Migration and more: IT leaders’ proven strategies for continuous enterprise modernization

Continuous modernization is a hallmark of a successful enterprise. But IT teams face heavy pressure to deliver demonstrable ROI from enterprise transformation, and to bring the rest of the organization onboard with their vision and change.

At Celosphere 2025, we passed the mic to enterprise transformation leaders who are deep into modernization journeys with the Celonis Platform. Alan Bott is Controller at The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints overseeing an Oracle transformation that began nearly four years ago and is scheduled for completion in 2030. Joining Bott was a member from the Chief Information and Digital Officer’s team at a multinational food and beverage company, which is delivering an ERP implementation in 183 countries.

For both organizations these are lengthy, complex projects. Which means Bott and his fellow panelist are well versed in best practices for system migrations, process optimization, app consolidation, and more. They shared many pearls of wisdom with the Celosphere crowd, including success stories, goals, pain points, and value frameworks that can help guide your own enterprise modernization.

Fueling your company’s ambition when modernizing

IT teams sometimes have their hands forced when it comes to system transformation. The classic example being legacy systems reaching end of life or vendor support. But how can companies ensure their enterprise modernization initiatives are driven by their own ambitions and needs?

For the food and beverage company, it’s about finding opportunity within the challenge of their ERP migration. “We’re a young company but with a legacy of growth and acquisition,” the panelist explained to the audience. “We need to migrate our full landscape but also accelerate and propel into the future of the AI enterprise. So while our journey is driven by a [vendor] timeline, centered around a tech upgrade, it’s given us a great opportunity to establish the right partnership with an IT tech provider as well as a system integrator, building a strategic journey together.”

When migration is a given, they recommend starting with a well-designed process with well-governed and managed data. Then look at the end-to-end process flow to make your entire ecosystem of processes and data run more efficiently.

How Celonis supports enterprise modernization own your own terms

Both organizations are using Celonis to support their modernization journeys.

The Celonis Platform has given the food and beverage company a comprehensive view of how its current processes run: a measurable starting point for modernization. This shared understanding of business operations has helped establish greater connectivity across its enterprise landscape, powering its busy year ahead as they prepare to accelerate activation and the ERP transformation.

Similarly, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has been using the platform to support its ERP implementation, transitioning from an on-premise solution to Oracle Cloud. Notably, Bott and his team have a unique advantage in the form of Celonis’ Oracle Value Scanner. This purpose-built solution allows Bott and his team to take a current process and get a baseline understanding of where operations are efficient, inefficient, automated, and not automated. Bott and his team are the first to use the Oracle Value Scanner for PeopleSoft, blazing the trail for other companies.

Once The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has implemented its Oracle ERP migration, it’s going to compare how the new process is performing to the old. Bott shared how Celonis enables the organization to evaluate whether they’ve accomplished their intended objectives, with KPIs that measure how well the new process is working. But he also explained that it’s important for the organization to “get bang for our buck” quickly, so Celonis has helped them explore use cases including duplicate payments, missed discounts, early payments, and late payments where they can achieve rapid improvements.

It’s not just about connecting the Celonis Platform with an organization’s tool ecosystem and enterprise architecture, though. The food and beverage company representative explained how: “The success of the journey depends on adoption. ROI comes from creating a workforce that’s able to manage the processes.” So they are building a strong foundation of governance by transferring, modeling, and documenting the company’s end-to-end processes in the Celonis Platform. “Celonis is building our internal capability and digital adoption,” they said. “We’re setting up a center of excellence (CoE), focused on finding the right balance between in-house skills and leveraging the partner ecosystem.”

The company’s partnership with Celonis has helped them avoid falling “into the trap of viewing Celonis as just another IT tool,” they said. “ROI won’t come that way. We’re committed to joint value.”

Using enterprise AI as part of modernization efforts

Both panelists also discussed how all companies need to approach AI strategically.

Bott explained how The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints intends to use AI to optimize accounting processes during their ERP implementation. In addition to identifying patterns through fluctuation analysis, they plan to use GenAI to explain any anomalies in their ledgers. “Our goal is to move from a monthly manual process to a daily, automated one, so we’re not scrambling to make sure we’ve got good data at the end of the month,” Bott explained. “Moving from manual to automated will mean we’re identifying issues at a much greater scale and quality.”

At the food and beverage company, they have learned that: “Pilot use cases leave you with a large total cost of ownership to justify with ROI. To transition into enterprise AI, you need your house in order. That starts with optimizing processes and applying AI to identify the value to go after that will help capture the hearts and minds you need to drive your efforts.”

Maintaining momentum for continuous enterprise modernization

The panel wrapped up by discussing how modernization never really stops. “The only way that you can generate investment as an IT organization is by bringing operating costs down so you can continue innovating,” the food and beverage company team member explained. “Continue modernizing your landscape to build a savvy digital enterprise.”

They stressed the importance of finding the right partners and making the right sourcing decisions “because what you build today is going to let you embrace whatever comes in the future”. They acknowledged that it’s a lot of work, but if you have the right data foundation and leadership in place, you’ll be positioned to grow your investment.

For The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Bott described how continuous improvement and process monitoring help them to be better stewards of their resources. “We’d like to empower our employees to be able to do more so we’re using the Church’s funds as judiciously as possible,” he explained. “You have to have the best teams and the best partners. We believe we’ve got that, and we’re learning how to communicate better to break down silos.”

Find out more best practices for modernizing your enterprise with confidence – and why it all hinges on adaptable, observable, free processes.

Editor’s Note: The views expressed by Alan Bott are his own and not necessarily those of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.