Celonis Global Game Changer Awards 2024: Winners and finalists deliver extraordinary impact with Process Intelligence

The Global Game Changer Awards celebrate the incredible work being done by Celonis customers and across our partner ecosystem. It recognizes customers and partners that use the Celonis Process Intelligence Platform to deliver extraordinary impact to their employees, customers and communities.

As co-founder and co-CEO Alex Rinke put it: “We want to celebrate these Game Changers because it takes a lot of courage to become one. Process intelligence is still a new topic, so it takes work, it takes courage, and it takes perseverance. And that's really worth celebrating.”

For the second year in a row, Celonis announced the finalists and winners of the Global Game Changer Awards at Celosphere, its annual user conference in Munich, Germany. And this year we turned the celebration all the way up to 11—handing out 11 awards compared to last year’s 3. Each winner of the three global customer awards and the four partner awards received $25,000 (USD) to donate to a charity of their choosing.

Over the last year, each of the finalists have transformed their businesses, created new value, and helped others along their own process excellence journey.

Innovation Award 

This award celebrates those customers that have shown a pioneering spirit and a unique vision for how Celonis technology can be used to unlock new types of value. The Innovation finalists were:

Smurfit Westrock

Sustainable packaging leader Smurfit Westrock qualified as finalists for this award thanks to its development of an innovative AI agent. The agent has been deployed into its production facilities to optimize the spare parts process and ensure maximum factory uptime.

Lufthansa Group

The travel giant has built an app within Celonis that fliers are sure to love. Lufthansa’s new baggage alert tool enables service partners to track and proactively communicate luggage location. Not only does it accelerate operational efficiency, but also improves overall customer experience by minimizing lost luggage headaches.

WINNER: Conrad Electronic, TD SYNNEX, and Schukat electronic

Conrad Electronic, TD SYNNEX, and Schukat electronic have together pioneered Celonis Networks. Through this groundbreaking, symbiotic arrangement, the companies share process data in real time. In the true spirit of innovation, this new networking approach has proven that process optimization does not need to stop at a company’s boundaries – but can extend into its end-to-end supply chain.

Value Excellence Award

The finalists of the award category stood out as true role models for end-to-end process excellence through their rapid achievement of significant new business value using Celonis. The top three performers were:

Panasonic

The Japanese giant is using Celonis to address a wide range of issues across the business, like duplicate payments, overdue accounts, and refining the inventory management. And the results have been impressive. For example, Panasonic was able to cut down its overdue payments by over 300 days – considerable new value that helps its business to thrive.

Saint-Gobain

Saint-Gobain has leveraged its exceptionally strong process Center of Excellence (CoE) to deliver widespread business benefits. The CoE has been a unifying force across the organization, bringing more and more teams, departments, and processes into Celonis, multiplying their value. The company has already seen key metrics, such as the DPO and DSO, significantly improve, reducing excess stock, cutting waste, and enhancing productivity around the globe.

WINNER: Pfizer

Pfizer’s value realization through the Process Intelligence platform is truly remarkable. The multinational pharmaceutical and biotechnology giant has already generated over $300M (US) in value thanks to rapid and widespread adoption of the Celonis system. Pfizer leadership has championed taking Celonis to the heart of every critical business process, helping optimize both operational effectiveness and patient outcomes.

And as impressive as its results have been, Pfizer believes it has barely scratched the surface of potential value realization. It’s currently looking into deploying Celonis to drive process improvements in inventory management and R&D.

Community Inspiration Award

This award goes to the Celonis customer that over the past 12 months has gone above and beyond to share their stories, knowledge and best practices with the wider Process Intelligence community. Through their example, they inspire process innovation and excellence in others.

The three finalists for 2024 were:

University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust

These public sector pioneers are using Process Intelligence to drastically reduce patient waiting times and missed appointments within its geographical catchment area. This work means that patients get better care faster. As a potential template that could be rolled out to other NHS trusts, it has huge implications for the state of public health in the UK – a truly inspirational story. 

Hitachi Energy

Everyone was hugely impressed at the speed and success with which such a large company was able to adopt Celonis. Across its many factories and service centers globally, Hitachi Energy has generated major benefits by deploying a rigorous top-down and bottom-up approach.

WINNER: Reckitt

Reckitt serves as a genuine inspiration to the whole Celonis-using community and is a deserving winner of the 2024 award. The company has unlocked millions of value with Celonis, across multiple functions. It has leveraged Celonis as a cornerstone of its ongoing digital transformation process.

And not only has Reckitt consistently overachieved in its process excellence initiatives – hitting value targets ahead of schedule again and again – and pioneered the use of AI in Process Intelligence, but the company has also been incredibly generous in sharing its learnings with the whole community.

Partner Awards

It’s not just customers who are process excellence game changers. As Celonis co-founder and co-CEO Bastian Nominacher put it: “The Game Changer Awards are also for celebrating our amazing partners. We want to recognize that ecosystem because it has such a positive effect.”

Echoing these sentiments, co-founder and CTO Martin Klenk said: “Our partners have been so key to the success of many of our customers. The success stories of the customers are also the success stories of the partners. Which is why we’re introducing four brand new awards this year.”

These new partner categories and their inaugural winners were:

• Value Excellence: This is awarded to the partner that has enabled and sustained exceptional value utilization at one of Celonis’ marquee clients, deploying cutting-edge technology and service features while driving a large-scale process transformation. The 2024 winner is: Accenture

• Innovation: Very often our partners' innovation is the foundation and catalyst for customers. This year’s winner, for example, has leveraged multiple new technologies combining generative AI and process mining across finance, supply chain, logistics, banking, and insurance. The 2024 winner is: IBM

• Partner of the Year (EMEA): This awardrecognizes the partner that has consistently delivered exceptional solutions driving significant positive impact for our clients in the EMEA region. The 2024 winner is a trusted leader and innovator in the partner space, delivering for instance the Cross Border Payments App. The 2024 winner is: ProcessLab

• Partner of the Year (North America): As per the EMEA award, the North American Partner of the Year goes to a business that has been really leading the charge with innovation solutions that are helping Celonis customers to drive critical business improvements. This partner was also responsible for developing the genuinely game-changing Maintenance Control Center. The 2024 winner is: Ashling Partners

Regional Game Changer Awards

In addition to the Global Customer Awards for Innovation, Value Excellence and Community Inspiration, Celonis also celebrated four customers for their outstanding working with Process Intelligence in DACH, EMEA, North America and Japan. The winners are:

• DACH: thyssenkrupp Rasselstein

• EMEA: JLR

• North America: Allstate

• Japan: Nippon Express Holdings

Changing the game, one process at a time

Reflecting on the awards and the celebration of Process Intelligence high-performers and value generators, Nominacher concluded: “I’m truly humbled to see what a powerful ecosystem of customers and partners we have assembled since we started this company. And the great thing is we are just getting started…”

For the official rules and conditions for the Global Game Changer Awards, please see the Global Game Changer Awards guidelines document (linked to from the Global Game Changers Awards webpage and available online as downloadable as a PDF).

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.