The Co-innovation Backstory: Emporix Commerce Execution Platform (CXP)

Emporix, a commerce SaaS company, launched its Commerce Execution Platform (CXP) powered by Celonis at CeloSphere 2022 and the effort highlights how Celonis Labs co-innovates with partners and customers. 

Emporix CXP enables companies to optimize commerce interactions on the fly based on real-time end-to-end process intelligence.  Celonis provides the process context for each customer and Emporix orchestrates the experience. Companies can monitor and adjust the commerce journey in real-time using process intelligence from Celonis EMS. 

Emporix is the first independent software vendor to build a product and business model on top of Celonis’ process context aware platform. Emporix's Commerce Execution Platform is system agnostic, can integrate with all known commerce systems and combines process context with targeted interaction optimization. Emporix CXP gives customers the ability to define and model execution scenarios such as payment, stock and order assistance with low-code capabilities.

At Celosphere 2022, Celonis, Emporix and AmerCareRoyal, a wholesaler of disposable goods for the foodservice, medical, retail, safety and hospitality industries, will have a panel discussion on the future of commerce execution. AmerCareRoyal is the customer co-innovating and implementing Emporix CXP under the tutelage of Chief Information Officer Jeff DeSandre. 

4 must-know Execution Management themes from Celonis Labs 

We caught up with Eugenio Cassiano, Senior Vice President of Celonis Labs, and Stefan Schmidt, Chief Product and Technical Officer at Emporix, to talk about the commerce and co-innovation behind Emporix CXP. "If you look pre-pandemic, customer experience was driven by the top line and was all about growth," said Cassiano. "Today, CEOs are looking at their commerce efforts more holistically. It's not just about growth. It's about operational excellence too."

Schmidt noted his company "looks at commerce more from a business point of view and profitability, capital efficiency and returns." That approach should be welcome given ongoing concerns about inflation and supply chain disruptions.

Emporix CXP will be available in limited availability to select customers with general availability in the first quarter. 

Key points:

The partnership. Cassiano said Celonis Labs is looking for disruptive business models to leverage Celonis EMS, and Emporix's approach to composable commerce was a good fit to combine what the companies do well. Schmidt added that Celonis' insights into processes and multiple enterprise systems coupled with Emporix could create "an entirely new class of digital commerce enterprise solutions."

The timeline. Celonis Labs and Emporix began working together to design Emporix CXP in January. In March, the two companies started building the product. In June, Celonis co-CEO Alex Rinke noted at Celonis World Tour 2022 New York that Celonis EMS can be used for front-end processes including commerce. In July, AmerCareRoyal joined the effort as customer and innovation partner. 

Digital commerce is a transformation engine. "With the beginning of 2022 the world has seen a new paradigm shift and while the focus for B2B brands was all about top-line growth, we have observed a lot of interest in adding additional dimensions such as sustainability (green line) and providing a positive impact on the bottom-line robustness." said Cassiano. "I believe that providing those three lines is an important step to innovate in the commerce space."

Schmidt added that B2B enterprises have historically shied away from digital commerce due to competition to channel networks and field sales, but that has changed. "At Emporix, we believe that digital commerce is at the heart of the digital transformation of a business," said Schmidt. "It spans the entire business."

Transparency and commerce. Cassiano said there's a need to orchestrate commerce processes to provide customers with more transparency amid supply chain disruptions and offering alternatives. Schmidt said CXP will be able to look for signals to relay to customers and proactively suggest the same product from a different supplier.

Supply chain and front-end commerce should be more intertwined. "There is always a 'hidden' inefficiency somewhere in the process," said Cassiano. "The Holy Grail is keeping the promise and delivering the promise and now we can do so based on prediction on the best, happiest process path."

Schmidt said businesses see the supply chain and commerce as intertwined, but the customer often sees two different functions. By coupling front-end commerce and the supply chain more, enterprises can enable better outcomes for customers

Use cases emerge organically. Use cases emerged through the incubation process with beta customers. Schmidt said:

“The scenarios took a business-centric view. What’s important to the business right now, rather than just looking at the customer. Whilst customer experience is important, sometimes a business has to do what needs to be done, such as shifting stock that’s too long in a warehouse, promoting products that have a better margin, that are more readily available or that are sponsored by a supplier, just to name a few.”

Customers ultimately determined that CXP’s best use cases were Payment Assistance, Stock Assistance, Order Assistance and Sales Assistance.

Key Performance Indicators that are most important for B2B commerce. Downstream costs after an order has been placed can be avoided, according to Schmidt. In addition, reduction in time during the order-to-cash process, order shipped, and invoicing all boost the bottom line, he said. "We can also avoid costs that are caused by returns or substitution," explained Schmidt. "Instead of letting customers know after they placed an order that a product is no longer available, we can do that proactively either before they place the order or by interacting with them to confirm a substitution before it even goes on the truck."

Schmidt said the partnership with Celonis will enable better order forecasting as well as supplier performance.

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.