Catalysts for Change: The Celonis Community

When we built this company, we never imagined how huge the community of business process excellence enthusiasts and experts would become. This week, we welcome an amazing 15,000 people to Celosphere Live, all passionate about process mining and the measurable, real, business outcomes it can deliver. It’s exciting to watch this community grow and rewarding to join them in taking action for a better, frictionless future.

Some members of the community are taking action to stem the scourge of the coronavirus. Avnet, for example, supports healthcare and medical customers in 125 countries. Since COVID, demand for ventilators, respirators, CT scans, ultrasounds and x-ray devices has skyrocketed. Their team is using Celonis as an early warning system in their supply chain.  Colorcon, a supplier of pharmaceutical products, maps suppliers based in heavily affected countries to adapt the supply chain in real time.

Late one Friday evening as I was shutting down for the day, I got a message from a customer in the United States, the kind of message that as an entrepreneur and CEO, you never forget. In the midst of the pandemic, he was calling to say thank you. His team of healthcare workers is on the front lines, saving lives. I was deeply humbled that we were able to help them.

Seen outside the confines of the current pandemic, our customers have long been realizing value from Celonis. Chart saved $10M in procurement in 2019 by infusing intelligence into their procurement. Uber, saved over $20M in efficiency gains.

Yet, despite all the progress we are enabling as a community, it’s the tip of the iceberg. There is still so much operational friction in the world. Technology is the underpinning of every enterprise and has been for decades. Yet despite the advances in technology,  processes are still handled as if nothing had changed since the 1980s. The way we work is fundamentally challenged. To address this, our Chief Product Officer, Hala Zeine, and I announced this week our new operational apps for accounts payable and materials management in supply chain.

This week we introduce:

• Operational apps. Today we are putting our apps in the hands of everyone in companies to enable the future of work. I am convinced this will change the future of Celonis too. See Hala’s blog for the full background.

• Rapid adoption program. To get you started quickly, our rapid adoption program for the apps allows you to install them directly from the app store. For existing customers and for anyone who signs before the end of May, this program is free of charge.

• The availability of real time data connectors. This will enable your business to take action and automate. We connect your data to Celonis in real time.

• Business Value Architects. This is a new service we are introducing, under the leadership of our CRO and Co-Owner, Miguel Milano, to drive measurable business value and accelerate adoption. Provided either by Celonis or a partner in our ecosystem, the value architects work as an extension of the customer team to frame, realize, and sustain value.

I have never been more excited about the future of the Celonis community. We are privileged to have the support of champions like Lars Reinkemeyer, who instinctively saw the value of strategic operational process improvement for Siemens. In his book, Process Mining in Action, he covers not only the Siemens story, but also BMW, Uber, ABB, and Bosch, among others. That’s why my closing appeal at Celosphere Live was to act now, and discover the Lars in you.

Alexander Rinke

Co-Founder and Co-CEO

Alex Rinke is co-founder & co-CEO of Celonis, the undisputed leader in process mining and execution management technology. Born out of a university project in Munich, Alex and his co-founders turned the theoretical concept of process mining into a working product, and landed their first client within weeks. Alex and his team successfully grew the company for five years without external funding, scaling rapidly across the globe before raising money. Five years and several rounds later, Celonis has now earned decacorn status, and recently completed the first ever $1bn Series D Round.

Today, Alex steers the global vision and executive team for Celonis, and is an active ambassador for sustainability and equal access to education. Alex firmly believes that by unlocking the world’s processes, we can create a better future for businesses and the planet.