Celonis Process Mining Plays an Essential Role in Navantia’s Digital Transformation

Currently, most companies face ongoing difficulty in their digital processes, due to only having visual or analytical data on their business records. Celonis on the upper hand creates a compelling opportunity to analyze and improve business processes through process mining technology.

Spanish shipbuilding company Navantia has re-immersed themselves through an intensive process of transformation aimed at sustaining the company for the 21st-century market. This initiative covers all areas of the company, where technological innovation and digitalization has proven to be an essential vector of change.

It is in the area of technology and digitalization where Navantia has aligned with CONVISTA, applying the solution for business transformation powered by Celonis Process Mining.

WHY CELONIS?

The key to digital transformation does not solely lie in the implementation of innovative solutions, where Celonis fits in, but also in the transformation of processes and people: a more agile organization, management style, and culture. In addition, improving management to create a greater fusion between internal and external talents are essential to succeed as well.

Navantia´s Technology division coordinates the areas of R&D and digital technologies, channeling the company towards the Shipyard 4.0. Their actions seek the best international references in the field of shipbuilding and other industries, creating a foundation for innovation. In the digital age of transformation, operational efficiency gives scope for a clear competitive advantage. Thanks to Celonis, the analysis and diagnosis of our processes are easier and the implementation for improvements has become much more effective. Emilio Días Ramírez, Head of Department of Corporate Systems and Support (DTI) NAVANTIA (Grupo SEPI) has quoted:

"Navantia intuited what the initial problems were, but had difficulties to clearly identify its root causes. The company noticed problems in its processes that had to be resolved in order to achieve better control of their actions."

Celonis Process Mining uses current information in IT systems to discover processes in a company, with the aim to provide total transparency of its execution and to measure the analytical capacities based on facts. This is easily implemented and used with data from all key source systems, whether it be with SAP or without SAP.

THE PROJECT

The first question that Navantia had to respond to before implementing Celonis was: What processes are crucial to the success of the company? It was decided that implementing Purchases, Accounts Payable and Product Definition and Development (production area) were most in need.

From the systems department, a transversal vision of the whole company was provided, continuously reviewing the implemented procedures, thanks to the knowledge gained from the technology, the market, and crucial areas identified for improvement. One of the key focus areas was in the re-work, particularly changes in purchase orders within the purchasing process. With the clarity provided by Celonis, Navantia discovered that manual changes occurred in a high percentage of cases. The main causes varied and were addressed one by one. After the project was successfully executed, all questions about the root causes of the problems were answered.

Within Accounts Payable, the SAP ECC standard was combined with the SAP VIM module, which allowed not only to see if the invoices were blocked, published or authorized, but also the problems in the approval stages. Thanks to the new added value of PI´s compliance function, the user can obtain a comparison between the theoretical and the actual process, as well as the visualization of the main causes of delays and deviations. In addition, Celonis can transform procurement into a driver for business success.

The verification of compliance is another of the mainstays of the project that allowed Navantia to see the company as processes, not just as the simple registration of transactions. Recognizing and working on processes allowed Navantia to grow as an organization: allowing the execution of controls and audits, the vision of its circuits, the projection and definition of budgets, and the implementation of policies in the authorization levels, among many other factors that contributed to the company’s success in implementing processes.

TEAMWORK

The ICT department in Navantia works closely with the company’s business development, operating in unison to streamline and simplify the crucially-mentioned processes to distribute the information to the entire organization, in the most efficient way possible. The Systems division of Navantia has extensive experience in the design, development, production and integration of Combat systems, Fire control Systems etc. With them, a transversal vision of the whole company is provided, continuously reviewing the implemented procedures, thanks to the technology and market research, to identify necessary areas of improvement. The collaboration between Navantia and CONVISTA, allowed us to gain dominance in the area of knowledge and business experience through Navantia´s internal team with the in-depth knowledge of the solution through Celonis, on the part of the CONVISTA team.

NEXT STEPS

Navantia assumes their main challenges for the future is to maintain constant growth, the adoption of continuous improvement plans and reach the full satisfaction of their customers. Navantia continues to underpin its leadership in the industry and the result in many divisions of the company will be to incorporate process mining and advanced concepts of AI (Artificial Intelligence) and Process Automation with RPA (Robotic Process Automation) supported by the tools provided by Celonis and the value from a specialist partner such as CONVISTA.

Joan Manel Guzmán Cañas

Sales Manager at CONVISTA Consulting, Spain