Deutsche Telekom’s process innovation award win sets a new benchmark for procurement excellence

The Procurement Success Awards, presented at the annual Procurement Success Summit, are a celebration of impactful procurement initiatives and best practices. Both the event and the awards are an opportunity to inspire innovation, align industry benchmarks, and drive competitiveness among procurement professionals.

At the 2024 summit in Shanghai, long-time Celonis customer Deutsche Telekom won the Process Innovation Award, which recognizes process innovation within the procurement workflow. It rewards procurement teams that have implemented new systems or processes to optimize procurement management.

How Deutsche Telekom is transforming Procurement

Innovation in Deutsche Telekom’s procurement operation forms part of a comprehensive digital transformation initiative that began back in 2010. It has included process standardization as well as the implementation of technologies like Robotic Process Automaton (RPA), artificial intelligence (AI), and advanced analytics. With a Shared Services Center that combines the finance, reporting, procurement and HR functions under one roof, Deutsche Telekom’s aim was to digitalize the end-to-end value chain.

As part of this transformation, the Celonis Process Intelligence Platform is used to connect data from more than ten source systems, including SAP Ariba and Salesforce. It provides unprecedented visibility into various process flows, including Procure-to-Pay, and enables those processes to be optimized. The transformation sets a new standard for operational excellence and shows how strategic technology implementation can drive significant value across the organization.

The results in procurement specifically are impressive, and all surpass industry benchmarks:  

Unprecedented automation 

Automation of their procurement processes has resulted in 100% electronic purchase orders and 92% no-touch invoice processing. Increasing the no-touch rate has freed up capacity for tactical sourcing, resulting in savings of €12 million. It has also enabled Deutsche Telekom to expand its services without increasing headcount. More efficient processes mean purchase orders are now right-first-time in over 90% of cases.

Remarkable on-time payment rates 

In the past, blocked payments prevented Deutsche Telekom from maximizing cash discounts. Now, Celonis automatically prioritizes invoices to drive on-time payments. With the help of real-time alerts and automated process steps, Deutsche Telekom has achieved a remarkable on-time payment rate of over 96%.

A culture of innovation 

Alongside its push for process automation, Deutsche Telekom has cultivated a culture of innovation, upskilling its workforce – which includes 92,000 users across multiple countries – to enable effective application of AI and analytics. A global approach, combined with local expertise, ensures consistent, high-quality Procure-to-Pay services.

A new benchmark for procurement excellence

So what did the Procurement Success Awards judging panel of illustrious procurement leaders say about Deutsche Telekom's transformation? Safe to say their feedback was glowing:

"Deutsche Telekom AG's procurement team has exemplified groundbreaking innovation in process transformation. Their case impressively illustrates a strategic procurement transformation, achieving significant cost savings, reduced lead times, and optimized KPI performance, which greatly enhances campaign effectiveness and strengthens vendor relationships. Well done on setting a new benchmark for procurement excellence!”

Despite this award-winning success, Deutsche Telekom continues to look for new opportunities for process improvement. For instance, the company recently took part in our one-day AI Lab event. These events encourage teams to compete to create functional prototypes that use Celonis process insights and AI capabilities (such as Process Copilots, Annotation Builder, and the ML Workbench) to solve their most pressing business challenges.

The Deutsche Telekom team used our Process Copilot to simplify the Accounts Payable process. Using natural language queries it was able to significantly reduce the time and resources required to handle each invoice.

How Celonis helps optimize procurement processes 

It’s not just Deutsche Telekom: over 620 of the world’s best performing procurement departments run on Celonis. By using the Process Intelligence Platform to centralize data across source systems, intelligently optimize procurement processes, and streamline execution, they’re able to mitigate supply risks, maximize purchasing power, and cut costs.

Here are just three ways Celonis can help your business optimize its procurement processes:

1. Control spend: Improve contract usage by identifying requisitions without contracts and automatically applying the appropriate contract to ensure the best terms and prices. Read how Celonis helps one of the leading producers of cane sugar in the U.S. connect procurement, AP and operations to save millions by making better use of cash discounts.

2. Increase efficiency: Identify and eliminate unnecessary manual touches such as repetitive price changes and contract reference updates, while improving first-time-right rates. See how an integrated academic health system uses Celonis to increase automation and reduce rework to significantly improve requisition-to-approval turnaround times.

3. Strengthen supplier reliability: Operate with insight into suppliers’ true performance and use intelligent recommendations to correct lead times and improve supplier performance. Discover how a global technology company specializing in the energy industry improves productivity by automatically reminding suppliers to submit comprehensive shipping data.

These procurement use cases can all be accelerated through Celonis innovations like AgentC, a suite of AI agent tools, integrations, and partnerships that enables our community to develop AI assistants in the leading AI agent platforms.These agents are powered by Celonis Process Intelligence, so they understand how the business runs and how to make it run better.

A global consumer goods company, for example, built an AI agent in a partner platform to extract payment terms from PDF contracts, compare them to terms in their master data, PO, and invoices, and then recommend actions to Accounts Payable clerks to address inconsistencies.

And it’s not just within procurement where Celonis can make a real difference. Using the Celonis Process Intelligence Graph, a global leader in sustainable packaging connected procurement processes with Inventory Management. It now prevents spare parts building up by informing buyers when they try to purchase something that's already in stock.

Ready to explore your procurement possibilities? 

To find out more about how you can follow in Deutsche Telekom’s footsteps and achieve an award-worthy procurement operation with Celonis:

• Check out our Celonis for Procurement solutions page

• Meet AgentC – our new suite of AI agent tools, integrations, and partnerships

• Read the full story of Deutsche Telekom’s Celonis journey

Bill Detwiler

Senior Communications Strategist and Editor Celonis Blog

Bill Detwiler is Senior Communications Strategist and Editor of the Celonis blog. He is the former Editor in Chief of TechRepublic, where he hosted the Dynamic Developer podcast and Cracking Open, CNET’s popular online show. Bill is an award-winning journalist, who’s covered the tech industry for more than two decades. Prior to his career in the software industry and tech media, he was an IT professional in the social research and energy industries.