Celonis partner Ofi optimizes last mile logistics in Mexico

Platinum Celonis partner Ofi, a 10-year-old consulting firm focused on expanding process mining in Latin America, worked with a large consumer product goods company to optimize its last mile delivery route planning.

Peter Ostroske, Founder and CEO of Ofi, said the project is an example of how process mining is making its way toward manufacturing, financial services and consumer product goods industries in Latin America. "There's still a lot of work to be done in Latin America because there's not a lot of knowledge about process mining in-region just yet," said Ostroske.

Ofi is part of a new breed of consultants building practices on Celonis and process mining. "We strongly believe process mining is going to accelerate organizational change because there won't be as many discussions around how a process is being managed or how inefficiencies are affecting our business outcomes," said Ostroske. "It'll be a very binary conversation around this is what's going on and this is what needs this to change. The consulting business will move to delivering results on a P&L basis."

For large enterprises across enterprises, Mexico is a key location. For the last mile process mining implementation, the Ofi client was optimizing last mile routes via visualizations and balanced scorecards within Celonis. "We helped them understand how to take action on some of the process insights and efficiency metrics," said Ostroske. 

The Ofi customer was tracking how many goods were being delivered per kilometer driven as well as how much product was getting to distributors and retailers. Truck asset efficiency and preventative maintenance are other areas critical to the last mile process initiative, said Ostroske.

Last mile optimization is a key use case in a market like Mexico, said Ostroske. "There are some unique challenges in Mexico versus a market like the US. Infrastructure and digitization are both important domestic issues," he explained. "Connectivity between ports and cities via road or rail requires additional support from local, federal and state governments. There is also a need for Mexican companies to invest more in digital strategies within the supply chain if they expect to be competitive on a global level."

Despite those challenges, Ostroske said Mexico's supply chain will see investment. "The businesses that are investing in Mexico are obviously seeing an important opportunity to serve the United States, as people de-risk from the political instability of China," said Ostroske.

According to Ostroske, companies looking to build out operations in Mexico need to be aware of the cultural differences as well as process mining maturity.

Ofi's clients fall into two categories. Companies with global operations and operations in Mexico are looking to spread process mining best practices across all geographies. Companies based in Mexico and other countries in Latin America are just experiencing process mining for the first time, but manufacturing and financial services are industries that are adopting process mining quickly.

He said Mexican companies are relatively new to process mining and Ofi's job is to educate those companies. "We've been doing a lot of proof of values with large companies throughout the region just to show them the power of process mining on a single process," said Ostroske.

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Larry Dignan

Editor in Chief (former)

Larry Dignan is the former Editor in Chief of Celonis Media. Before joining Celonis, he was Editor in Chief of ZDNet and has covered the technology industry and transformation trends for more than two decades, publishing articles in WallStreetWeek.com, Inter@ctive Week, The New York Times, and Financial Planning magazine.