Co-CEO Alex Rinke delivered the Celonis point of view and answers to the top 5 buyer questions for the Process Mining Battleground taking place on July 31.
In the discussion, Rinke lays out the typical pattern of how customers begin with process mining in financially oriented applications, then progress to supply chains and other customer-facing functions. He describes product innovation and scale as key differentiators for Celonis, and details how generative AI can make process mining more accessible and usable for a greater population of end users.
Below are highlights of our discussion.
Highlights
Prevalent Customer Use Cases and Industries
01:19 — Rinke notes an industry estimate that forecasts 80% of companies will be using process mining by 2025, and that’s a big driver of Celonis‘ momentum. He says there’s strong customer enthusiasm because “processes are really the engine that make value repeatable in every business.” Industries including retail, consumer packaged goods, financial services, manufacturing, and life sciences have placed a big focus on process mining.
02:19 — He notes that process mining often starts in financial operations — for use cases including accounts payable, and accounts receivable (“the back office”) — and then quickly takes hold across the supply chain and the front office.
How Celonis Supports Shifting Priorities and Macroeconomic Conditions
03:50 — Process mining applications usually start at a grassroots level then catch the CEO’s attention because of their impact. An example of the power of process mining is Celonis customer Bosch, which recently disclosed savings of 100 million euros with the technology. The C-suite has shifted from a focus on growth at all costs in a free-money environment to a high focus on efficiency. Productivity and efficiency have advanced from a top 10 priority two to three years ago to a top 3 priority today, often the No. 1 priority.
04:58 — The high dollar savings and ROI that customers can achieve are driving adoption of Celonis software, in line with this focus on efficiency. Rinke says there isn’t a macroeconomic environment in which Celonis would be more relevant.
Top Differentiators
05:59 — As a company that started 12 years ago, Celonis has the most mature process mining technology, Rinke says. The company has developed its platform so that it can ingest data from a wide variety of sources at scale and then customers can govern the data at scale. Customers can also take action on insights discovered through connections to other platforms, such as automation, thanks to the Celonis API. It can drive tens, even hundreds, of millions of dollars in savings.
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07:17 — The second source of differentiation is innovation. By being squarely focused on process mining and not other categories, development concentrates on the core platform, and the company doesn’t need to tie sales of various products together. He cites the company’s object-centric process mining developments as an example; that technology allows an end-to-end view across a process, spanning multiple objects and events. Merck has talked about how it’s using this technology to accelerate and simplify value creation and uncover new use cases.
08:35 — The final differentiator is embedded knowledge — in the form of prebuilt use cases for functions such as accounts payable and procurement — that enables rapid time to value.
Making It Easier to Adopt Process Mining, Plus Customer Examples
09:23 — Celonis has democratized access through its Business Miner application, for example, which provides “consumer-grade” user experiences. HSBC is an early customer that has seen accelerated time to value within complex processes.
10:27 — The company’s Intelligence API makes it possible to receive process mining insights in a range of widely used applications: low-code tools, automation tools, Microsoft Teams, Salesforce, and more. “You can, through our Intelligence API, embed our process intelligence
wherever the user is. And that’s huge for our customers.” Other options aim to let customers get “in the door” easily and quickly and realize value. This includes a free plan.
AI’s Role in the Platform and the Product Roadmap
12:07 — There’s a specialized machine learning (ML) infrastructure that’s been plugged into the process mining system for years. Customers and partners have built on top of that infrastructure with specialized tasks including identifying duplicates in invoices that current systems don’t find. Hundreds of customers have saved millions of dollars with that alone.
13:10 — There are even deeper opportunities with large language models or LLMs. Celonis worked with partner Rollio to create a generative AI experience to really understand processes. Any users can type their questions about the processes and the chatbot will answer.
