How Mars Uses Process Mining to Improve Deduction Management

Mars had three objectives when they started working with Celonis: reduce deduction inflow, increase recovery rates and cut cycle times. Here’s how they achieved them all.

When your enterprise operates at the scale of Mars, the fourth largest private company in the US, deductions can add up quickly. But without clear visibility of what’s causing those deductions and where they’re coming from, tackling and reducing them is a tough task.

That was the challenge facing Nikki Nagel when she was appointed Mars Accounts Receivable Transformation Lead earlier this year. Joining us at Celonis World Tour 2021, she spoke about how Mars is using the Celonis Execution Management System (EMS) to minimize leakage and enforce greater control and compliance across Accounts Receivable (A/R), and walked us through her Celonis learning and development journey.

Here’s a few of the highlights from Nikki’s session.

A ‘robust’ training platform to go from novice to expert in just a few weeks

Before getting started with Celonis, Nikki was no stranger to A/R transformation — having already held various A/R roles at Mars over the previous seven years. But even when you’re an expert in your field, mastering transformational technology can be a challenge. 

“When I started, I didn't know anything about process mining; I didn't know anything about Celonis,” said Nikki. “But when you first start with Celonis, it's very exciting because it gives you so much information. Through Celonis, we were able to set up KPIs, measure the trends, and then also start making those changes based on the new opportunities we found.”

“For me, the key to being successful in the first 30 days of my new role as A/R transformation lead was really investing time in learning about Celonis, and taking the time to complete the Celonis Training Tracks,” she continued. “Celonis has a very robust training platform, which really helped me to accelerate my knowledge of Celonis and all of my learning.”

Leveraging early success to drive change quickly

After using Celonis’ Training Tracks to get herself up to speed and gain confidence in what she could achieve with the Celonis EMS, Nikki was ready to start putting it to use, and leveraged early successes to drive adoption across the business.

“Doing all of my training upfront gave me the confidence to know exactly where we could use Celonis to achieve our three primary goals: reducing deduction inflow, increasing recovery rates, and reducing cycle times,” explained Nikki. 

“Prior to working with Celonis, we had a high unidentified deduction inflow. We couldn’t see the root causes or sources of deductions — only that deductions were being created,” she continued. “Using Celonis, I identified that our opportunity wasn’t just in how those deductions were coded and identified. By applying automation more intelligently, we could also cut coding and rework time that was going into manual deduction identification.”

Making Celonis part of business as usual at Mars

The changes made off the back of that discovery helped Nikki and her team see the full value of process mining for A/R and the Celonis EMS in action — driving adoption across the department and the rest of the business. 

“When we're sharing Celonis [with the rest of the enterprise], we want to make sure that we're sharing it with the right message,” said Nikki. “We're here to help you and find where you're performing non-value adding tasks on a recurring basis, rather than spending that time on value creation for your company. So, we make it clear that we’re here to show them that, rather than pointing out where they’re doing things wrong.”

Through that approach, Nikki is making Celonis part of business as usual at Mars — helping the entire enterprise harness the power of process mining to improve execution.

Watch our full chat with Nikki from Celonis World Tour 2021 now and find out more about Mars’ Celonis EMS journey. Plus, learn exactly how Nikki implemented and led a 30, 60, 90 day plan for success.

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Celonis helps you drive process improvement. Across your entire business. At speed. Companies all over the world use Celonis to optimize their processes, boost their business performance, and lighten the load on mother earth.