KARL STORZ: 'Empowering people to think in processes'

Etienne Kneschke, Executive Director of Global Business Process Management at KARL STORZ, said Process Mining and Execution Management drives a culture of transparency as well as a common language around process excellence. 

Since its beginnings in 1945, the KARL STORZ family company has grown into a global manufacturer and distributor of endoscopes, medical instruments, and devices. The range of endoscopic instruments for human and veterinary medicine now includes more than 15,000 products. The most recent KARL STORZ developments are in digital documentation systems and comprehensive operating room concepts.

In 2019, KARL STORZ started the implementation of Celonis with Order-to-Cash and has continued to connect Procure-to-Pay, Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable and Repair-to-Cash since then. Other business processes are on the roadmap.

Kneschke's take is that there are multiple levels of value from process mining. On the one hand, these include measurable values such as improving throughput times, reducing operating costs or improving working capital. On the other hand, however, soft values should not be underestimated. These arise among employees who gain new insights and perspectives about business processes as a result of the visualized end-to-end transparency.  

Kneschke, a speaker at Celosphere 2022, explained in an interview:

"Now, we have several processes in place. In the beginning, we started with Order-to-Cash. And we knew that the data we are mining with Celonis is going to be amazingly powerful. That transforming of data into end-to-end business processes and information can speed up process optimizations tremendously. We're creating transparency about business processes that are hidden and invisible in systems."

This transparency is created via process-related and aggregated dashboards that track various Process Performance Indicators (PPIs) at KARL STORZ. 

Simon Geisenberger, Senior Business Process Consultant at KARL STORZ, said the strategy of the company is to become continually more efficient and to understand process complexity. Celonis is the tool that enables a wide range of stakeholders to better grasp process improvement not.

Kneschke said cultural change is possible when that process intelligence is democratized. 

"People think and act the same way because they get the same understanding of the process. That is so valuable because you enable people to think in processes, to use the same language when they talk about processes, to see the same things, and to get the same ideas about how to optimize them,” said Kneschke.

What's next? KARL STORZ has developed a roadmap to connect as many business processes as possible to establish continuous process analysis, improvement and monitoring.

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.