Celosphere 2022: Skoda targets procurement process excellence with the help of gamification

Czech automaker Skoda has identified €1.7 million in optimizing its procurement processes with plans to scale Celonis with the help of a little gamification.

Speaking at Celosphere 2022, Vaclav Slapka, Coordinator of Data Analytics & Process Center in general procurement, said the company started using Celonis Process Mining and Execution Management System (EMS) in July 2021 and validated data and went live in November. Slapka and two data analysts implemented Celonis.

Celosphere 2022: Everything you need to know news, product, process mining best practices

By April, Skoda, owned by VW Group, started to realize value and has been expanding adoption ever since. Slapka said the use of Celonis is aligned with company's goal to be a top 5 automaker in Europe by 2030. In 2021, Skoda sold nearly 900,000 cars.

Slapka said the initial use case revolved around general procurement and Purchase-to-Pay. The data on Skoda's nearly 100,000 orders and €1.3 billion in general procurement volume.

"We see the potential in Celonis, but to leverage the potential we need people on boarded on Celonis as soon as possible so they can come up with more ideas," said Slapka.

Slapka said Celonis EMS was also a way to make the culture more data driven and transparent. Enter change management by gamification.

In addition to informational campaigns, change management and knowledge training, Skoda created a game focused on new use cases and competition. The upside was an accelerated rollout.

As Skoda employees competed to master Celonis they received awards for their digital fitness with points for skills, log-ins and usage. Ultimately, a Celonis user could become a Conqueror as they built skills.

Slapka said Skoda's gamification plan onboarded all users after 2 months and used all of the Celonis licenses. Now the plan is to operationalize process mining and execution management for daily use.

Skoda has 25 daily active users on Celonis and 50 monthly active users. "Our vison is to roll process mining out across Skoda processes and become a lighthouse for VW Group," said Slapka, who is also planning a Center of Excellence (CoE). "We want to be a Center of Excellence for VW Group. The Purchase-to-Pay process is in every brand in VW Group."

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.