The field of Process Mining was pioneered by academics since the 90s, but has exploded with commercial applications and enterprise adoption in the last 10 years. Even so, the field continues to be pushed forward by the academic community. Celonis’ Process Mining for Audit Professionals badge - released Fall 2021 - is no exception.
Careers in Accounting and Audit continue to be transformed by emerging technologies. Firms are looking more and more for talent with technical capabilities and universities are responding with a resounding “YES! We will equip our students for the accounting and audit jobs of the 20’s!”
Celonis software - the Execution Management System (EMS) - is already being adopted as a key tool across thousands of consultancies, professional services firms, and audit firms around the world. If you want to learn more about commercial adoption, listen in on this 1hr webinar hosted on January 28th, 2022 by Celonis Digital Consulting.
The idea for this #CelonisCertified training came out of an Academic Partner Roundtable hosted in February 2021. An academic partner, Dr. Gregory Dawson (ex-PwC Partner) made a case for the relevance of a niche training to equip his students to be job-market ready. And the wider community agreed.
Our Academic Alliance is made up of passionate accounting educators who see how technical skills can accelerate the career development of their students. In fact, Dr. David A. Wood came forward after this roundtable to bring a solution: co-creation of a training badge with Celonis as a part of a greater research project on this topic with co-authors Dr. Marc Eulerich, Dr. Scott Emett, and Dr. Scott Summers.
Pictured: Co-author Dr. David A. Wood with Senior Academic Alliance Manager Kate Lovejoy at American Accounting Association conference presenting the Audit Professionals badge.
Within a couple of short months, Dr. David A. Wood, Dr. Marc Eulerich, Dr. Scott Emett, and Dr. Scott Summers had an initial training to pilot. And Dr. Gregory Dawson graciously opened his class to be the first 50 recipients of the badge.
What did we hear?
“I feel a lot more prepared for the future of audit and that I have a leg-up on other graduates that haven’t had this training…”
“This is by far the coolest and most intuitive software that I've ever used....the whole class is mesmerized by it. It just feels like they combined all the best things from other softwares and then added process mining on top and made it insanely easy to use.”
“...Thank you so much for taking time to share this amazing software with us! I will be pushing to use it in (my) KPMG office and also exploring some of its features using (a) company's data.”
"...I am in awe of the software and am excited to finish the certification. My mind is buzzing with ideas of where I would love to implement Celonis in the future..."
After the successful pilot, David, Marc, Scott and Scott conducted interviews with industry professionals, incorporating key content into the Audit Professional badge, so that learners can get a peek into practice.
In Fall 2021, Celonis launched this Process Mining for Audit Professionalscourse to our global academic and commercial community. These Masters of Accounting Students were the first 50 of hundreds (soon to be thousands) of accounting graduates who better understand core accounting topics through process mining and interactive analyses, e.g. Segregation of Duties dashboard, and can conduct next-gen internal audits with Celonis EMS
As Academics are a core part of our Partner Ecosystem, alongside Consulting and Technology partners, our authorship team was recognized as winners of the Curriculum Co-Creation of the Year (Academic Award) at our Annual Ecosystem Summit. Their work is bringing knowledge across classrooms and firms around the world.
Academics and industry professionals, we invite you to learn about process mining and develop foundational skills in applying Celonis EMS software for audits through this 8 hour training course.
And when you finish, please share your story via the survey to support our research!