What is Process Intelligence and how will it help you optimize your business processes?

Lift the lid on any enterprise and you’ll find a hive of processes that interconnect across different departments, systems, and people. These processes determine how effectively the business runs and delivers value.

Importantly, the way processes operate in reality is different from how they were originally designed. Teams design a process to run in a straight line and assume a couple of variants will inevitably creep in but the problem is, processes very quickly start to look like a spaghetti map.

In the recent Process Optimization Report, 63% of enterprise leaders said that sub-optimal processes are costing time and reducing productivity – even though 83% view processes as their greatest lever for value and fastest lever for change. Something has to change.

Process Intelligence is that change. Process Intelligence provides the understanding and tools needed to make processes work better for customers, companies, and the planet.

• Discover the differences between Process Intelligence and Business Intelligence here. 

What is Process Intelligence?

Process Intelligence acts like the essential connective tissue between an enterprise’s people, systems, and processes. It provides a business-wide shared understanding of how processes actually work, how they interact with each other, and how to improve them.

It starts with Process Intelligence taking data from systems like ERPs, CRMS, and Excel and using process mining technology to turn that data into a living, moving digital twin of a business’s end-to-end processes.

Using AI algorithms and specialized process improvement knowledge, Process Intelligence then shows teams where value is hiding in their processes.

After the data has been gathered and insights provided, Process Intelligence gives people the tools needed to analyze, improve, and monitor processes. In doing  so, it helps teams  to understand exactly where value is hiding in your business, and exactly how you can capture it. For a deeper dive into the tools involved, read: What are Process Intelligence tools and how do they work?

7 ways Process Intelligence helps optimize business processes

Process Intelligence is purpose-built to unlock business value. It provides leaders with unprecedented clarity of their businesses as they truly operate, rather than how they think they operate. It provides both the roadmap to process optimization and the vehicle to get there. Here’s a look at some of the specific ways Process Intelligence helps optimize business processes.

1. Visibility and data-driven decision making

Process Intelligence draws together and standardizes process data in a single platform. This removes assumptions, anecdotes, and gut feeling from decision-making. As a result, business leaders gain data-backed insights to help them make better decisions.

• “We’re finally data-driven in our approach of how we deploy resources. We know exactly where to focus our efforts to solve issues, instead of just adding another approval step to improve compliance.” Read more about how Celonis Process Intelligence delivered a multi-billion dollar, multi-agency process and procurement audit 200 x faster for the State of Oklahoma.

2. Uncovering value and process optimization

The process data and analytics tools provided by Process Intelligence help uncover value opportunities and eliminate inefficiencies hidden in organizations’ processes – from eliminating bottlenecks to redesigning processes to optimize business performance. By automating data collection, cleansing, and analysis, Process Intelligence can accelerate optimization initiatives by reducing time to value.

Furthermore, armed with dynamic process insights, organizations can continuously optimize and streamline their workflows to boost productivity, cut costs, and elevate customer experience.

• “Once we had everything set up, we had this ‘Wow’ moment. For the first time, we saw our processes as they really are and could directly point out inefficiencies.” See how Celonis Process Intelligence helped Deutsche Telekom Services Europe save over €66M in their Procure-to-Pay processes.

3. Targeted, strategic automation

The full visualization of business processes from Process Intelligence helps enterprise leaders identify workflows suitable for automation. The technology highlights repetitive, high-volume manual tasks that would be more productively tackled by robotic process automation (RPA) tools or similar. Importantly, it can also simulate the cross-business impact of such automations before they’re implemented. In this way people are freed to focus on higher value strategic tasks.

• Discover what automation software is and how to maximize its value

4. An enablement layer for AI

Process Intelligence provides AI and machine learning (ML) algorithms with a detailed, data-informed understanding of an organization’s processes and how they interact. This, in combination with process best practices and knowledge of business operations and governance, amplifies AI’s ability to optimize processes. The AI not only knows how the business functions and identifies value-creation opportunities, it can also precisely model the impact of process changes, and rapidly respond to anomalies with intelligent automation countermeasures.

• Find out how to make AI work for your enterprise by feeding it Process Intelligence

5. Performance monitoring and continuous improvement:

Business process management professionals can track process performance, and the impact on business objectives via Process Intelligence dashboards. This includes the implementation of ‘early warning alerts’ if functional or process performance drops out of expected ranges. At the same time, Process Intelligence can play a critical role in digital transformation – monitoring the real-time impact of process optimization initiatives. These insights allow process improvements to be adjusted in response to real-world outcomes on a continual basis. Process Intelligence supports a culture of continuous process improvement within an organization.

• “The working capital impact that Celonis has had – in the range of millions – is quite astonishing.” Find out how Celonis Process Intelligence reduced rejected sales orders by 86% and unlocked millions of dollars in accounts receivable for PepsiCo.

6. Team collaboration and alignment

The shared visualization platform that Process Intelligence tools provide allows different business functions to work together on process discovery and optimization. Mutual understanding of process interdependency across the business eliminates silos and siloed thinking, promoting collaboration and pursuit of process improvements aligned to strategic goals.

• Check out how the Celonis Process Intelligence Graph provides a common language for enterprise process performance.

7. Compliance, risk and process best practice

With a digital twin of business processes as they actually happen, enterprise leaders can ensure cross-functional compliance with regulations, business controls, and process best practices. Process Intelligence dashboards enable them to see anomalies and instances of non-compliance – as well as new process adoption rates. Process Intelligence not only helps offset business risk, but also acts as an aid to change management, pinpointing teams or functions requiring greater support.

• “The capabilities of Celonis are incredible. It totally changes the conversation when you have Finance, the business, and our team on the same page.” See how Process Intelligence has facilitated a digital transformation program at Cardinal Health leading to a 60% growth in user adoption over 12 months.

Process Intelligence has the power to transform businesses into the best version of themselves, finding value hidden in their processes and providing the tools to capture it. Beyond that, it sets up an ongoing cycle of self-improvement that puts businesses in the best possible shape to adapt to volatile trading conditions and embrace emerging technologies with confidence.

Discover a new way to understand your business processes

Andrew London

Senior Content Marketing Manager

Andrew London is a Senior Content Marketing Manager at Celonis. He specializes in both strategy and execution, helping with positioning and messaging at one end, while getting his hands dirty producing content at the other. He learnt how to do all this working with some of the biggest names in B2B tech at Velocity Partners — being part of the team that helped them win The Drum Agency of the Year award during his time there. Before that he cut his teeth working for SEO powerhouse TechRadar where he proudly held the top ranking position for “Best gadgets”.