Celonis Next 2024: Process Intelligence and AI take center stage within the enterprise

Artificial intelligence (AI) has gone from project to product with remarkable speed—driven largely by advances in generative AI and the proliferation of consumer-facing LLMs. People around the world routinely use GPTs and copilots to help them write birthday invitations, punch-up social posts, or create a dinner recipe using only the ingredients in their cupboard. Many people even use AI for work-related tasks, such as summarizing meeting notes or writing emails. As impressive as these AI use cases are however, delivering meaningful results with enterprise AI requires an additional element—process intelligence.

During the Celonis:Next online event, co-CEO and co-founder Alexander Rinke and fellow Celonauts walked viewers through the ways Celonis brings process intelligence to every part of the enterprise through recent product innovations and AI-enabled features, including Process Intelligence Graph enhancements, Process Copilots, AI-powered apps, Studio updates, and more.

“We’re proud to be trusted by the world's leading companies to help make AI not just a parlor trick, but a new way of doing business,” said Rinke in a press release. “For us, it’s all about bringing Process Intelligence to every part of the enterprise—BI tools, automation, and AI. The strong demand from existing and new customers shows the importance of the combination of Process Intelligence and AI. The innovations we announced at Celonis:Next enables us to deliver even greater business value across the top, bottom, and green lines for our customers and the broader ecosystem.”

Process Intelligence Graph

Launched at Celosphere 2023, the Process Intelligence Graph (PI Graph) sits at the heart of the Celonis platform. The PI Graph builds a system-agnostic digital twin of a business and couples it with the unique business context within which it operates (KPI definitions, improvement opportunities, what makes something “good” or “bad” for the organization). It shows how a business is running and where and how it could run better.

Celonis Process Intelligence Graph

PI Graph enhancements announced at Celonis:Next include:

• Oracle EBS Transformations: Seamlessly bring Oracle data into the Process Intelligence Graph for key processes like Accounts Payable, Procurement, Order Management, Accounts Receivable, and Inventory Management.

• Fast Data Model Search: Find objects and events faster than ever and keep searches focused with improved filters.

• Improved Relationships UI: Model objects and events more easily with a more intuitive user interface, including the ability to show incoming or outgoing object relationships.

• Intuitive Object Selection: Thanks to the PI Graph’s object-centric foundation, quickly create cuts of the data for different use cases and users.

Process Copilots

Also unveiled at Celosphere 2023, Celonis Process Copilots make it easy for users who aren’t data or process analysts to ask LLM-based GenAI chatbot questions about their processes. They are also easy to set up.

First, customers model their data in the PI Graph and define the knowledge they’re drawing on so the Copilots can understand the business. Then, they select the KPIs, records, and attributes the Copilots can access. Finally, the Copilot is published and the entire organization can start asking it questions, like “What is our supply vs demand for each month?” The Copilot finds the relevant metrics and creates a chart to help less-technical users surface insights quickly.

Celonis Process Copilots

Process Copilots deliver:

• Faster insights for anyone in the organization without the need to build a dedicated dashboard to answer simple questions.

• More productive Centers of Excellence which can scale by configuring a Copilot once rather than building multiple ad-hoc dashboards.

• Enjoyable user experience by asking for data in your own words.

"Process Copilots put Celonis Process Intelligence within easy reach of our people, empowering them to drive process excellence and make more informed business decisions while allowing our Celonis experts to focus on wider value creation," said Alexander Skolik, Digitalization Expert at Enervie, in a press release.

Copilots can even search the Celonis Marketplace for apps, from Celonis and our ecosystem partners, that can help companies get to value fast.

AI-powered Apps

In addition to the GenAI-powered Process Copilots, Celonis used the Next to demonstrate how its platform apps are being infused with AI. During the event, the company demonstrated the Planning Parameter Optimization App, which provides material planners with updated planning parameters based on evolving consumption and replenishment patterns derived from a machine-learning (ML) recommendation model.

Celonis Planning Parameter Optimization App

"Using Celonis' Planning Parameter Optimization app, we can more accurately monitor and manage our supply chain, reducing costs and improving key metrics like excess inventory and on-time delivery," said Thomas Stoll, Vice President Global Supply Chain at manroland Goss web systems, in a press release.

Other AI-powered 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, and the Duplicate Invoice Checker, which is purpose-built to address duplicate invoices often missed by ERP.

Investments across the Celonis platform

In addition to the PI Graph enhancements and multiple AI-focused announcements, Celonis highlighted additional investments it is making, including:

• Revamped Studio experience: Improvements to the Celonis platform’s low-code development environment.

• Celonis Process Management: A suite of products including the Process Designer, Navigator, and Cockpit resulting from the integration of Symbio’s technology (acquired last year) into the Celonis platform.

• Emporix Orchestration Engine: An intelligent process orchestration engine that leverages Celonis' Process Intelligence to automate processes end-to-end in real-time.

• Standard Data Ingestion API: Makes it easier and faster for companies to get data into Celonis from source systems when using third-party data platforms and tools.

• Premium Process Query Engine: Turbocharges the speed and the amount of data Celonis can process—up to 4X more data and processing speeds that are 3X faster.

Enhanced Celonis Studio development environment

For more information on the new and updated apps, features, and capabilities announced today, please watch the on-demand Celonis:Next video embedded above.

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 his career in the software industry and tech media, he was an IT professional in the social research and energy industries.