To transform a company successfully, you must trace all of its processes, discover the problems and eliminate them. Celonis SE of Munich, the market leader in this area, offers the opportunity to do this and provides practical solutions that can be implemented. Bastian Nominacher, Co-Founder and CEO of Celonis, speaks to Janice Köser of Staufen AG about the company’s work.
Very successful start-up despite doubters
Alexander Rinke, Bastian Nominacher and Martin Klenk founded Celonis in 2011. With their Execution Management System (EMS), companies can control all of their processes intelligently and data-based. It’s a technology that can drastically improve the workflow. Nevertheless, in the beginning, nobody wanted to invest in this start-up.
The founders proceeded with determination anyhow. And now, just ten years later, Celonis is not just the market leader in process mining, it’s also the first so-called “Decacorn” in Germany. That’s what privately held companies and start-ups that have a value of at least $10 billion are called. Celonis is currently the most valuable privately held start-up.
You must take transformation seriously
Bastian Nominacher provides some insights into his work: When starting out with a company, it’s always especially important that the management takes the transformation striven for seriously and prioritizes it. Resources must be provided and those responsible named. It’s important that the processes be incorporated into everyday flows.
Some entrepreneurs shy away from approaching the company’s core directly. They waver, would prefer to start with easier areas. However, fundamental change can only happen if the core topics are taken up – in a comprehensive manner. The establishment of a center of excellence is indispensable for this.
Here’s how the Execution Management System works
Celonis’ EMS is like an x-ray machine that makes all of a company’s processes visible: It registers and processes all data that is created with each step. This includes:
- IDs
- Timestamps
- Activities
This way, it can be determined without a doubt where the process gets hung up. Possible are, among other things:
- Delivery delays
- Multiple processing
- Misunderstandings due to various responsibilities
Celonis‘ EMS keeps an eye on all business processes and makes suggestions for solutions to each individual problem. These are practical improvements that can be made to the company’s system that make the workflow much easier. The task of the EMS is to minimize the complexity of the flows through the greatest possible transparency, and at the same time, to maximize the company’s performance.
Sustainability is a critical topic
Celonis has many large customers. In the course of cooperation, this start-up from Munich has determined that sustainability has become an important topic for many people: they don’t want to waste anything, they want to conserve the earth’s resources as well as possible. That’s why it’s so important to eliminate supply chain problems, for example, so that nothing spoils.
High performers confirm the effectiveness
Celonis’ large customers include L’Oreal – a company that has succeeded, with the help of Celonis’ EMS, in making its supply chain 8 times more effective. The founders of Celonis have conducted a study, the “State of Business Execution Benchmark Report 2021,” for which more than 2000 decision-makers were surveyed.
The study shows that those who profit most from the start-up’s software use the data collected across all systems and react quickly and in agile fashion to all problems that occur. This happens when they implement the software’s suggestions and use it with an eye to the long term. Employees therefore become the directors of value creation in digitalization.
Readiness for lasting change is required
The founders of Celonis can confirm what has often been suggested: Even the market leaders who are well-established must be ready for change. Only companies that react flexibly to new situations and are agile in case of sudden hurdles can remain competitive. That was clear once again at ANUGA in Cologne, the food trade show, where the topic of supply chains was also very important. Celonis’ software can help companies keep finding improvements and thus continuously optimize themselves.
Change management with a strong partner
Celonis’ strength is its high-quality, intelligent software that makes every process at a company as transparent as possible and offers solutions. To be able to make the necessary changes at a company, however, another partner is required, one who picks up the employees where they are and guides them to the new situation. This is where cooperation with Staufen AG has proven useful, as its consultants anchor change at the company with lean methods and increase acceptance among employees.
More information at the Best Practice Day
Representatives of Staufen AG and Bastian Nominacher of Celonis and many other experts will speak at the Best Practice Day on November 23 and 24, 2021. Among other things, there will be deep insights into the comprehensive potential of process mining. Potential customers can get a picture of the software before the whole-day workshop on the second day of the congress: Employees from Celonis and Staufen will focus on the topic of process excellence.
Anyone who is interested in Celonis’ EMS can see how it feels to work with the software: They can take the first steps toward process analysis on the live demo system. Potential customers can therefore see what they have previously only heard. They can see
- how the processes flow
- how they can work with the data
- how suggestions for improvement are formulated
- how these suggestions are implemented
Trainers will help participants start out with processes and conduct analyses. This is a very good way to test out the new technology and see whether it might be something for your own company. This year, the workshop will take place online.
Conclusion: Transformation made easy
With Celonis, a young company went right to the top of the process mining sector in just a few years. The user-friendly software makes it possible to monitor all processes transparently and to react immediately in case of problems. And the new technology also provides solution approaches. In connection with Lean Management advising by the experts at Staufen AG, the high-quality EMS is ideally suited for a sustainable transformation of companies.
Moderation
Janice Köser, Manager Academy, STAUFEN.AG
Guest
Bastian Nominacher, Co-Founder and CEO, Celonis SE