Accounts payable

• The money a company owes to its suppliers and vendors.
• Can also be used for the name of a department or job.
• Use it in a sentence: Accounts payable departments the world over are using process intelligence to boost on-time payment while reducing operating costs.

Accounts receivable

• The money a customer owes to a company for goods or services delivered.
• Can also be used for the name of a department or job.
• Use it in a sentence: Improve your accounts receivable process and you’ll optimize cash flow and reduce outstanding debts.

Action Flow

• A way to define an automated process flow. Action Flows can consist of multiple events, decision points and alternative routes, as well as involve an arbitrary number of different applications.
• Use it in a sentence: Action Flows provide out-of-the-box integrations and intelligent automation to trigger actions in operational systems, such as SAP, Google Apps, and ServiceNow.
• Read: How to automate workflows with action flows.

Activity

• The different process steps of the case, which are used to reconstruct the process flow.

Agent C

AgentC is a suite of AI agent tools, integrations, and partnerships from Celonis that enables our community to develop AI agents in leading AI platforms. These platforms include Microsoft Copilot Studio, Amazon Bedrock, and IBM watsonX Orchestrate powered by Process Intelligence coming from Celonis.

Agile methodology

An iterative approach to the analysis and improvement of business processes. It aims to accelerate adaptation and refinement - all based on what the data says.

AI agent

A software program and automation technology that can interact with its environment, collect data, and use that data to perform self-determined tasks to meet pre-determined goals. Unlike AI assistants, AI agents can act autonomously and do not require prompts for every action.

Use it in a sentence: Celonis offers integrations that help companies build AI agents, and then orchestrate those agents once they’re up and running.

AI assistant

An intelligent application that understands natural language commands and uses a conversational AI interface to complete tasks for a user.

Use it in a sentence: Celonis’ AI Assistant Builder, which is part of AgentC , enables customers to create AI assistants within Celonis.

Assignment groups

In an IT context, assignment groups are teams responsible for handling specific types of incidents, requests, or tasks. Assignment groups ensure efficient resolution by aligning issues with specialized expertise.

Applications/Apps

Computer program designed and built to address a specific issue or opportunity.

Use it in a sentence: Celonis apps include the Free-Text Requisition App, which improves spend under management by quickly converting free-text requisitions to POs using ML-based algorithms to recommend historically purchased materials or catalog items.

Automation

• The act of putting technology in the driver’s seat to take action – namely on improving a process.
• Use it in a sentence: Automation shouldn’t be the first step in process improvement; it should only come after you use process mining to understand your processes.

Black Swan event

• An event that defies expectations, carries extreme consequences, and is only understood in hindsight. Examples include natural disasters, armed conflicts, and major stock market crashes.
• Use it in a sentence: Celonis Process Intelligence helps supply chain companies prepare for Black Swan events by providing real-time visibility and predictive analytics across the entire supply chain, enabling proactive decision-making and rapid response to disruptions.

Business Process Management

• Business Process Management (BPM) enables organizations to visualize, analyze, and optimize their processes and workflows. Using tools such as business process mapping/modeling, simulation, monitoring and continuous improvement techniques, BPM aims to design and implement the ideal organization-wide processes to deliver business strategy effectively.
• Use it in a sentence: Celonis Process Management unites Business Process Management technology with process mining insights via Celonis’ Process Intelligence platform to provide you with an integrated vision of how your processes actually work vs. how you think they work.
• Read: Using Business Process Management to transform your business

Bluefield migration

• A strategy for migrating data, processes, and customizations to a new system while preserving parts of the existing system. Combining elements of both greenfield and brownfield migration, it’s a hybrid approach that allows companies to take advantage of new features while retaining existing functionality and data.
• See: Brownfield Migration, Greenfield Migration

Brownfield migration

• The transferring and adapting of existing on-premises systems and applications to the cloud, often requiring modifications while preserving core structures and functionality.
• See: Greenfield Migration

Business context

• The process models, business rules, KPIs, industry benchmarks (and more) that govern the environment in which a specific business operates.
• Use it in a sentence: Celonis Process Intelligence gives organizations a data-driven approach to business process management, powered by artificial intelligence combined with the unique business context in which the business operates (i.e., what makes something good or bad for the business).

Business intelligence

• A collective term for the strategies, technologies and processes that organizations use to turn their data into actionable insight. With business intelligence, companies collate, integrate, analyze and visualize data from across their operations - unifying multiple (often unconnected) datasets into a coherent, interrogable source of business truth.
• Use it in a sentence: By turning big data into actionable insights, business intelligence delivers significant benefits to a business. These include: making better decisions, improving efficiency and productivity, enhancing customer experience, and reducing operational risk.
• Read: What is Business intelligence?

Business Miner

• A capability of the Celonis Process Intelligence platform that lets you find and fix broken processes using an easy-to-use question-and-answer-based interface.
• Use it in a sentence: Business Miner enables anyone, including users with limited technical knowledge, to quickly and easily begin to discover and share actionable process insights across the enterprise.

Carrying cost

• The total cost of all expenses related to storing or holding unsold inventory, also referred to as holding cost.
• Use it in a sentence: Celonis' Material Allocation App provides full visibility of your inventory across all locations, helping to reduce carrying cost and release working capital blockages.

Case

• An instance of the object you follow through the process. A case depicts a single process path, such as a sales order item moving through an order-to-cash process.

Case ID

• A unique reference number to document all activities and timestamps that are directly related to each case.

Cash conversion cycle

• The time span between a company's cash outflow for production costs and the inflow from sales.
• Read: What is a cash conversion cycle?

Cash discounts

• A reduction to the amount of an invoice that a buyer owes. Offered to incentivize a buyer to pay a bill before the scheduled due date.
• Use it in a sentence: Kraft Heinz, using Celonis, got end-to-end visibility across Accounts Receivable to better renegotiate cash discounts.

Cash flow

• The net amount of money (cash and cash equivalents) that goes into a company and out of the same company over a period of time.
• Use it in a sentence: Cash flow optimization is a top priority for most companies to combat inflation and uncertainty. Here are four quick ways to optimize cash flow and how Celonis can help drive rapid impact.

Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM)

• CBAM is a regulatory approach that imposes carbon costs on imported goods, aligning them with domestic climate standards to reduce carbon leakage and encourage global emissions reductions.
• Read more: Celonis for Sustainability Transformation.

Celonis Academy

• The team responsible for all training programs for our customers, partners, and Celonauts.

Celonis app

• An application created by Celonis that's tailored to a specific business process and accessed from the Marketplace.

Celonis for Consulting

• A program designed specially for consultants. It lets you use the functionality of the Celonis Platform to turn process insights into client value and accelerate & codify insights with apps.
• Use it in a sentence: Consultants at 2000+ consulting firms are already using Celonis for Consulting Celonis for Consulting to help with their projects.

Celonis Free Plan

• A light version of Celonis where users Celonis for Consulting to help with their projects. receive immediate access to and enjoy the power of the world's #1 Process Intelligence technology.

Celonis Marketplace

• The digital hub for hundreds of high-quality, pre-packaged Process Intelligence apps and solutions.
• The Celonis Marketplace contains hundreds of assets, divided into four types: Apps, Connectors, Experiences, Action Flows. Some are out-of-the-box Celonis apps, others are built with and by our Partners.

Celonis Studio

• The development platform to build, test, and edit Celonis apps in a single, low-code interface.
• Use it in a sentence: You can build bespoke views with custom dashboards in the Celonis Studio.

Celopeers

• The Celonis online community that offers resources for Celonis beginners and veterans.
• Use it in a sentence: On Celopeers, you can connect with other Celonis users, join your local user group, get information on the latest Celonis product releases, and get support from the Celonis Customer Support team.

Celosphere

• The annual user conference for customers and partners of Celonis.This global gathering of the Celonis community sees thousands of process experts come together to learn, share, and take their business performance and careers to the next level.
• Use it in a sentence: Celosphere offers attendees the choice of over a hundred different sessions to listen-in on, all carried out by leading industry executives, analysts and process excellence experts. – ERP today.

Center of Excellence (CoE)

• A Center of Excellence refers to the team mandated to drive technical deployment, establish a strong community, and provide leadership, best practices, support and training for a specific tool or solution.
• Use it in a sentence: Customers with a CoE and dedicated teams are 8.8x more likely to generate a positive ROI with Celonis.
• Read: How to build a Center of Excellence

Change management

• The processes involved in the guiding of successful change within an organization. Change management can include a number of stages from planning and execution to monitoring and embedding change. Standard changes or business projects that might require change management include: upgrading or replacing a critical system, rolling out a new product line, and restructuring the organization.
• Use it in a sentence: The three pillars of effective change management are: people, processes, technology. Trying to make changement management work without addressing all three will cause problems.
• Read: What is change management?

Command center (in supply chain)

• In the context of supply chain, a command center is a centralized hub that uses various technologies to integrate all of the data, processes, and systems that form the many functions that form (or are adjacent to) the supply chain. Supply chain command centers can be seen as an expansion of control towers, allowing for greater connection and orchestration within supply chain operations, and going beyond visibility and monitoring to facilitate decision-making, task coordination, and execution.
• Use it in a sentence: The Celonis Process Intelligence Platform acts as a supply chain command center, uniting data across functions, processes, and domains to help solve your pressing supply chain management challenges.
• Read: How command centers can help with supply chain operations

Conformance checking

• In an IT context, conformance checking is the process of analyzing actual data from a process execution and comparing it to the expected behavior, also known as a process 'happy path.’
• Use it in a sentence: Process mining technology helps with conformance checking by monitoring your process conformance against best-practice models to identify value in and between processes, and determine how to capture the opportunities.

Connectors

• Pre-built extraction and transformation capabilities to quickly connect your process data to the Celonis platform.

Control tower (in supply chain)

• In a supply chain context, a control tower is an established tool for integrating data from multiple sources, improving visibility, and aiding supply chain management. Unlike command centers, they are usually specific to an individual function (often logistics).
• Use it in a sentence: A logistics control tower helps teams look at transport resources across the global supply chain.
• Read: Supply chain control towers – getting ahead of disruption and building resilience

Convergence

• The replication of an event across different cases, possibly leading to unintentional duplication. Convergence can cause misleading diagnostics.
• Use it in a sentence: Squeezing reality into simple event logs creates distortions. It can unintentionally replicate events, which is known as convergence. More here.

Composable architecture

• In IT, composable architecture is made up of modular systems that can be easily adapted to business needs (as opposed to systems with rigid frameworks to which businesses had to conform their processes). Most IT leaders now prioritize composable architecture in their approach to building and evolving their tech landscapes, as this approach helps break through the rigidity of legacy ERP systems and deal with the complexity stemming from configurable but decentralized systems (like cloud software, ITSM systems, and human capital management systems).
• Use it in a sentence:
• As part of our enterprise modernization initiatives, our CIO is focused on rebuilding our tech stack with composable architecture, which should make managing all of our technologies considerably easier.

Copilot

• An LLM-based chatbot that enhances user productivity by providing real-time guidance, automating tasks, and supporting decision-making within workflows.
• Use it in a sentence: With data and context coming from the Process Intelligence Graph, Process Copilots enable business-wide teams to access Process Intelligence – fast. Capable of being configured in a matter of minutes and interrogated using a natural language interface, users can access specific data insights and answer specific, relevant questions quickly and easily.
• Check out how to build and deploy powerful AI copilots, assistants, and agents that are grounded in the process digital twin of your organization.

Credit check

• Evaluation of a customer’s previous credit behavior.
• Use it in a sentence: If you use Celonis to know who your dependable customers are, you’ll be able to skip the credit check and speed up orders by days.

Credit memo

• Short for credit memorandum and occasionally known as a credit note, a credit memo officially acknowledges a customer is owed money. That money can be applied to future purchases of goods and services. A credit memo is different from a refund because it provides credit for a future invoice amount, not cash, to the customer account.
• Use it in a sentence: A credit memo contains important information, including: the purchase order number, date of purchase, original invoice number, corresponding invoice date, payment terms, billing details, buyer shipping address, prices, quantities, and more. A credit memo will also include the reason it was created and issued.

Cycle time

• The total amount of time it takes to complete a process, from start to finish. The concept of cycle time comes from lean manufacturing, where it refers to the production time for one unit or item. The metric has since been adopted across many other sectors and business functions — from finance to customer service to project management. Its exact definition varies depending on the process to which it is applied.

Data science

• The exploration and analysis of raw data to transform it into valuable information used to solve business problems.
• Use it in a sentence: Today’s process mining reflects a powerful combination of process science, which is the intricate study of processes, and data science, which means finding the insights in the data generated by the various parts of those processes. More here.

Days payable outstanding

• The number of days that pass before a company pays outstanding invoices.
• Read: 6 days payable outstanding KPIs you should know about.

Days sales outstanding

• The number of days that pass before a company gets paid for sales made.
• Read: Days sales outstanding, understanding the metrics.

Demurrage

• A fee attached to cargo that has overstayed its time at a terminal.
• Use it in a sentence: Process mining has revolutionized the way organizations approach transportation optimization, capturing opportunities to consolidate open loads, helping to reduce demurrage or detention fees, and more.

Detention

• In shipping and logistics, detention refers to charges imposed on shippers, cargo owners, or trucking companies when containers are held beyond a certain predetermined time period.
• Celonis Process Intelligence helps eliminate detention fees by optimizing workflows, predicting delays, and automating real-time alerts to ensure efficient cargo movement.

Deviation

• When an activity happens outside of the intended process mining path.

Digital twin

• A digital representation of a real-world entity. In the world of process mining, a digital twin is a virtual representation of a real-world process. Digital twins allow teams to simulate process improvements without having to disturb the process until they know the changes will be beneficial.
• Use in a sentence: The Celonis Process Intelligence Graph builds a system-agnostic process digital twin of a business and combines it with the business context in which the organization operates. It shows how the business is running, where and how things could run better, and how teams can capture the value hiding within the business.

Divergence

• What occurs happens when there may be multiple instances of the same activity within a single case.
• Use it in a sentence: Squeezing reality into simple event logs creates distortions. It can lead to the loss of causal relations, which is called divergence. More here.

Duplicate invoice

• An invoice mistakenly issued or processed more than once, leading to the possibility of the same bill being paid multiple times.
• Read: 5 steps to reduce costs caused by duplicate invoices.

Duplicate payment

• When a company pays an invoice or bill twice.
• Use it in a sentence: Deutsche Telekom saved more than €66M by optimizing its Procure-to-Pay process to tackle duplicate payments and cash discount losses.

Ecosystem

• A network of organizations complementing the skills and reach of each other, working together to drive a certain solution forward.
• Use it in a sentence: At Celonis, our Ecosystem is made up of business and technology experts across all industries and it spans the entire globe.

Enterprise architecture

• A framework that aligns technology, data, processes, and strategy. It enables a transition to a future state that can deliver on business objectives.

Enterprise Modernization

• An approach to updating and improving an organization’s systems and technologies that encompasses process optimization, application modernization, and system migration. As opposed to a one-time system migration or transformation, enterprise modernization is meant to keep tech stacks efficient, high-performing, and future-ready through a combination of ongoing strategies.
• Use it in a sentence:

As work increasingly moves to the digital realm, and as innovations like AI and automation become crucial in order to remain competitive, it’s important for IT leaders to enable the business through the multi-pronged strategy of enterprise modernization.

ERP

• An enterprise resource planning (ERP) system is software designed to integrate and manage core business processes, improving efficiency and decision-making.
• Use it in a sentence: Using the data from your existing ERP system, process mining technology can uncover hidden opportunities to rapidly capture value across your organization.

ESG

• Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) are criteria used to measure a company’s broader impact.
• Use it in a sentence: The Celonis Sustainable Spend Management App helps procurement teams pick suppliers that align with their ESG goals.

Event

• A digital representation of a real-world occurrence that happened, at a single moment in time, to one or more objects connected to your business. For example, a customer paying an invoice, a user creating a purchase order for a vendor's product, or a warehouse shipping an order.
• Use it in a sentence: The event of shipping an order involves both the warehouse the order shipped from, and the order that was shipped.

Event log

• Digital recording of an action that happened in a software system. All event logs have a case ID, an activity, and a timestamp.

Event type

• A definition of an event that happens to one or more objects during a business process (such as shipping an order), what attributes it has, and its relationships to objects.

Extractor Builder

• Tool to create reusable data extractors for any system and automatically tag and contextualize data from connected systems.

Free-text requisitions

• The type of request made by requisitioners when they manually create a request rather than picking a standard vendor with prenegotiated contract terms.
• Read: The power of process mining for procurement.

Fuzzy matching

• A machine learning and AI technique used to identify similar but not identical elements in a dataset
• Use it in a sentence: In AP, PepsiCo used Celonis’ fuzzy matching capabilities to automatically identify invoices that were split to circumvent approval limits.

Generative AI

• The type of artificial intelligence that is capable of creating new and original content. It often does this in response to prompts.
• Use it in a sentence: Generative AI helps process mining solutions interact with humans more easily and efficiently through natural language processing and generation.

Greenfield migration

• Building new cloud-native environments from scratch, allowing organizations to design optimized infrastructures without constraints from existing legacy systems.
• See: Brownfield migration

Hypercare

• During any major change in how an organization operates, hypercare is the period of increased support directly after the change. Hypercare is often used in reference to system migrations. After a migration has been completed, it’s time for hypercare — a time during which IT and related teams closely monitor the new system to ensure it’s working as intended, and swiftly resolve any problems.
• Use it in a sentence:

Our system migration seems to have gone well, and our IT teams are now allocating extra time and resources to hypercare — they’re making sure everything is working well in the new environment, and that any snags are addressed quickly.

Happy path

• Familiar term used to describe a process working as originally designed and without exceptions, workarounds, or detours.
• Use it in a sentence: Change-makers use Celonis to show their teams and bosses how processes no longer follow the ‘happy path’ but how they can again by making the right data-backed interventions.

Inventory management

• The supervision of stock levels, orders, storage, and distribution to ensure optimal availability of products, reducing costs and meeting demand efficiently, while preventing overstocking or stockouts.
• Use it in a sentence: Inventory management done well leads to improved material availability, reduced operating costs, and optimized working capital.

Invoice

• A document sent by a business to a buyer detailing the products and services provided to the buyer by the business. An invoice acts as the official payment request for the products and services concerned.

ITIL

• Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) is a library of best practices designed to help organizations effectively manage IT services, improve IT support and service levels, and align IT service with business needs.
• Use it in a sentence: Process mining can help you assess whether a business process is implemented according to ITIL guidelines.

IT service management (ITSM)

• The strategic approach to designing, delivering, managing, and improving IT services to align with organizational goals and enhance user satisfaction.
• Use it in a sentence: IT service management (ITSM) helps companies and their customers get more out of technology, and implement it more seamlessly into their operations
• Discover more: Celonis for IT Transformation

ISV

• Independent Software Vendor
• An ISV is a company that develops and sells specialized software solutions, enhancing functionality and value within larger platforms or enterprise environments.

KPI

• Key Performance Indicator.
• A measurement that helps teams understand how the business – or a certain part of it – is performing overall.

Large language model (LLM)

• A machine learning model that can perform a variety of natural language processing (NLP) tasks, such as comprehending and generating human language.
• Use it in a sentence: Celonis Process Intelligence can make a large language model (LLM) aware of common causes of process breakdown – based on a company’s past activity as well as comparing it to industry best practices.

Read: 9 questions about Process Intelligence, BPM, and AI, answered

Lead-to-order

• The end-to-end process ​​that starts with someone’s intent to buy a product and ends with the fulfillment of the sale.
• Use it in a sentence: Mark’s team is now using Celonis in Lead-to-order to know whether they can hit their billion-pound revenue target in two years' time.

Lean Six Sigma

• The combination of the Lean Manufacturing and Six Sigma methodologies. Lean Six Sigma is an approach to process improvement that helps make sure initiatives are well-planned, executed, and monitored for sustained results by using a methodology called DMAIC (Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control).

Legacy systems

• An outdated, cumbersome, and increasingly obsolete technology that is still in use at an organization.
• Use it in a sentence: By using Celonis, organizations will be able to keep their legacy systems going, run Celonis on top, and then transform on top of Celonis.

Machine learning

• A type of artificial intelligence that enables computer systems to learn from data and algorithms. In doing so, machine learning enables AI to learn in a similar way to humans and improve performance over time.

Manual process mapping

• A method of trying to uncover how processes work without the use of modern technology. Manal process mapping often sees teams create a process map in the form of a flowchart or diagram.

Master data

• The core information essential to the running of a business day-to-day.
• Master data typically includes information like product and service descriptions, financial data like account numbers, and location information like office addresses and trading territories.

Master data improvement

• The steps taken in the pursuit of always up-to-date and accurate master data. Can include improvements to product, supplier, or customer data.

Maverick buying

• Term to describe what happens when requisitioners do not adhere to internal procurement processes and fail to make use of existing procurement contracts.
• The opposite to maverick buying is spend under management.
• Use it in a sentence: Celonis can notify category managers of maverick buying repeat offenders, reject maverick purchases, and contact vendors repeatedly fulfilling maverick purchases. More here.

Natural language processing (NLP)

• The branch of artificial intelligence that enables computers to understand, process, and generate human language.
• Use it in a sentence: NLP provides a more user-friendly experience, enabling individuals to conduct detailed data analysis by querying business intelligence platforms using their normal everyday language.

No-touch rate

• Refers to the percentage of process instances completed without human intervention.
• A high no-touch rate indicates automation effectiveness and efficiency within a workflow.
• Use it in a sentence: With the observability given by Process Intelligence, DTSE increased their no-touch rate significantly, which freed up capacity for tactical sourcing and resulted in savings of €12M.

Object

• A digital representation of something connected to your business that exists in the real world. For example, a customer, a company, an order, or an invoice.
• Use it in a sentence: The most powerful insights come from the ability to visualize and analyze complex relationships between objects and events — across interconnected processes.

Object-centric process mining (OCPM)

• An innovative technology for visualizing and analyzing complex business operations. It involves representing the business as objects, events, and their relationships in order to explore the true interconnectedness of the business.
• Using object-centric process mining, teams can: view all business activities from any perspective using a single source of truth; discover valuable opportunities that live at the intersection points of processes and departments; and move from two-dimensional views of processes to a three-dimensional and dynamic view of the entire business.
• Use it in a sentence: Object-centric process mining allows us to view a process from any angle. We move from a two-dimensional view, where we look at a single object type, to a three-dimensional view where we consider multiple object types at the same time and how they are interrelated.

Object type

• A definition of an object in a business (such as an invoice), what attributes it has (such as a currency), and its relationships to other objects.

Observability

• The ability to understand what’s happening inside a complex system based on the external outputs of that system. When systems are observable, people can more quickly and accurately take action to fix problems.

On-time delivery

• Ensuring products reach customers or stakeholders precisely as scheduled, enhancing reliability and satisfaction while minimizing delays and disruptions in the supply chain.
• Use it in a sentence: On-time delivery keeps customers happy by meeting promised commitments, shipping dates, and delivery dates. On-time delivery drives customer loyalty, and to a large extent also revenue.

On-time-in-full (OTIF)

• The measurement, often by percentage, of orders a business is able to deliver on the date or at the time agreed with the customer (on time) and at the volumes expected (in full).
• Use it in a sentence: An order can be considered as delivered on-time-in-full (OTIF) if the customer receives exactly what was ordered, in the amount requested, at the correct location, and within the agreed upon timeframe.

Optical character recognition

• The conversion of an image of text into a format that machines can read. Optical character recognition can take handwritten, typed or printed documents and convert them into digital formats.

Optimizing

• Configuring a process to produce more value, such as improving quality or reducing costs.

Order management

• Order management is the process of tracking and fulfilling sales orders from the order being made to the order being delivered. Order management done well ensures efficient inventory control, customer satisfaction, and accurate data management. It encompasses order processing, tracking, and communication between suppliers, warehouses, and customers.
• Use it in a sentence: Order management owns the full order life cycle; it depends on other departments more than almost any other function.

Order-to-cash (O2C)

• Order-to-cash encompasses the entire sales lifecycle, including order management, credit management, invoicing, shipping, and accounts receivable. Done well, order to cash ensures revenue generation and customer satisfaction.
• Use it in a sentence: Order-to-cash (O2C) is the process by which customers make orders and companies receive payment. It’s the lifeblood of any business. The concept is simple in theory, but in practice is frequently affected by process deviations.

Paid-on-time-rate

• Measurement for how many invoices customers settle within the agreed payment terms. Paid-on-time-rate reflects the efficiency of credit management and customer reliability, directly impacting cash flow and financial health by minimizing late payments and associated risks.
• Use it in a sentence: Deutsche Telekom used Celonis to unlock a cash discount rate of 96% and a paid-on-time rate of more than 90%.

Predictive AI

• Predictive AI learns from historical data and uses it to predict the likelihood of future events. Process mining uses this kind of AI to anticipate and prevent process problems and also find the root causes of problems that happen.

Process

• The way something gets done. A process is a series of steps and decisions involved in completing a task. Processes make up every aspect of our leisure and work.
• Use it in a sentence: A process is the series of steps that are taken in a particular order to achieve a specific result. Read more here.

Process Adherence Manager

• A tool to see how your target processes compare with your processes as they currently run.
• Use it in a sentence: Visualize all deviations and identify root causes in a single view with the Process Adherence Manager.

Process analysis

• The review and close examination of an enterprise’s processes.
• Process analysis sees teams dig into the root causes of process issues and quantify how they’re impacting key performance indicators.
• Use it in a sentence: Process analysis can be difficult in large, complex organizations, but with a Process Intelligence platform you can easily conduct process analysis at every level of your enterprise.

Process Copilot

• An artificial intelligence tool that turns natural language requests into process insights.
• Use it in a sentence: Process Copilot provides insights into KPI trends and their root causes; the user simply types in a question to see relevant, tailored charts and graphs.

Process adherence

• A discipline that compares how processes are working to how they were modelled to work. With process conformance, you discover if the process is functioning as you expected to function.

Process data

• Any type of record generated by a business process. Process data can include activity sequences, timestamps, event logs, and process variants.
• Use it in a sentence: Celonis uses process data combined with over a decade of our own process knowledge and AI to generate a customer’s Process Intelligence Graph.

Process Designer

• A capability of the Celonis Process Intelligence platform that allows you to build an enterprise map by modeling your processes, in a common view that can be shared between your business and IT – from business processes to customer journeys, enterprise architecture, and org structure.
• Use in a sentence: Process Designer makes it easier to build target models and supports you with suggestions made by generative AI that factors in context on how your business operates.

Process event

• The recorded occurrence of a specific activity within a process, marked with a timestamp and relevant attributes.
• Process events are analyzed to uncover process flows and optimize operations through data-driven insights.

Process excellence

• The pursuit and achievement of optimizing processes to the extent they make an active contribution to value creation across the top, bottom, and green lines.
• Discover more about process excellence here.

Process Explorer

• A tool that uses explorative analysis to show how processes run based on the frequency of activities performed.
• Use it in a sentence: Illuminating the complex ways in which objects and events interact, Process Explorer helps you find value opportunities within and across your processes — with limited technical expertise required.

Process flow

• Representation of the sequence and dependencies of activities within a business process. It visualizes the paths and interactions between events, revealing bottlenecks, deviations, and opportunities for process improvement.
• Use it in a sentence: A process mining solution visualizes and validates process flows, showing how the many objects and events in the system interact.

Process improvement

• The act(s) of examining, documenting, and mapping out the various steps of a process, and then pinpointing and eliminating pain points.

Process Intelligence

• A combination of system data, process knowledge, and AI that knows how your business flows
• Use it in a sentence: That LLM is genuinely smart now it’s using Process Intelligence.

Process Intelligence Graph

• A system-agnostic, enriched digital twin of a business.
• A Process Intelligence Graph provides a single Process Intelligence layer that supports improvements, automation, and system transformation across all applications. It sits at the heart of the Celonis platform and is a key enabler for emerging technologies like Generative AI.
• Use it in a sentence: The Celonis Process Intelligence Graph is the connective tissue at the heart of the Celonis platform, helping teams understand how objects and events interact, how processes are interconnected, how the business runs, and how it can run even better.

Process Intelligence Platform

• The suite of business functionality and developer functionality built by Celonis that uses process mining, task mining, AI, and automation to improve business processes and systems.

Process knowledge

• Accumulated understanding of how common business processes often progress.
• Use it in a sentence: The process knowledge that Celonis has built into the Process Intelligence Graph draws on more than a decade of process mining experience.

Process mapping

• A lengthy, time-consuming method of visually representing activities within a process.
• Use it in a sentence: Although eclipsed by its more powerful descendant, process mining, process mapping can be a starting point for businesses coming into process improvement fresh, without prior insight into their business operations.
• Here are 10 examples of how to use process mapping.

Process management

• The continued design and governance of processes to ensure they are working as intended.

Process mining

• Every step of a business process leaves a digital footprint in transactional systems in the form of event log data. Process mining uses this event log data to create a living picture of what actual processes really look like, which does not always match what people expect processes to look like.
• Use it in a sentence: Process mining creates an “MRI” of a business process that helps you gain visibility and uncover value opportunities hiding within core operations. Celonis process mining has quickly become the backbone of many companies’ efforts to streamline and optimize processes.

Process modeling

• Method of creating representations of workflows to simulate, analyze, and optimize process structures. Process modeling enables clearer insights into performance and potential improvements.
• Read: How to unlock next-level Process Intelligence with process modeling and process mining

Process monitoring

• Method for tracking and regularly evaluating key data points associated with a certain process or processes.
• Use it in a sentence: My company uses process monitoring to see how closely our AP teams are adhering to the new processes.

Process Navigator

• Tool to view and monitor processes and systems. With Process Navigator , every employee can access their processes, relevant documentation, org hierarchies, and their roles and responsibilities.
• Process Navigator simplifies the onboarding of your processes and keeping track of any changes.
• Use it in a sentence: With Process Navigator, you give every employee a personalized repository of processes and their wider operational context, embedded into everyday systems like Microsoft Teams, so they know what steps to take, when, and in which systems.

Process optimization

• The combination of technologies, solutions, and tactics to view, analyze and improve processes with the aim of achieving maximum efficiency and quality. Process optimization can include removing steps, automating interventions otherwise done by people, and re-designing the process entirely.

Process orchestration

• The co-ordination, synchronization, and monitoring of different business processes.
• Discover more: How AI and process orchestration bring us a giant leap closer to the autonomous enterprise.

Process science

• The scientific field concerned with studying the nature of change. It combines knowledge from information technology and knowledge from management sciences to improve and run operational processes.
• Use it in a sentence: Today’s process mining reflects a powerful combination of process science, which is the intricate study of processes, and data science, which means finding the insights in the data generated by the various parts of those processes. Read more here.

Process Simulation

• A tool to measure the impact of adapting potential changes to a process and how any changes would affect your business. You can simulate any part of the process and assess the impact of decisions beforehand.

Process workflow

• A series of steps necessary to complete a specific process. The process workflow is the sequence of activities, who is responsible for completing those activities, and what tools they need.

Procurement

• The end-to-end process of acquiring goods and services, from requisition to payment. By analyzing procurement processes, teams can streamline workflows and optimize supplier interactions.
• Use it in a sentence: Every procurement department has an important mission: spend wisely to protect the company's spend and margins.

Purchase order (PO)

• A document issued by a buyer to a supplier. A purchase order (PO) outlines what goods and services the buyer expects from the seller, including a unique PO number and information on quantity, price, and payment and delivery due dates.
• Read: How to make perfect matches between purchase orders and invoices

Purchase-to-pay

• The comprehensive process from purchasing goods or services to completion of payment. Purchase-to-pay involves analyzing event logs across procurement, receiving, invoicing, and payment stages to identify inefficiencies, streamline workflows, and enhance financial and operational performance.
• Read: Process mining finds & captures value in Purchase-to-Pay – here’s how

Quantum computing

• An emerging computational technology that relies on quantum mechanics, a fundamental theory of physics that describes how the world works at the level of the atom and subatomic particles, to solve problems that traditional computers find too complex.

Qubit

• A qubit, or "quantum bit," is the basic unit of information in quantum computing. While classical bits can only exist in a 0 or 1 state, qubits are able to exist in a so-called superposition of these two states. As a result, they’re capable of modelling systems where uncertainty or extreme complexity is a factor.

RPA

• RPA stands for Robotic Process Automation. RPA software uses ‘robots’ or simply ‘bots’ to perform many of an organization’s repetitive, high-volume tasks without needing human intervention. These tend to be repetitive, rules-based tasks, such as form-filling, standardized reporting, matching POs to invoices and goods receipts, data extraction and insertion, or logging into systems and applications.

S4/HANA

• SAP’s integrated ERP suite built on the HANA database.
• Use it in a sentence: S/4HANA migrations can bring a new level of operational agility and transparency into your business but involve countless costly risks and roadblocks. The good news is: Celonis can intelligently support each phase of your S/4HANA migration
• Read: 5 Facts You Should Know about S/4HANA Migrations.

Scope 1, 2, 3 emissions

• Scope 1 - Direct emissions

Any emissions produced by the creation or distribution of your products or services. Think of the fuel used by trucks, the gas burnt to fuel workshops.

• Scope 2 - Indirect emissions from purchased energy

Any emissions created by purchased energy. Think of the coal burnt to create the electricity used to power your office.

• Scope 3 - Indirect emissions from the value chain

Any emissions created either upstream or downstream from your company. Think of products and services that your company pays for, or the emissions created once your products or services leave your ownership.

• Get: The Realist's Guide to Sustainable Supply Chains.

Semantic layer

• A semantic layer helps people aggregate, unify, organize, and make sense of business data, which can – in its raw forms – be overwhelming or even inaccessible to non-technical workers.
• Use it in a sentence: TheCelonis Process Intelligence Graph is a semantic layer for your business processes, sitting above all the raw data coming from your business systems to provide you with context and meaning.

Six Sigma

• Established in the 1980s by Motorola, Six Sigma is a method for identifying and reducing process “defects”.
• See: Lean Six Sigma.

Source system

• Any software platform that generates and stores event logs and transactional data used for process analysis. Examples include ERP, CRM, and financial systems.

Spend under management

• Spending that is monitored and optimized through the procurement process. The opposite of spend under management is maverick buying.

Standardizing

• Making the process as repeatable as possible, and ensuring that the process as-is matches the process as-designed.

Streamlining

• Removing redundant or unnecessary activities from a process.

Supply chain

• The network that produces and delivers a product – from raw material suppliers to manufacturers, distributors, and retailers. The supply chain of any business is crucial to its success.
• Use it in a sentence: Supply chains are effectively one mega-process made up of lots of connected micro-processes. So a process-first approach is needed to maximize efficiency and improve supply chain performance.

Sustainability Layer

• The collection of sustainability-focused data, knowledge, and capabilities embedded within the Celonis Process Intelligence Platform. The sustainability layer is created to unite sustainability data across your business functions and processes and to provide a single source of truth of both sustainability and business performance.
• Use it in a sentence: We use many parts of the Sustainability Layer — like the supplier ratings and emission factors built in to our Celonis supply chain apps — to track and improve our organization’s ESG performance.

Swivel-chair activity

• The manual process of transferring data between disconnected systems, requiring users to switch interfaces repeatedly, which leads to inefficiency and the likelihood of increased errors.

System

• Any software or technology platform that generates and stores event logs related to business processes. Systems, such as ERP or CRM platforms, provide the data needed for analyzing and improving process performance.

System migration

• The transferring of data and processes from one software platform to another. This transition requires careful mapping of event logs and process data to ensure continuity, minimize disruptions, and maintain accurate process analysis and monitoring during and after the migration.
• Use it in a sentence: IT wants to be on-time and on-budget when embarking on a system migration, but that’s challenging when process mapping is manual, fit-gap analysis is subjective, and user adoption is subpar.

System of record

• The trusted, primary database that contains essential business information, ensuring consistency, accuracy.
• A system of record serves as a single source for critical decision-making.

System-agnostic

• Classification of a platform, solution, tools, or methods that can analyze and integrate data from various software systems without being tied to any specific platform. This flexibility allows comprehensive process analysis across diverse systems, ensuring broader insights and improved optimization opportunities.
• Use it in a sentence: The Celonis Process Intelligence Graph is system-agnostic and compatible with nearly any software you use - yes, even your ultra-specialized inventory management system or your even older ERP!

Task mining

• Technology that collects and aggregates data from employee desktop tasks and turns it into understandable behavioral patterns.
• Use it in a sentence: Parts of your processes take place outside of transactional IT systems, like on a user’s desktop or in email software. Task mining lets you capture these off-system activities to help improve your process understanding.

Throughput time

• KPI for the time it takes for cases to proceed from activity A to activity B. Knowing throughput time provides insight into process efficiency, bottlenecks, and areas for potential improvement.

Timestamp

• Precise record of the date and time when an event or activity occurs within a process. Timestamps are crucial for reconstructing process flows, analyzing timing patterns, and identifying bottlenecks in the workflow.

Touchless collections

• The collection of payments without manual, human intervention. This involves using technology like process mining to send invoices, reminders, and process payments.

Touchless invoice

• An automatically generated and processed invoice that requires no manual, human intervention. This streamlined approach uses technology to issue, track, and manage invoices, enhancing accuracy and speeding up payment cycles.
• See: Invoice.

Transactional system

• A software platform that records and manages daily business transactions, such as ERP or CRM systems. Transactional systems provide the event logs essential for process mining, enabling the analysis and improvement of processes.
• Use it in a sentence: Process mining sifts through process data that can be found in all of your various transactional systems, from ERP to CRM to SCM and whatever other acronyms you want to throw its way. Discover more here.

Transformation Hub

• The central place for you to understand the amount of value associated with your process mining initiatives.The Transformation Hub shows the value waiting to be unlocked from the opportunities uncovered by Celonis as well as the value already generated by the Celonis platform.
• Use it in a sentence: The Transformation Hub makes it simple to tag, track, and pull opportunities and results to share with anyone, no matter the audience.

Variant

• The specific path of activities or events that a process follows. A specific set of activities followed by a case is called the case's variant. All different activity combinations that exist for the cases together are the process's variants.

Warehouse management

• The processes involved in the efficient control and optimization of warehouse operations, including inventory storage, organization, and retrieval. Warehouse management typically looks to ensure accurate order fulfillment, streamlined processes, and effective space utilization.

Working capital

• The financial resources tied up in operational processes, including cash flow, inventory, and receivables. Process mining optimizes working capital by analyzing and improving process efficiency to enhance liquidity and reduce operational costs.