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Celonis Process Management delivers next-level operational excellence
A key innovation announced during Celosphere 24’s opening keynote address was the evolution this year of Celonis Process Management (CPM). Since the acquisition of Symbio in 2023, Celonis has integrated its best-in-class process modeling and management capabilities into the Celonis Process Intelligence Platform. Over the course of the two-day event, several panels and thought leadership sessions focused on how CPM works, what it has to offer, and how to generate the most benefit from it.
Crucially, these sessions homed in on how CPM addresses one particular, significant business challenge, summarized neatly by John Santic, Celonis’ Director of Product Marketing: “We are trying to solve a very expensive and persistent business problem. In the most simple terms, modeled processes are not in harmony with executed processes.”
For too many organizations there’s a gap – a wide, costly gap – between ideal processes and actual processes. But it’s a gap that can now be closed, thanks to the powerful combination of process management and process mining (with a little help from AI).
The problem to overcome
Before digging into the CPM solution, it’s worth looking at how Santic and his colleagues explained the cost to businesses when modeled processes don’t align with actual processes, and how this can happen. A gap between theory and reality can form for a variety of reasons, most commonly because:
Businesses have outdated and inaccessible process models that haven’t been kept aligned with rapidly changing market demands, conditions, or trading requirements.
They lack centralized, broad-based access to how processes should run (people don’t know what the ‘ideal’ processes are).
They lack process insights to measure performance against “should-be” models.
These are easy situations to fall into, but if unaddressed can cause significant challenges for businesses, including:
Reduced productivity: The greater the distance between ideal and actual process, the less effective and efficient that process is.
Compliance issues: Adhering to ideal processes, shaped to the business rules and the regulatory landscape, armors organizations against compliance risks – like GDPR breaches, payments without approvals, or unchecked customer credit.
Increased costs: Divergence from the ideal process typically generates greater demand on resources than necessary – in time, money, and even headcount.
Compromised customer experience: If teams either don’t follow or are unaware of the model processes, their sub-par performance (in whichever department they’re in) can cascade all the way through to customers. Be it slower service, lower quality standards, or diminished customer understanding – customer satisfaction is compromised (very often right alongside employee satisfaction).
Read: Using business process management to transform your business
CPM and Process Mining: A perfect union
The Celonis Process Intelligence platform has the power to close that gap between ideal and actual processes.
“This is thanks to two worlds coming together in perfect union,” said Tom Thaler, Principal Product Manager for Celonis Process Management. “The world of business process management (BPM) and the world of process mining.”
BPM and process mining are traditionally separate domains in terms of both data and organizational culture and structure. One aligns operations with strategy, while the other extracts value from process execution data. But these separate disciplines prevent businesses benefitting from a valuable symbiosis.
“The secret,” Thaler continued, “is that these two disciplines need to come together in technological and organizational harmony, and live in the same integrated home or platform.”
That integrated home is the Celonis Process Intelligence Platform. Celonis Process Intelligence provides a unique class of data and business context which is the key to improving processes across systems, departments, and organizations. This intelligence is unique as it spans multiple systems, is enriched with deep business knowledge, and it enables effective enterprise AI, intelligent orchestration, and next-gen cloud applications.
Celonis Process Management enables users to visualize their actual ‘as is’ processes, to design new ideal process models, share process best practices enterprise-wide from a central repository, and measure performance against the ideal in real time. And that’s just for starters. CPM ensures business processes are consistently aligned with and measured against ideal practices that support strategic goals. It provides the ideal foundation for business transformations.
Celonis Process Management (CPM) solutions
Over the different sessions, the Celonis team detailed how the three main CPM solutions interact to optimize customers’ process management.
Process Designer: This provides modeling and documentation capabilities that enable customers to create a full enterprise map of their organization at every level – from setting strategy through to org charts, roles, responsibilities, and enterprise architecture. AI helping users begin their process designs if required increases the speed at which processes can be modeled.
Process Navigator: This is a centralized, interactive consolidation layer for Process Designer from which customers’ entire organizational process knowledge can be accessed and actioned by users across the business. Process Navigator offers a personalized experience for each user, whatever their level of technical knowledge, making it easy to find and act on process information, to manage change, and to optimize operations. Process Cockpit is the integration point between the process insights from Celonis and process management. Here is where the new Process Journey View and your process model view come to life with live operational insights from Celonis to guide all operational users.
Process Adherence Manager: This is where process models and mining come together, where users can track process performance and drive adherence to the ideal operational state – defined by their business’s process models. The Process Adherence Manager gives business leaders a closed loop to discover where, when, and why deviations from ideal processes occur, and then suggests how they can be addressed.
With these tools CPM accelerates the design of your business landscape from strategy to hard process models and overall speed to value alongside. Generative AI not only supports users in the process model design, but also ensures these ideal processes stay up to date – and in lock step with business strategy. In addition, by providing a centralized platform, easily accessed by all stakeholders, the CPM drives enterprise-wide enablement and adoption of your ideal operating model. In other words, it makes sure everyone knows how processes should run.
Overall, the platform delivers operational insights where it matters most, in order to foster a culture of operational excellence and continuous improvement. With its process mining counterpart and flexing considerable AI muscle, the platform empowers your people, aligns your technology, and optimizes your processes.
And it works. Karl Storz, a global manufacturer and distributor of endoscopes, medical instruments, and devices, uses Celonis Process Management to break down departmental silos and optimize processes in the areas of 02C, P2P, AP, AR, M2S, etc. Previously, limited visibility and inconsistent terminology in manual and digital workflows led to increased effort and communication issues. By merging Process Mining and Process Management on a single platform, Karl Storz has created a holistic one that is actively used by over 1000 users in more than 50 projects.
“The Process Journey view with embedded KPIs and operational information helps us to easily identify potential and bottlenecks across human and digital end-to-end processes and is a huge help in our efforts towards Process Excellence and engaging people in managing change,” said Etienne Kneschke, Executive Director of Global Business Process Management at Karl Storz.
Similarly, as Christian Wittenberg, Head of Architecture at Dutch manufacturer AkzoNobel can attest: “Using Celonis Process Management with Process Adherence Manager is improving how we standardize and run processes by closing the gap between the modeled and executed process. These capabilities are driving greater compliance, cost-effective operations, and will enable a smoother SAP S/4 transformation by more efficiently assessing as-is execution with SAP best practices to inform our gold-standard operating model.”
Klaus Schwind, Director Global Business Process Excellence at Heidelberg Materials, one of the world’s largest integrated manufacturers of building materials and solutions, said: “Our success with Celonis Process Mining was the foundation to expand into Celonis Process Management. This is critical to support us in our upcoming SAP S/4 transformation and drive ongoing operational excellence to reach our strategic goals.”
Read: Process adherence for operational excellence: Closing the gap between theory and practice
CPM Features and Capabilities
During their presentation, Santic and Thaler gave attendees a look at some of CPM’s capabilities, which include:
BPMN Model Import into Process Adherence Manager: Allowing users to introduce Business Process Model and Notation models into the Process Adherence Manager will enable all business processes to be modeled, defined, and optimized transparently and in a uniform language – eliminating waste, accelerating speed to value, and improving compliance.
A new Process Cockpit Journey view: The Process Cockpit Journey view integrates as-is process insights (from process mining) with process models, along with operational views, to help users access, understand, and enhance processes. The new view is designed to make processes even easier to understand – irrespective of users’ technical knowledge – by delivering them process insights within the context of their work.
Enhanced Process Designer experience: Currently in limited availability and rolling out generally in 2025, this will feature elements such as new modeling capabilities, a refreshed UX/UI, and GenAI-based modeling. This new approach is designed to simplify workflows, enhance efficiencies, and drive higher levels of productivity through ease of use. (Available in Q4.)
With CPM, the Celonis Process Intelligence Platform becomes the ideal vehicle for ensuring processes remain aligned with an organization’s strategic goals – even during an era of almost perpetual business transformation. Ideal process models evolve to meet the demands of the current business environment, and the Celonis platform provides the insights, tools, and AI required to keep processes optimized.
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