Overview
The Conformance Counts calculator analyzes all conformance issues in your process data and displays how many cases are affected by each type of conformance violation. This calculator automatically identifies boolean attributes marked as conformance issues and provides a comprehensive summary of process compliance problems.
Conformance issues represent violations of process rules or standards, such as missing approvals, skipped steps, out-of-sequence activities, or policy violations. By counting how many cases have each type of issue, this calculator helps you prioritize which compliance problems to address first.
Common Uses
- Identify the most frequent conformance violations in your process
- Measure overall process compliance by counting cases with versus without issues
- Prioritize compliance improvement initiatives based on issue frequency
- Track conformance trends over time by comparing counts across periods
- Create conformance dashboards showing the distribution of different violation types
- Drill down into specific conformance issues to analyze affected cases
Settings
This calculator has no configurable settings. It automatically discovers and analyzes all boolean attributes that have been marked as conformance issues in your process data.
Standard Fields:
- Title: Optional custom title for the calculator output
- Description: Optional description for documentation purposes
How It Works:
The calculator scans your case data for boolean columns flagged as "ConformanceIssue" type. These columns are typically created by:
- Enrichments that detect process violations (for example, "Missing Approval" or "Late Payment")
- Filters that flag non-compliant cases
- Data extraction logic that captures compliance flags from source systems
- Process mining analysis that identifies standard violations
Each conformance issue column should contain true/false values where "true" indicates the violation is present in that case.
Examples
Example 1: Analyzing Purchase Order Compliance
Scenario: Your Procure to Pay process has several enrichments that flag conformance issues like missing approvals, maverick buying, and policy violations. You want to understand which compliance problems are most prevalent.
Settings:
- Title: "P2P Conformance Issues Summary"
- Description: "Overview of all compliance violations"
Output:
The calculator displays a table with one row per conformance issue:
| Conformance Issue | Case Count | Case Percent |
|---|---|---|
| Missing Three-Way Match | 847 | 18.4% |
| Purchase Order Above Approval Threshold | 623 | 13.5% |
| Maverick Buying (Non-Catalog Supplier) | 412 | 8.9% |
| Missing Budget Approval | 267 | 5.8% |
| Late Payment to Supplier | 189 | 4.1% |
| Invoice Price Mismatch | 143 | 3.1% |
| Duplicate Invoice | 87 | 1.9% |
Insights:
The most significant compliance issue is missing three-way match validation, affecting 847 cases (18.4% of all purchase orders). This creates audit risk and potential payment errors. The second most common issue is purchase orders exceeding approval thresholds without proper authorization, affecting 623 cases.
Together, these two issues account for nearly one-third of all purchase orders, making them the highest priority for process improvement initiatives. You can click on any row to filter your process map and case data to show only cases with that specific conformance issue.
Example 2: Measuring Overall Compliance Rate
Scenario: You want to create a high-level compliance metric showing what percentage of cases are fully compliant versus having at least one issue.
Settings:
- Title: "Invoice Processing Compliance Rate"
- Description: "Cases with any conformance issue"
Output:
The calculator shows all conformance issues detected:
| Conformance Issue | Case Count | Case Percent |
|---|---|---|
| Missing Approval | 423 | 12.3% |
| Late Processing | 387 | 11.2% |
| Incorrect Routing | 234 | 6.8% |
| Missing Documentation | 156 | 4.5% |
Insights:
Looking across all issues, approximately 1,200 of your 3,450 invoices (about 35%) have at least one conformance issue, meaning your overall compliance rate is approximately 65%. This provides a baseline metric you can track month-over-month to measure the impact of process improvements.
To calculate exact compliance rate, you would combine this data with Case Count calculator results. The fact that percentages don't sum to 35% indicates some cases have multiple conformance issues - this is important to know when planning remediation efforts.
Example 3: Comparing Conformance Across Time Periods
Scenario: You implemented process improvements last quarter and want to measure their impact on conformance rates.
Settings:
- Run the calculator twice: once filtered to Q3 data, once filtered to Q4 data
- Title (First): "Q3 2024 Conformance Issues"
- Title (Second): "Q4 2024 Conformance Issues"
Output:
Q3 2024 Results: | Conformance Issue | Case Count | Case Percent | |-------------------|------------|--------------| | Missing Approval | 423 | 12.3% | | Late Processing | 387 | 11.2% |
Q4 2024 Results: | Conformance Issue | Case Count | Case Percent | |-------------------|------------|--------------| | Missing Approval | 267 | 8.1% | | Late Processing | 298 | 9.0% |
Insights:
Your approval process improvements in Q4 reduced missing approvals from 12.3% to 8.1% - a significant 34% reduction in this conformance issue. Late processing also improved from 11.2% to 9.0%. These results demonstrate measurable improvement in process compliance following your intervention.
You can add both calculator outputs to a dashboard for side-by-side comparison, or use the "Selected Cases by Category Over Time" calculator to show how these conformance rates trend across all months.
Example 4: Prioritizing Compliance Initiatives by Business Impact
Scenario: You have multiple conformance issues but limited resources to address them. You want to prioritize based on frequency and business impact.
Settings:
- Title: "Accounts Payable Conformance Issues - Impact Analysis"
- Description: "Frequency and severity of compliance violations"
Output:
| Conformance Issue | Case Count | Case Percent | Business Impact |
|---|---|---|---|
| Late Payment (Beyond Terms) | 1,234 | 24.5% | Lost early payment discounts, supplier relationship damage |
| Missing Three-Way Match | 847 | 16.8% | Audit risk, potential payment errors |
| Duplicate Payment Risk | 156 | 3.1% | Direct financial loss |
| Missing Purchase Order | 423 | 8.4% | Compliance risk, lack of budget control |
Insights:
While duplicate payment risk affects only 3.1% of cases, its business impact (direct financial loss) may warrant immediate attention. Meanwhile, late payments affect nearly a quarter of all invoices and result in both financial losses (missed discounts) and relationship damage with suppliers.
This analysis suggests a two-track approach: implement automated duplicate detection to prevent high-impact losses, while simultaneously addressing the high-frequency late payment issue through process optimization and resource allocation.
The conformance counts data, combined with business context about each violation type, enables data-driven prioritization of your compliance improvement roadmap.
Example 5: Drilling Down into Specific Conformance Issues
Scenario: The Conformance Counts calculator shows that 847 cases have "Missing Three-Way Match" issues. You want to analyze these cases in detail.
Settings:
- Title: "All Conformance Issues"
- Description: "Process compliance overview"
Output:
The calculator shows all conformance issues including "Missing Three-Way Match" with 847 cases (18.4%).
Next Steps:
- Click on the "Missing Three-Way Match" row in the output table
- This filters your entire analysis to show only the 847 cases with this conformance issue
- Use additional calculators to analyze these filtered cases:
- Case Explorer: See the specific purchase orders with missing three-way match
- Breakdown by Categories: Analyze by supplier, department, or amount range
- Root Cause Analysis: Use AI to identify common characteristics of these cases
- Process Map: Visualize the actual process flows for non-compliant cases
Insights:
The Conformance Counts calculator serves as a starting point for deeper analysis. By clicking on specific conformance issues, you can progressively narrow your focus from "what are all the issues" to "which cases have this specific issue" to "why do these cases have this problem" to "how do we fix it."
This drill-down workflow is essential for moving from compliance measurement to compliance improvement.
Output
The calculator produces a table with the following structure:
Column Name (Text): The display name of each conformance issue attribute. This describes the specific type of process violation or compliance problem.
Case Count (Number): The number of cases affected by this conformance issue. This represents how many process instances have this particular violation flagged as "true" in the data.
Case Percent (Percentage): The percentage of total cases affected by this conformance issue, expressed as a decimal (0.184 = 18.4%). This helps you understand the relative prevalence of different conformance problems.
Interactive Features:
- Row Filtering: Click on any row to filter the entire analysis to show only cases with that specific conformance issue
- Sorting: Click column headers to sort by issue name, frequency, or percentage
- Dashboard Export: Add the calculator to dashboards for ongoing conformance monitoring
- Case View Access: Each row contains a hidden CaseView object that enables the filtering functionality
Interpretation Notes:
- High percentages (above 20%): Indicate systemic process problems affecting a large portion of cases. These require process redesign or policy changes.
- Medium percentages (5-20%): Common issues that should be addressed through targeted improvements, training, or automated controls.
- Low percentages (below 5%): May represent edge cases or specific scenario failures. Consider whether prevention is cost-effective.
- Zero counts: Conformance issues that exist in your data model but are not currently occurring. This is good - it means that particular compliance rule is being followed.
Empty Results:
If the calculator returns an empty table, this means:
- No boolean columns are marked as conformance issues in your data, OR
- All conformance issue columns contain only "false" values (no violations detected)
To use this calculator effectively, you must first create conformance issue attributes through enrichments or data extraction that flag specific process violations as boolean true/false values.
This documentation is part of the mindzie Studio process mining platform.