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Celosphere 2024: Creating a better world for everyone, process-first
The mission is clear. Kicking off Celosphere 2024, Celonis co-Founder and co-CEO Alexander Rinke issued a rallying call to the thousands of change-makers in attendance – to push even harder to make processes work for people, companies and the planet.
He explained how the more complex and multi-layered processes have become over time, the more important it has become to step away from a systems-centric approach and become process-led.
Citing real-world Process Intelligence wins in procurement, production, sustainability, and finance from world-class companies, Rinke confirmed:
“With a process-first approach, companies become more productive, more efficient, and more sustainable. And the planet thrives. So when processes work, everything works — better. Process Intelligence connects you to your processes, your teams to each other, and emerging technologies — like AI — to your business. Finally, AI knows how your business flows.”
Process Intelligence provides the shared understanding of how a business actually runs and the tools to improve it. And, the platform is maturing fast. Rinke and his team used the keynote speech to unveil multiple innovative new products and enhancements, and how they will transform customers' experiences and businesses.
Celonis co-Founder and co-CEO Alex Rinke on stage at Celosphere 2024.
New and enhanced functionality
The first of these to be showcased was Celonis Networks. Launched in beta, Networks extends the power of Process Intelligence by enabling companies to connect to each other, to share intelligence to address diverse process challenges from logistics to sustainability.
Meanwhile, Rinke and his team revealed other significant platform enhancements focused on improved data ingestion, new data tools, and a simplified data interface. Because more and more customers are using Celonis operationally to manage their vital strategic processes – and that means processing huge volumes of data.
The Celonis Data Core (or Celocore)has been launched to meet this great (and growing) need. Celocore makes it faster and easier for users to load data into the Celonis platform, powering a step-change in both speed and scale.
With updated connections and improved data model coverage for Oracle, you can easily push data from third-party databases and ETL tools such as Databricks or Snowflake, and the platform’s custom Extractor Builder is now compatible with more systems. Which means more data, brought in more easily than ever.
But, says VP of Product Marketing Divya Krishnan, that’s just the beginning. “Customers can expect next-level speed and scale”, she said. “With our new data stack, extraction, transformation, and load times have been slashed. In combination with our market-leading Process Query Engine which we launched last year, this means that you can expect up to 14x improvement in speed, 20x the volume compared to competition and a 10x improvement in data freshness.”
Additionally, Celonis’ technology partners are extending the platform's capabilities through strategic integrations. For example, the union of Celonis' process digital twin with Ardoq's enterprise architecture mapping enables IT teams to evaluate system and application investments, driving enhanced system modernization, cost optimization, and risk management outcomes.
Celonis Process Management
To further help organizations with the demands of business transformation, Celonis has integrated enterprise process management solutions into the Process Intelligence platform. Celonis Process Management brings together transactional data around how your processes actually run and conceptual data about how they should run. Now users can identify in real time where processes deviate from the ideal path, as well as design, re-model and, with the help of AI, deploy their processes across their organizations.
New user experience
Celonis has transformed the platform’s interface with AI capabilities over the past year, focusing on speed and usability. New AI assistants enhance every aspect of the platform: from offering users chat-based interactions to accelerate data import through Celocore, to simplifying dashboard creation in Studio with conversational AI support.
New Apps
A majority of Celonis customers use at least one platform app, getting value in half the time. Well, good news. There’s a whole new stable of purpose-built apps, spanning different industries and use cases, including:
Logistics and transportation: new apps for load consolidation and for detention and demurrage.
Front office: A new customer service app to help reduce re-assignments and improve first contact resolution.
Additionally, over the last year Celonis has been leveraging key partners’ industry expertise to build a new class of purpose-built apps in its Celostone program. The partner program’s launch apps are:
Celonis Plant Maintenance Navigator - powered by Marcadus (Manufacturing)
Celonis Maintenance Control Center - powered by Ashling Partners (Manufacturing)
Celonis Cross Border Payments - powered by ProcessLab (Banking)
Celonis Tax-Ray - powered by KMLZ (Finance)
No AI without PI
One of the overarching messages during the keynote, and the whole event, is that any artificial intelligence strategy can only work effectively when powered by the process data, contextual business understanding, and standardized process knowledge within Process Intelligence. Or, more simply, there’s no AI without PI.
But when they come together, the business outcomes can be extraordinary. Which is why one of the most important areas of innovation unveiled this year was in the AI space.
Celonis VP of Product Marketing Divya Krishnan on stage at Celosphere 2024.
AgentC
Developing and deploying AI agents that reason autonomously, leveraging tools and data to achieve your goals is one of the hot-button topics in GenAI. Meet AgentC. AgentC is a suite of AI agent tools, integrations, and partnerships enabling users to take advantage of AI agents built by partners, and to create custom agents in leading agent developer platforms. It puts an agency of trustworthy, Process Intelligence-powered AI agents at your fingertips. And thanks to new integrations, you can configure and roll-out your AI agents within major environments including CrewAI, Amazon Bedrock, IBM watsonX Orchestrate, and Microsoft Copilot Studio.
Process Copilots
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.
AI Annotation Builder
This innovation enables users to enrich their Process Intelligence Graph to make it an even smarter foundation for all of the enterprise AI work that they’re undertaking. This is a great fit, for instance, for AI-augmented processes involving high volumes of free text – such as classifying sales orders or conducting risk assessments around transfer of materials from one plant to another. The AI Annotation Builder means Celonis customers can extract the valuable signal from the noise of unstructured data – extract it, analyze it, and put it to work.
A process-first future
The Celosphere ‘24 keynote left an indelible impression. For every function in every industry, every strategy and every use case, when processes work, everything else works, too. The session framed an exciting phase of evolution for Process Intelligence, with new and enhanced functionality focused on creating almost limitless opportunities for customer value generation. It laid out a process-first roadmap for activating AI – AI that knows how your business flows – to realize its benefits, not just anticipate its potential.
The final word on this process-first future should go to CEO Alex Rinke:
“Imagine a whole world where processes work. People feel fulfilled and less frustrated, while companies – your companies – become more productive, efficient, and sustainable. Together, we can reduce waste and drive innovation, benefiting the planet. It sounds like a happy ending to the story, but trust us, we’re just getting started.”
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