What is...?
You've stumbled across the company Celonis and don't really understand what it does? You ask yourself what Celonis is and have long since lost your way in the endless expanses of the website without finding any answers? Texts like:
"Celonis, the market leader in process mining, is changing that. The Execution Management System eliminates system complexity and frees up execution capacity" sound like technical jargon to you? And what is this process mining that is mentioned everywhere? We answer all these questions in a nutshell, especially the question "What is Celonis". Here we go. There is a chance you might have heard the name before, but if not, do not worry, here you will find everything you need to know. Celonis is the market leader in process mining software. With their Execution Management Software, not only can you create transparency in a process, it also finds ineffiencies and solves them.
A quick look at Wikipedia reveals: Celonis is actually a German software company, but it is strongly internationalised, with headquarters in Munich and New York. In addition, Celonis has already achieved the so-called unicorn status in 2018. This is awarded to young companies that receive a company valuation of more than 1 billion dollars. Not bad, then. Celonis now counts large companies and corporations such as Lufthansa, Uber and Siemens among its customers.
Celonis has developed software that does process mining. Process mining is a technology that allows processes to be analyzed based on data. Processes such as deliveries, productions, or even orders can be recorded and evaluated. The aim behind this is to uncover inefficiencies and uncover potential areas for improvement. Especially in huge companies with cross-departmental processes, it is almost impossible to know, let alone understand, the entire process at a certain point.
Celonis' software is called an "Execution Management System". In concrete terms, this means that digital processes are automatically recorded and mapped. This is to create a completely objective and data-driven picture of the company's internal processes. The data for this is usually already available in software such as SAP.
A visualization of the processes should subsequently help to identify ineffiencies, for example, manual processes that could be automated, and this is where it gets interesting, to proactively and automatically eliminate them. This is quite impressive. If you want to try process mining yourself, you can sign up for Celonis Snap for free. This is free software tool that aims to make process mining possible for everyone. All it takes is a CSV file and the software creates a flowchart from it that clearly shows the process. You can immediately recognize the process flow and perhaps see at first glance what could be done better.
Process mining is of particular importance against the background of business process management. More and more companies are realizing that the key to success also lies in their processes. Analyzing and optimizing these is the first step. Celonis goes one step further and wants to completely change the way companies function with the Execution Management System. Important decisions should be made based on data, not feelings or subjective assessments.
What began with process mining has long since been complemented by other software and services. The Celonis universe continues to grow, so it's no wonder that the tech giant decided to buy the Czech company Make last year. Make offers a platform that can be used to automate digital processes. It allows Celonis to link the knowledge from its process analysis with the subsequent successful automation. After all, process automation makes little sense if the processes have not been optimized beforehand.
But now back to the initial sentence, which is written like this on the Celonis homepage and, to be honest, is difficult to understand: "Celonis, the market leader in process mining, is changing that. The Execution Management System eliminates system complexity and frees up execution capacity". This sentence ultimately means nothing other than that Celonis analyses, visualize, and automatically improves processes in the larger context of its Execution Management System. This reduces system complexity, i.e. unnecessarily complicated, superfluous, and time-consuming processes. For Celonis, execution capacity means nothing other than performance. This is to be improved by improving one's processes.
To answer the question "What is Celonis" in a nutshell: Celonis gets more out of existing processes, explicitly digitally running processes. For this purpose, Celonis has developed a software platform that extracts and analyses important information from other applications, such as SAP or even simple CSV files. The goal of is to improve existing processes but also to make future decisions data-driven.
Celonis is currently quite successful with this. The company has been profitable from year one, has repeatedly dusted off huge sums of investments, and is still on a growth course. With the purchase of Make, the company has also taken an important step in the direction of cloud automation and, in our eyes, is truly positioned for the future. We are excited about what lies ahead, but we are sure that we will be writing about Celonis here more often in the future.
At Make it future, we help companies automate their processes so they can focus more on what's important. To support our customers with their Celonis implementation, we have partnered together with Apolix; a process mining consulting agency.
Apolix can help you to identify if Celonis EMS can help you. They are the only Platinum Celonis Partner and offer the full suite implementation; from the technical aspects to realizing true value from the insights. They are a process mining consulting agency based in The Netherlands. They have managed dozens of implementations and have customers in more than 8 countries over 3 continents. They are a strategic partner focused on value realization as their methods are rooted in translating insights into valuable actions.
If you haven’t started with your process mining journey or want to gain more valuable from your current Celonis implementation, Apolix can support you. Reach out to us now to plan in a Discovery call to see how we can help you!
Cloud Integration, iPaaS, SaaS, BPA… Ough, hard to keep track of all these terms. They are currently used frequently (and increasingly) in the context of automation, and it is sometimes difficult to make a clear distinction and distinction. We have already written blog posts on the terms iPaaS, SaaS and BPA, but we’ll take them up again here to make the difference.
But let’s start with cloud integration, because that’s the central umbrella term in which we embed all the other technologies in this blog post.
Arrange a free cloud integration consultation now
Arrange a free cloud integration consultation now
To illustrate these advantages, an example is suitable that we know well from our everyday work as an automation agency:
The central data to be used here is the data of a major customer. This can be the simplest information, such as the address. This address is required in numerous but completely different processes in the company: on the one hand, for correct invoicing in accounting. On the other hand, in the CRM system, where all the data of the large customer is also stored. But the address is also important in sales, for example, when employees go to the sales meeting on site.
Now the customer announces that the address of the company has changed after a move. This information will reach you by e-mail. There are now two options:
01. The e-mail is forwarded to all affected departments, accounting, sales, customer service, marketing… All persons open their corresponding program, CRM, accounting software, marketing tools (such as newsletter marketing) and change the data already stored there of the customer. This means that in multiple applications, different people do exactly the same thing: change one address.
02. But there is also an alternative: By connecting your applications, thus by integrizing them, the customer’s e-mail, or rather the information it contains about the address change, is automatically passed on to all affected applications: CRM, accounting, marketing, ERP. This does not require any clicks, because the cloud integration detects a trigger, i.e. address change, and thus automatically starts the process.
What sounds unimpressive in a single process becomes more effective when such a process occurs several times a day or weekly. Because there is a lot of data that is available in different applications and should always be correct. If these applications are cloud applications they are suitable for cloud integration.
But cloud integration doesn’t just happen. There are now a variety of applications that enable and implement this. Such tools usually allow us to link the relevant cloud applications on a central platform and define clear rules on when, how, where, how much data should be passed on and what happens to them.
To realize cloud integration, there are various applications and technologies that are sometimes used interchangeably.
We have made a first distinction between iPaaS and BPA here.
We explain the term SaaS in more detail here.
Cloud integration is rather an umbrella term that includes numerous technologies, such as SaaS, iPaaS and BPA, and this is also absolutely necessary. Cloud integration is a concept that is made possible by appropriate technologies.
However, all terms share the commonality that they are cloud-based and thus offer enormous potential for growth and scaling. In addition, they are often cheaper to implement and maintain because changed requirements are easy to implement.
As an independent automation agency, we implement cloud integration according to your requirements. We use a variety of SaaS tools and iPaas (strictly speaking BPA) software. Together we find individual solutions that are flexible and scalable.
