Hot Topics at Celosphere Live: 6 Key Takeaways for Process Professionals

It all started with a simple, yet powerful idea. As the coronavirus crisis threatens the health and jobs of millions of people, companies are challenged to not only ensure their employees’ safety but also to protect their business.

They need to turn those challenges into opportunities. That’s how Celosphere Live, the world’s largest Process Excellence event, was born. 

Within a few weeks, an in-person event envisioned to welcome 2,000 attendees in Munich turned into Celonis’ first-ever virtual Process Excellence marathon with more than 18,000 registrants.  

Process enthusiasts from all over the world — the US, Germany, the UK, France, India, South Africa, even Japan — came together to share ideas and solutions to today’s biggest business challenges. 

In 73 hours of inspiring customer sessions, product workshops and Q&A’s, attendees came away with tons of new ideas, best practices, and actionable insights: Like how Deutsche Telekom saved $44 Million annually in cash discounts and how Avnet supports healthcare and medical customers in 125 countries by ensuring supply chain reliability in the turbulent times of COVID-19. 

To give you a quick recap, we distilled the top 6 lessons from Celosphere Live for achieving operational excellence.

1. It’s time to embrace a whole new way of working

In a time of constant change, businesses must be resilient and agile in steering their processes. Existing BI and AI tools, however, fall short in offering the insights needed to make data-driven business decisions. Lacking real-time visibility, executives often make half-blind decisions based on latent data while employees toil away on manual tasks in siloed departments.

Celonis changes that. 

In his opening keynote at Celosphere Live, Celonis’ Co-Founder and CEO Alex Rinke announced the next generation of AI-driven apps enabling a whole new way of working. Celonis’ Operational Apps, available now for Accounts Payable and Materials Management for Supply Chain, combine Celonis’ market-leading Process Mining engine with business context, AI, and automation to help you achieve your business goals. Executives can now align their organization's priorities on every business level, empowered by real-time data that enables them to make better decisions — and deliver the outcomes they care about most. Read the blog from Hala Zeine, our Chief Product Officer, to learn more about how Celonis’ Operational Apps put AI to work.

Sessions you should watch:

• Catch the demos of the AP Operational App and Materials Management for Supply Chain App to see them in action.

• Watch Martin Klenk’s keynote, Celonis Co-founder and CTO, on how to build your own Operational board in less than 45 minutes.

• Watch the product workshop on Process Automation to translate process insights into direct action by using automation and next-best-action recommendations.

2. Cash preservation and supply chain reliability are critical during COVID-19

As the COVID-19 pandemic impacts every part of our daily lives, businesses worldwide are grappling with the effects of the coronavirus crisis, too. While some needed to ramp up their production at record pace (e.g. for hygienic products or medical devices), many others are fighting with a dramatic drop in demand. In both scenarios, companies urgently need to understand the impact of COVID-19 on their business operations in order to react accordingly. At Celosphere Live, CEO Alex Rinke presented the COVID-19 Customer Care Program, containing three purpose-built apps that help with two of the most critical challenges companies face due to COVID-19, Cash Preservation (in Accounts Payable and Accounts Receivable) and Supply Chain Reliability. Within two weeks, they've been adopted by 125 companies, among them Reckitt Benckiser, ABB and Colorcon. “It’s really amazing how our customers are using our technology to fight the impact of this pandemic”, said Rinke. To name just a few examples: Avnet uses the app to keep their supply chain of critical components for medical devices up and running. ABB is leveraging Celonis to determine purchases at risk and to identify alternative suppliers. Reckitt Benckiser monitors their cash flow and identifies bottlenecks in sales orders and Accounts Payables.

Sessions you should watch:

• Watch the Keynote from Alex Rinke to hear how companies use Celonis in times of COVID-19.

• Watch AVNET’s session to see how they are leveraging Celonis to instantly react on specific confirmation dates changes from suppliers of particular materials in the world.

3. Real-time data connectivity changes the Process Mining game

Data is key to improving your processes and operations. But no matter how many BI tools and KPI dashboards you’re using, they all have fallen short in delivering real-time business insights. The problem is, you’re already behind if you’re making decisions off of old data. 

By extracting data from sources systems in real-time — Celonis enables businesses to gain a huge competitive advantage by uncovering process bottlenecks faster and turning those insights into action. Porsche, for instance, is using machine sensors to monitor their assembly lines in real-time, identify rework activities, and quickly catch errors.

Now, Celonis has taken their data connectivity abilities to a whole new level. “As of today, our technology enables real-time SAP and Salesforce data extraction. You will see changes made to an invoice or delivery in SAP showing up in Celonis in less than a minute,” says Gunther Rameseder, VP of Solution Engineering.

Sessions you should watch:

• Watch the technology keynote from Celonis Co-founder and CTO Martin Klenk to learn about the Celonis’ capabilities that enable you to connect to any data sources in real-time, discover friction through AI, and enhance processes with automation, ML, and other advanced technologies.

• Catch the session on real-time data feeds to learn how Celonis makes it easy to extract and transform your business data from cloud and on-premises systems — no coding required.

4. Companies need to focus on getting change management right

For an organization to thrive, change is key. Unfortunately, most change initiatives are just not successful. Shockingly, 70% of change programs “fail to achieve their goals, largely due to employee resistance and lack of management support,” according to consulting firm McKinsey. So it’s no surprise that at Celosphere Live, many discussions and Q&A’s centered on questions about change management and adoption of Process Mining. 

Aggregated from diverse customer sessions and Q&A’s, here are our five tips for successful change management.

1. Start with a clear vision: To make Process Mining work, you need to focus on one question first: What is the business problem you want to solve? “Start with a clear understanding of your overarching vision and business targets”, says Gunther Rameseder, Vice President Solution Engineering at Celonis. 

2. Leverage your resources: Implementing Process Mining can seem (just like any other new technology) overwhelming. Take it step by step. Rather than rolling out Process Mining in 50 different processes at once, start with your ongoing initiatives and core business processes first. “Don’t lose focus by going too broad too early”, says Christian Buhrmann, Director Bosch Management Consulting. Bosch started their Process Mining journey by building first data models for specific use cases, holding early root-cause workshops and spreading success stories to build momentum for a broader implementation.

3. Involve the right people: Make sure to get not only executives and project managers but your end-users on board, too. “At the end of the day, you want to make their lives easier and help them achieve their targets”, says Rameseder. Select power users, get their input, and make them part of the project.

4. Spread the word: Align your people behind your initiative. “A good communication and training plan is key. People tend to cling to the systems they know”, says Nikki Spillers, Vice President of Global Business Services for Chart Industries.

5. Celebrate your successes: “Acknowledging the efforts of your employees is really key”, says Bastian Nominacher, Co-founder and Co-CEO at Celonis. Share success stories internally, in newsletters, slack groups, during roadshows at a regular cadence with the executive management. 

Sessions you should watch:

• Watch the session from AVNET to learn how they implemented Celonis in their Purchase-to-Pay process to gain understanding of their early deliveries and have a positive impact on their working capital.

• Watch the session from Bosch to learn how they achieved a successful rollout and how Celonis supports Product Owners and Operation Managers in the new unit of Bosch Global Business Services.

5. We can all learn from successful enterprise-wise rollouts 

Ramping up a software solution to a global enterprise level is pretty complex, no doubt. At Celosphere Live, companies like Bosch, ABB, and Uber shared their best practices on how to roll out Process Mining across departmental silos and country borders. Deutsche Telekom, for instance, implemented over 150 use cases across all relevant business units and drove adoption of over 1,500 Celonis users. “We have people from ICS [Deutsche Telekom’s Internal Control System], Audit, Finance, Controlling, and Technology coming together to discuss end-to-end process improvements using the Celonis technology,” says Peter Tasev, SVP Procure-to-Pay, Deutsche Telekom Services Europe. Their key to success? They focused on a clear goal (establishing continuous process improvement across the organization), avoided common adoption pitfalls, spread awareness through the organization, identified Process Mining champions, and built a Center of Excellence to drive and monitor adoption.

Sessions you should watch:

• Learn from Deutsche Telekom how they implemented over 150 use cases with end-to-end KPI reporting and drove adoption of over 1,500 Celonis users within their organization across all relevant business units.

• Watch the session from Reckitt Benckiser and see how they simultaneously deployed Process Mining in five processes within two months to support the stabilization of SAP and drive insight into process improvement areas.

• Catch the session from ABB and learn how they successfully rolled out Celonis at a global scale - from finance to manufacturing to IT management - and achieved a 360° process view.

• See how Uber leverages Process Mining to reduce friction in their customer processes to drive efficiencies and customer satisfaction across their global business.

6. Companies are creating digital twins to mirror their processes

As market pressures force businesses to find new ways to maximize efficiencies — while still increasing customer satisfaction — many companies are exploring the idea of creating “digital twins” of their processes to help them drive improvements. A digital twin of an organization (DTO) enables you to analyze and optimize your product, service or process in a digital instance so you can replicate what works, or address issues before they turn into real-world problems. No time wasted in manual trial-and-error modes. At Celosphere, we were taking digital twins one step further — by applying the concept to the entire organization. “If we put a rover on Mars, we only have one shot. So, we build a digital twin — a simulation — of Mars and the rover to know when it lands in the future, it will work,” says Alex Rinke. If we can build a digital twin for Mars, why not build it for an entire company? An inspiring example is Lufthansa Cityline. They implemented a digital twin of their organization and used AI to monitor and steer their ground operations processes in real-time. AI recognized each activity and measured efficiency — from baggage loading and fueling to passenger boarding. Now, they can predict delays in real-time, and the digital twin's accuracy increases overtime as more data refines the AI model. With these new insights Luftshana saw the opportunity to optimize their on-time departure. By adapting their boarding processes, Lufthansa operated 300,000 minutes more punctually in 2019 compared to 2018 and increased their on-time departure by 17%.

Sessions you should watch:

• Watch the Introduction to Process Mining session to learn more about how to create a digital twin.

• Watch the session from Lufthansa CityLine to learn how they used Celonis to build a digital twin of their organization, allowing them to make measured improvements to increase punctuality for customers and enhance internal efficiency.

• Catch the session from ABB, who are using an organizational digital twin to future proof their business.

How you can relive Celosphere Live

With that said, there’s only one thing left to say…Thank you for joining Celosphere Live and making it such an incredible event! Thank you for all the great questions and comments, and thank you for being with us on the journey to a frictionless world. If you missed it or want to dive deeper into the latest trends in Process Mining, watch the replays of customer sessions, product workshops, and keynotes here.

Janine Gürtler

Senior Content Marketing Writer