Celonis detailed another partnership with a customer in a co-creation context — this one targeting functionality intended for the insurance industry — on the final day of its Celosphere customer conference in Munich.
ERGO Group, a Germany-based insurance giant with a global footprint, is a Celonis customer that began using the company’s software in recent years and is ramping up that usage.
As it does so, the company is expanding its alliance with Celonis, as the two firms detailed their plans to integrate insurance industry functionality into Celonis’ core Execution Management System, or EMS.
News of the ERGO relationship came on the heels of Celonis’ disclosure earlier at Celosphere that three companies — BSH Home Appliances, Delphi Technologies, and The LEGO Group — had all supported the development of a new set of apps aimed to help customers drive sustainability outcomes.
Insurance Expertise
Celonis specializes in process mining, execution management, task management, and other software that helps customers gain visibility into how their business is running and then use that insight to fix it.
ERGO Group is an insurer that offers life, property, casualty, and other forms of insurance; its 2021 premiums were 19 billion euros. Celonis is tapping that insurance industry expertise to expand the scope of its product for a massive global industry.
ERGO began working with and testing Celonis software in 2021 and that usage has since expanded so it applies to 28 processes in the 2024 timeframe, and 55 processes by the end of 2025.
Mark Klein, chief digital officer at ERGO and chairman of ERGO Digital Ventures, emphasized the importance of process mining in the strategy he is leading for ERGP, saying that processing mining “is important, not only to identify potential for improvement in today’s economically challenging times, but also to become more resilient overall — and thus to be well-positioned for the future.”
But the companies clearly see great potential in working together on a more strategic basis, to address industry-specific requirements: They said they will work together to optimize Celonis’ EMS for use in the insurance industry.
“The extensive cooperation between both companies is leading to ground-breaking results, which we will also be incorporating into the further development of our software,” said Celonis co-CEO Alex Rinke, who emphasized in a Celosphere interview the importance of engaging proactively with customers in the product development process.
The latest software capabilities from Celonis will be tested at ERGO, internationally, and across all lines of business. ERGO, in turn, has set up its own process mining unit in its ERGO Digital Ventures division, which is gradually making the solution known and rolling it out within the Group.
ERGO uses process mining to make its processes more customer-friendly; for example, by further reducing claim-settlement times. In addition, the technology is intended to open up new use cases for applications that have already been successfully implemented, such as voice, artificial intelligence, or robotics. ERGO said it expects this to yield further optimizations in areas such as customer satisfaction, quality, efficiency, and productivity.
This is another indicator of the evolving nature of the software provider-customer relationship; the importance of directing development at both customer-specific and industry-specific requirements; and the need to treat customers as partners to ensure maximum alignment between technology and business needs. Remaining competitive in the Acceleration Economy requires nothing less.
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