Top process mining and execution management innovations of 2022

As global instability, economic uncertainty and supply chain disruptions dominated the headlines in 2022, CEOs and corporate executives turned to digital and process transformation technology to mitigate these macroeconomic risks.

Even before 2022 began, companies were significantly ramping up digital transformation plans and budgets. In October 2021, IDC predicted that digital transformation investment would rise by nearly $1 trillion (US) in the 2022-2024 time frame ($6.3 trillion) compared to 2020-2023 ($5.4 trillion). In 2022, the IT research firm predicted that global digital transformation spending will reach $3.4 trillion in 2026.

And as such, 2022 was a strong year for innovation in technologies that drive digital transformation, such as automation, analytics, low-code/no-code tools, XaaS, digital twins, remote work and increasingly process mining and execution management.

In 2021, Gartner predicted that the process mining market would grow 40-50% and pass $1 billion in 2022. Likewise, Polaris Market Research predicted that the process mining market will grow at a compound annual growth rate of 49% and be worth $11 billion by 2030.

Here are the top innovations in process mining and execution management from market leader Celonis in 2022.

1. Process Sphere: From process X-rays to business execution MRIs

Just as medical X-rays reveal hidden problems inside the body, process mining X-rays reveal broken processes inside an organization. At Celosphere, its annual user conference, Celonis announced Process Sphere™, a next-generation technology designed to take process mining from two-dimension X-rays to three-dimensional business process MRIs.

Process Sphere is built on a novel approach to process mining called object-centric process mining (OCPM) and provides the following benefits:

• Real-world view of your business process based on objects and events to give full clarity across processes with new object-centric process mining technology

• Simplified ‘subway’ map view which provides a rich, but simple expression of the business based on semantic language

• Embedded process analytics that deliver a shorter time-to-insight with analytical components embedded into the view

2. Business Miner: Making process mining and execution management accessible to every business user

Also announced at Celosphere, Business Miner™, is a new capability of Celonis EMS that allows every business professional to find and fix broken processes using an easy-to-use question-and-answer-based interface. Business Miner is part of the company’s strategy to democratize process mining and execution management technology by building enterprise apps at consumer scale within a business operating system.

Celonis EMS Business Miner curated KPI visualizations and follow-up questions

3. Workforce Productivity: Total process visibility

According to Celonis, 75% of the time workers spend executing business processes happen outside of transactional systems, such as ERP, CRM, and SCM. Having visibility into tasks executed on the desktop is therefore crucial for companies to identify and fix end-to-end process inefficiencies.

In 2022, Celonis announced Workforce Productivity powered by Task Mining. Workforce Productivity is designed to give companies full workforce visibility across entire departments, let them compare process insights across teams and quickly adapt to rapidly changing workforce behaviors. 

4. Celonis EMS Connector for Power BI

With its acquisition of Process Analytics Factory GmbH (PAF), Celonis is bringing execution management into PowerBI, Microsoft Teams and Power Automate under Celonis Experiences for Microsoft. Celonis EMS Connector for Power BI is the company’s first offering and makes it easier to get process insights within the Microsoft environment already used by millions of business users.

Celonis EMS Connector for Power BI allows customers to natively connect Power BI to their Celonis EMS instance to enlighten reporting. For example, business users can create a dashboard in Power BI that tracks process health and business KPIs. Users can monitor the dashboard from within Power BI and if anything looks suspicious, they can jump directly into EMS to investigate.

5. Celonis Accounts Receivables apps

A result of Celonis’ acquisition and integration of Sailfin Technologies, Celonis Accounts Receivables apps are a new set of Accounts Receivable (AR) applications, purpose-built for collections, credit and disputes. When deployed together, the three discrete Accounts Receivable apps power each other through shared data and insights. Here’s a look at each app:

• Celonis Collections Management App: Designed to be the collections hub for the AR team, it provides team management functionality, customized views and dashboards for stakeholders, KPI tracking and analytics, intelligent prioritization and assessment of customer risks.

• Celonis Credit Management App: Designed to improve the efficiency and accuracy of credit operations, it combines data-driven risk assessment with centralized customer information to streamline approval processes, minimize risk and simplify customer onboarding.

• Celonis Disputes Management App: Designed to remove friction from AR processes, it tracks dispute impact, accelerates diagnostics and root cause analysis and enables dispute resolution at scale.

6. Celonis Kafka Connector: Real-time process data streaming goes open source

In September 2022, Celonis announced that the company’s real-time data-streaming connector had gone open-source. Developed by Lenses.io, which Celonis acquired in October 2021, the Celonis Open Source Kafka Connector is an open-source component that can enhance any Apache Kafka® cluster to add native capabilities to ship any stream of data from the customer's Apache Kafka cluster, into Celonis EMS.

The Celonis Open Source Kafka Connector is available as an Apache 2.0 licensed component, and the Kafka Connector GitHub repository contains the latest code releases, documentation, examples, operational details and more.

Download the Celonis Kafka Connector Brochure for detailed information on how it works.

Bill Detwiler

Editor, Technical Content & Ecosystem

Bill Detwiler is Editor for Technical Content and Ecosystem at Celonis. He is the former Editor in Chief of TechRepublic, where he hosted the Dynamic Developer podcast and Cracking Open, CNET’s popular online show. Bill is an award-winning journalist, who’s covered the tech industry for more than two decades. Prior his career in the software industry and tech media, he was an IT professional in the social research and energy industries.