“Everyone becomes a process improver.” Those were some of Celonis co-founder and co-CEO Alex Rinke’s key words at the process mining (PM) provider’s flagship event Celosphere Live 2020. Business leaders are beginning to discover the value of both PM technology and the cultural change it can bring – driving everyone from the C-suite to the shop floor to continuously strive for process excellence; the customers Celonis put on show certainly made this clear, and HFS’ upcoming Process Mining Top 10 will be a first glimpse at this powerful and fast-growing technology. What was also on show was Celonis’ reach (>18,000 registered) and its expanding ecosystem: over 320 partner universities – key for generating IP and advancing the technology, especially alongside Celonis’ tight link with the founder of process mining Prof. Wil van der Aalst – and a partner network of SIs, consultants, vendors, BPO players, spreading the implementation potential of Celonis across the globe.
While this is impressive growth (130% last year, a doubling in headcount, and newly sourced $290m in funding), Celosphere Live’s main call to attention centered on two announcements: Celonis’ new operational apps and the creation of Business Value Architects (BVAs), explored by this HFS Highlight.
Business Value Architects are part of a continuing grasp for getting more bang for the buck on process mining tech
COVID-19 has shown just how true this statement is:
“Operations processes need to run under difficult circumstances – process mining is important, and so is the combination of data and processes”
Wil van der Aalst, Distinguished Humboldt Professor. RWTH Aachen / Eindhoven University of Technology
Celonis are “obsessed with creating business value in each engagement” according to Rinke and they’re “tripling-down” on investments throughout their ecosystem during this difficult time. One way that Celonis is doing this is by creating the role and certification of “Business Value Architect”. BVAs from Celonis or a Certified Partner are sold as subscriptions alongside the software and become an extension of a company’s internal team, focused on framing, realizing and sustaining value. Framing the value consists of identifying, qualifying, quantifying and prioritizing process improvement opportunities as well as helping the organization establish the operational readiness to drive value. Subsequently, the BVAs support the action plans to realize the value and enable the end users to leverage Celonis on a daily basis. Finally, the BVAs track and report on the realized value, generate success stories and assist the organization in setting up a Celonis Center of Excellence (CoE) in order to sustain the value. Customers are also envisioned to be part of the BVA certification.
New operational apps will bring outcome-driven “action” to complement the process analytics
Over the last eight years of working with some of the largest companies, Celonis has seen countless business processes and transactions run through its systems. Two of the most common business functions making use of its process mining technology are finance and accounting, and supply chain management (SCM). Since 2019, Celonis has worked with dozens of its customers to co-develop its newly launched Operational Apps around these functions.
Built using real process data, these apps are essentially pre-configured modules to help F&A and SCM leaders, managers, and staff to take specific actions that will directly drive better outcomes and additionally prioritize work based on key goals and KPIs. The embedded analytics can guide different personas on what to prioritize in their work queues based on the selected KPIs, such as applying cash discounts in accounts payable (AP). Celonis’ AI engine sifts through process data and highlights the specific blockers that have largest detrimental impact to the desired outcome. The engine then recommends actions to take based that drive better outcomes. Users can take the recommended actions themselves or the system can automatically take the next-best action, based on native automation capabilities.
AP and Materials Management in Supply Chain are the first two apps available, but more excitingly, Celonis is opening up its platform for third parties and clients to build their own apps to support different business functions. Emerging technologies need to be applied to solve very specific business challenges, and the new operational applications make it easier to bridge that gap, building business context and action into an otherwise visibility focused mining technology.
The Bottom Line: Organizations need guidance on developing a process mining discipline and tying the technology to key business outcomes…and Celonis is here to invest in it.
Celonis is satisfying the need we’re seeing from execs during the pandemic to radically improve their process efficiencies and save cost. Cloud, automation, analytics are all in the bucket we’re seeing spending likely to ramp up in; process mining can encompass them all and more. Celonis has been quick to recognize this and are at the head of a quickly developing process mining market. The value architect program will help the vendor push forward the program management aspect of implementing its product, and tackle a huge inhibitor for adoption – change management. Similarly, the operational apps are a great first step towards a process orchestration proposition by blending multiple emerging technologies and tying together process mining with automation and outcome-driven AI.
But what else is next? Object-centric process mining was emphasized for the near future by Professor van der Aalst, as Celonis continues to go after mining core operating processes as well as multiple interlinked processes. From a more hypothetical standpoint, Alex Rinke challenged current and future clients to become the celebrated “first superfluid enterprise” by Celosphere 2024 – to look for improvements in every process, and connect an array of emerging technologies, not least AI, on top of that to remove any last hint of process friction. Celonis on its part must continue its investments to make this happen – integrate across analytics, automation, and AI capabilities, and provide more prescriptive guidance and best practices to help clients scale and get more value out of its technology.
