Uniper + Microsoft + Celonis

Uniper, a leading energy provider, is putting digital innovation and AI at the heart of its strategy to meet ambitious sustainability and energy security goals. Discover how a partnership with Microsoft and Celonis is making Enterprise AI work and helping Uniper drive large-scale, automated improvements across end-to-end processes.

Tracking the energy transition with technology

Uniper is an international energy company with activities in more than 40 countries. Its mission: to provide energy that’s not only secure and affordable, but increasingly sustainable. “We want to move from carbon-rich energy production into a greener world,” says Hans Pezold, Uniper’s CIO. “We quite often talk about a real transformation.”

Part of this transformation is Uniper reinventing its ways of working to better serve customers and the planet – including investment in low-carbon alternatives and scaling production of hydrogen projects. “We have to accelerate the energy transition with the use of technology,” says Daniela Bierwirth, Uniper’s SVP Corporate IT & Digital Experience Management.

The need for end-to-end process visibility

However a vision doesn’t become reality overnight. Uniper’s data was causing problems. Though abundant and accessible, the team struggled to make sense of it. Pezold notes: “Quite often, we didn’t know how our data flowed. Data is useless without context because that turns it into insight.”

The path from raw data to actionable insight ran straight through Uniper’s processes. So the company needed greater visibility of its processes to enable more strategic decision-making. Bierwirth notes: “Uniper can’t live up to its full competencies without efficient processes. Living up to our mission statement means optimization and end-to-end ownership is key.”

Uniper x Microsoft x Celonis partnership

Thanks to its partnership with Microsoft and Celonis, Uniper is turning its vision into reality. Here’s how it works. Microsoft contributes its world-renowned capabilities and AI technology stack to ensure Uniper’s data is consolidated in one public cloud and employees have access to AI services. Simultaneously, the Celonis Process Intelligence Platform creates a system-agnostic digital twin of Uniper’s end-to-end processes, providing both operational transparency and the operational context AI needs to succeed.

Agnes Heftberger, CEO, Microsoft Germany & Austria explains: “Taking Celonis' Process Intelligence and the capabilities of Microsoft AI, and then adding to it Uniper's transformative ambition… This is a lighthouse for other companies to follow. To drive AI transformation, not for the sake of technology, but to really do it with a deep, deep focus on business value.”

Driving a more efficient plant maintenance process

Uniper first applied the Celonis Process Intelligence Platform to its power plant maintenance processes. “That was mind-blowing,” remembers Pezold, “ we were able to see all the flows, all the transactions. It was a vision that instantly told us where we needed to fix something.”

This visibility allows Uniper’s teams to predict what’s needed before issues arise. Celonis Process Intelligence is also fed to Microsoft agents, enabling them to work autonomously, order the right parts, and alert the right people. As a result, Uniper can ensure plant parts are ordered correctly, schedules are aligned across plants, and downtime is minimized. Not only does this save employees time, it reduces waste – directly contributing to Uniper’s green goals.

The success of that first use case caught all the right attention. “People from all the different board areas are approaching us and want to be part of the game,” says Bierwirth. “They have realized that they don't need a deep technological background to actually understand their processes and that is great because Process Intelligence is the basis to successfully deploy AI.”

Towards an AI-driven future with Microsoft and Celonis

After Uniper’s success in plant maintenance, the company has:

• Scaled Celonis across 27 processes
• Connected eight source systems to its Process Intelligence Graph
• Empowered 350 users with access to the Celonis platform

The energy giant is now set to scale its use of AI. “The synergies between Microsoft AI and Celonis really unlock a new enterprise capability,” says Heftberger. “We have deep insights through Process Intelligence, and we have Microsoft AI, in this case, Microsoft Copilot Studio, turning these insights into actions or more specifically into agents that act on our behalf. Together that creates AI that doesn’t just bring answers, but really drives impact.”