Democratizing process intelligence: Insights from Celosphere 2024

"There is no AI without PI (Process Intelligence)"

This succinct sentence from this year's Celosphere in Munich sums up what is currently driving the process management community: the combination of artificial intelligence and in-depth process knowledge will become the key to sustainable process improvements.

The speed of this development is remarkable: when we launched aiio in 2021 as the first AI-first process management platform, the combination of AI and process management was still viewed with skepticism. Today, almost two years later, it is the consensus - and presents the industry with new challenges.

However, this new reality also brings new challenges, as Alex Rinke, Co-CEO of Celonis, aptly described in his keynote speech: "What we are missing is a shared understanding of how the company actually works and how we can improve it." An observation that is consistent with our experience from numerous customer projects - and underlines the need for a low-threshold democratization of the process platform for everyone (e.g. with aiio).

Shaping the day-to-day process together

While Celosphere demonstrated the impressive possibilities of modern enterprise solutions, it also became clear that the true value of process intelligence only emerges when it becomes part of everyday business life. At aiio, this is exactly where we come in - with a platform that makes process knowledge available where employees work every day. It goes without saying that we have been integrating modern technologies such as AI since our launch in 2021 - but the focus is always on the practical benefits for our users.

The evolution of the process intelligence market

In our view, the integration of Symbio into the Celonis platform marks a significant trend: enterprise solutions are becoming more comprehensive, but also more complex. While this is interesting for large corporations, the question for many companies is: How can we democratize process intelligence while staying within tighter budget constraints?

Expert knowledge vs. company-wide use

One exciting detail from the Process Navigator presentation at Celosphere stood out: In a medium-sized company presented as an exemplary lighthouse project, Celonis has now reached around one in eight employees thanks to the new modeling and management tools that have now been integrated.

While this is an impressive figure for a budget-intensive expert tool like Celonis, it also shows that 87.5% of employees are still being left out. So the question must be asked: What level of acceptance can process management achieve at all in a company where 7 out of 8 employees have no creative access to processes? This is a challenge that we at aiio have specifically addressed from the outset.

Microsoft M365: The integration platform of the future

Celosphere 2024 highlighted another important trend: Microsoft M365 is becoming the central platform for process intelligence. With the presentation of the Campari case and the integration into Microsoft Copilot Studio, Celonis underlined the growing importance of the Microsoft ecosystem - an approach that we at aiio have been pursuing since our foundation.

The numbers speak for themselves: with over 280 million active Microsoft Teams users and an average of 57% of working time in M365 applications, the platform is the ideal place for democratized process management. While Celonis presents MS Teams primarily as a collaboration channel for process mining experts and as a text-based chat bot for the workforce, aiio goes one step further as a native M365 solution:

• Full integration into the M365 environment enables a seamless connection to Celonis insights.
• The Microsoft Graph serves as a central interface for context-related process information.
• Microsoft Teams is the hub for company-wide democratized process management.
• aiio enables the shared use of co-pilot functionalities for AI-supported optimization.

This synergy creates an end-to-end workflow: What Celonis recognizes in the process analysis can be further processed, scrutinized and optimized directly in aiio by all employees in their familiar working environment - and with an optimized ratio of budget-intensive expert access and budget-friendly access for everyone in a system like aiio.

The power of combination

So instead of seeing enterprise solutions and democratized process management as opposites, as was the case in the past, the key lies in the intelligent combination:

1. process mining as a data foundation

• Precise process analyses, e.g. by Celonis
• Creating a data-based basis for decision-making
• Identification of optimization potential (IT-centric)
  

2. democratization of process management with aiio to turn those affected into participants

• Integration in Microsoft M365
• Finding optimization potential beyond IT systems by involving everyone
• Intuitive use easily possible without expert knowledge
• Company-wide licensing affordable
  

3. more than the sum of the parts

• Import of mining results into aiio
• Enrichment with employee know-how
• combine the knowledge from the heads with the knowledge from the IT systems
• Continuous improvement by all parties involved

Best Practice: ABB & Busch-Jaeger use Celonis and aiio together

Our pilot project with ABB & Busch-Jaeger shows how this combination works in practice. Here, we are taking exactly the same approach as described in the Celosphere presentations: Extracting data from IT systems and making it available to the entire workforce at a low threshold. This is achieved by optimally combining the strengths of Celonis on the one hand and aiio on the other.

We will present the full case study at the PzM Summit in November 2024 - here are the key learnings in advance:

• Process mining provides the "what" and "how" of the processes in the IT systems (which are less than 50% of the real process flows).

• aiio uses AI agents that also read in target process information, e.g. from drawings and conventional process documentation, and combine it with the process mining import.

• aiio makes these combined findings usable for all those affected, thereby enabling participation and collaborative further development of processes.

• The combination creates truly sustainable process management.

Hyperautomation meets democratization

While Celonis is also driving hyperautomation for suitable, IT-centric processes with the integration of Symbio, we at aiio are focusing on unlocking process knowledge for everyone in the company. And since a large proportion of processes will continue to be carried out by people in the future, the key to success is finding the right balance:

1. Expert systems for in-depth data-driven analyses
2. Democratized process management platforms for human-driven analyses and company-wide use and further development of the organization
3. Intelligent integration of both worlds

Conclusion: process intelligence for everyone

Celosphere 2024 has shown that process mining and AI are becoming increasingly powerful. At the same time, it is clear that the real added value only comes when these technologies are made accessible to all employees.

With the combination of process mining and aiio, companies can create exactly that - a data-driven, yet agile and democratized process landscape that optimally supports both experts and employees.

Find out more now!

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^Disclaimer:

^{Celonis®, Symbio® and all other brands mentioned are registered trademarks of their respective owners. The naming of brand names and protected trademarks is for descriptive purposes only.}

^{aiio has no business relationship with Celonis SE or its affiliates. The compatibility between aiio and Celonis products described in this article is based on publicly available interfaces and has been developed independently.}

^{The reporting on Celosphere 2024 is based on publicly available information and represents our interpretation of the event. All statements on products and services of other companies reflect our assessment only.}

^{All examples and references cited, in particular the ABB & Busch-Jaeger case, are based on our own project experience and have been published with the consent of the companies mentioned.}

^{© 2024 aiio GmbH. All rights reserved.}

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