MOL Group + Celonis

Context: Supporting a strategy for tomorrow

MOL Group is a leading integrated Central Eastern European oil and gas corporation, operating in 30 countries and employing 25,000 people. And they have a vision. With their Shape Tomorrow strategy they’re striving for a smart energy transition to deliver solutions fit for tomorrow, while making their region more sustainable, self-sufficient, and competitive.

Celonis has supported this vision since process mining was first introduced to MOL Group's Downstream division in 2019. From initial use cases in O2C, Procure-to-Pay (P2P), and Plant Maintenance, Celonis deployment has expanded across the division, with implementation of object-centric process mining (OCPM) and AI experimentation among the latest developments.

Challenge: Zero visibility of a complex value chain

The Downstream division refines crude oil into fuels, chemicals, and polymers for household, industrial, and transport use, before selling and distributing them. With three refineries, 40 depots for redistribution, 75,000 customers, and over one million annual orders, B2B Sales within the division is a highly complex and resource-intensive area. Products subject to excise tax must be sold to operating companies within individual countries before being sold on to the end customer. Additionally, extra administrative work around transport requirements is often required if products are flammable or explosive.

MOL Group believed there was room for improvement in their complex O2C process, but they couldn’t see the whole picture. Szabolcs Szabo, SVP for Value Chain Management, Downstream, was leading the quest for process improvement. Speaking at Celosphere 2025, where the MOL Group team was out in full force, he explained, “We were relying on the very classic Lean methodology – all these post-its and endless workshops. They were good, don't get me wrong. But we were not seeing the numbers. We were working with test populations and hoping that we get it right.”

Solution: From curiosity to clarity with process mining

By deploying process mining, MOL Group were able to see – for the first time – the complete O2C picture, across all product lines, orders, and customers.

By connecting Celonis with their ERP system, MOL Group accessed two years’ of order data (around 4.5 million records) which revealed thousands of variants in the O2C process. They had previously estimated their perfect order ratio – also known as First Time Quality (FTQ) – to be around 92%. Process mining revealed the true FTQ figure to be lower than 50%.

Szabo was surprised to discover MOL Group’s high-value customers weren’t the ones requiring a lot of effort, because established electronic data interfaces (EDIs) meant they could order directly into the ERP system. It was the long-tail of low-value customers that were consuming all the effort, with non-standardized processes and endless special requests. Celonis also revealed multiple loops and rework steps in the O2C process, as well as frequent manual interventions in workflows that were supposed to be automated.

With real-time visibility of the O2C process, MOL Group trained multiple team members on Celonis and began a targeted approach of regular FTQ reporting and issue resolution. They tackled one bottleneck at a time, often using Celonis Action Flows for intelligent automation.

Over three years the FTQ rose from less than 50% to around 70% – a relative increase of at least 40% – and it’s still improving. As Szabo explains, “The processes started becoming more transparent and we started having data-driven improvements. I could see the symptom, I could act, and then I could see, for example, the perfect order ratio increasing. So it gave us data-based feedback on what we were doing.”

FTQ wasn’t the only needle to move. Celonis, and more specifically task mining, was deployed in the back-office customer care department that deals with order processing. Between 2021 and 2024, the department saw a 25% increase in efficiency. In parallel, Celonis surfaced new metrics such as Order Confirmation Lead Time that could be used to measure and improve performance.

In 2025, MOL Group adopted OCPM. This connects O2C with other processes like Procurement and Inventory Management creating a true digital twin of Downstream operations. The real-time, end-to-end view provided by OCPM enables a greater understanding of interdependencies across the division, and reveals additional improvement opportunities at the intersection of these business-critical processes.

Vision: Unlocking new value every day

Some of MOL Group’s future plans involve building on the success they’ve already had with Celonis. They’ve committed to increasing efficiency by a further 25% in the customer care department over the next five years.

Having already deployed process mining to Accounts Payable (AP) and logistics, they’ll also be expanding the use of Celonis into other areas, and OCPM will be instrumental in providing the end-to-end connectivity required to drive improvements across business operations. MOL Group will also increase deployment of AI for smarter process automation, powered by Celonis.

Above all, MOL Group will continue to use Celonis to create value through data-driven improvement. Szabo believes one of the greatest powers of Celonis is expressing everything in value terms. The platform can tell him, for example, how much he can free up in working capital if he reduces the O2C process by a single day. As Szabo explains, “We unlock new value every day, leveraging process mining, task mining, and AI to turn potential into measurable results.”