation.
Side-by-side comparison
| Process mining | Task mining | Workflow discovery | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Altitude | System / org-wide | User activity, broad | One task, specific |
| How it captures | Event logs | Passive monitoring | Intentional recording |
| Output | Process diagrams | Patterns & priorities | Ready-to-run automation |
| Setup cost | High | Medium | Low (record once) |
| Who runs it | Analysts / consultants | Analysts + tooling | The person doing the task |
| Best for | Large cross-system processes | Spotting candidates at scale | Automating specific tasks fast |
So which should you use?
- Choose process mining when you need to understand a massive, multi-system enterprise process end to end.
- Choose task mining when you want to survey many employees and prioritise where automation could help most.
- Choose workflow discovery when you already know a task is repetitive and you want to automate it now — without a consulting engagement.
They're not mutually exclusive. Large organisations often mine to prioritise, then use discovery to build. But for most teams who already know which weekly tasks hurt, discovery is the shortest line between the problem and a working automation. See how to automate a workflow instantly for that path.
How Spion fits
Spion is a workflow automation discovery tool in your browser. You record a recurring task once; Spion reconstructs it into an editable workflow and exports a ready-to-run automation to Claude, Workato, Make, Zapier or n8n. No logs to mine, no monitoring to deploy — just capture the task and ship the automation.