From insight to impact: Operationalizing AI with process intelligence at Celonis Garage

Enterprises today are under immense pressure to deliver a tangible return on AI (RoAI), yet many initiatives stall because they lack a shared understanding of how the business actually runs. Standard business intelligence tools and siloed systems often provide only "whispers" of the truth, leaving leaders to make critical decisions based on incomplete or static data.

At Celonis Garage, our mission is to turn these whispers into a common language for understanding and improving business operations. Based in Bengaluru, our global innovation hub operates with the agility of a startup to identify, validate, and scale solutions that make Enterprise AI work where it matters most: in the heart of your processes.

The following sections highlight our most recent noteworthy innovation stories that demonstrate how we are bridging this gap between high-level strategy and ground-truth execution.

Removing risk through scenario simulation

One of our flagship innovations, Scenario Simulation, introduces a sandbox environment that removes the risk from real-world process change. Traditionally, process transformation has been a "whack-a-mole" strategy where fixing one micro-process might inadvertently throw another out of balance.

Through Scenario Simulation, people can design process changes using natural language. The system then generates a process blueprint grounded in historical data, using advanced AI models to simulate expected outcomes. This delivers predicted KPI impact, confidence indicators, and clear explanations before a single change is executed. We are currently co-innovating with our internal Lead-to-Opportunity team on an end-to-end version—truly drinking our own champagne—to ensure these simulations deliver real-world business impact.

Bridging research and real-world impact

Innovation is a team sport, and our partnership with academic institutions is vital for pushing the boundaries of what is possible in process intelligence. In August 2025, we officially launched the Celonis x IIITA Research Centre on the IIIT Allahabad campus. Our joint work focuses on moving beyond black-box machine learning toward causal, explainable insights.

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From left to right: Dr. Monika Gupta, Tarun Shiva (VP Celonis India COE & APAC Services) and Poornima Dhall (Lead Partner Manager Academic Alliance APAC, Celonis) at the Celonis x IIITA Research Centre on the IIIT Allahabad campus

Our first project addressed Explainable Concept Drift Detection, a novel solution to predict and manage KPI shifts by understanding the underlying process changes driving them. Building on this, we recently had a research paper titled, "Process Intelligence Engine: Enhancing Order-to-Cash (O2C) Efficiency using Causal ML and xAI," accepted at LION 2026 in Milan. This work introduces a process-aware decision intelligence framework that replaces opaque models with predictive upstream decisioning and risk-aware automation directly embedded into Order-to-Cash workflows.

"India is a hotbed for technology innovation, and the depth of talent here is truly remarkable. I’m excited to work with visionary startups and our ecosystem to cultivate a dynamic environment where collaboration fuels the next wave of process intelligence advancements." – Sowmya Kubendran has joined Celonis as the VP, Head of Celonis Garage

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Dr. Monika Gupta delivers a session on transforming business processes using AI and process intelligence at Delhi Technological University.

Strategic advantage through real-time intelligence

To maintain a competitive edge, teams need actionable insights, not static reports. The Garage has developed a Compass - competitive agent designed to empower our Go-To-Market and account teams with real-time, AI-driven strategic advantage.

The agent supports teams with contextual, data-driven intelligence which will be integrated directly into sales and strategy workflows. By expanding the knowledge base with both internal and external intelligence sources, we are ensuring that our teams can move from information to intelligent action instantly.

The future of the composable, AI-driven enterprise

The enterprise of the future is AI-driven and composable. It requires a digital twin of business operations that is system-agnostic, dynamic, and without bias. At Celonis Garage, we are dedicated to building this foundation, ensuring that people—and technologies—have the ground truth they need to succeed.

By focusing on strategic problem statements and rapid value realization, we are moving past "pilot purgatory" and industrializing Enterprise AI. When processes work, the enterprise works.