Item: Celonis
Rating: 10
Author: Paresh Gandhi, MPM, LSSGB, ACP

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Celonis is currently being used as a reporting and visibility tool. Similar to tableau and Power BI. We currently have this tool implemented in several workstreams, i.e. Accounts Payable, P2P, A/R, Customer Service. We also have this tool integrated with various other systems such as Zendesk, Metrix / IFS. Celonis has the ability to provide visibility to data that we once did not have before and the data is quickly achievable. Our next step is to move towards automation. We want to leverage the action flow to start with our automation journey.

Pros and Cons

Reporting.
Data analytics.
Integration with various systems.

Support - one of the worst I have ever seen. With out escalating issues to Germany, support is not able to resolve questions.
PQL - The software needs better query builders that helps business users build queries.
GUI - In process analytics, there needs to be a drag and drop functionality to build analysis quicker and not have to write formulas to perform sum or average calculations. Similar to [how] pivot tables are performed in Excel.

Return on Investment

We have been [able] to accomplish significant returns and track performance with Celonis. This has been visible in A/R and Service Contract (integration of Metrix).
Whip up customizable dashboards for all types of users where the data would be hard to extract and have to hire additional BI specialists to develop particular dashboards.

Digital Transformation

With the success of Celonis, I have been able to start a Center of Excellence (Digital Transformation) group that will focus Celonis as the centerpiece that will lead with reporting and automation. I also want to explore attaching process documents to processes within Celonis. I believe this will help with the foundation of the Center of Excellence. I would like to see Celonis help us leverage the tool to manage the Center of excellence and projects, priorities. Our organization really likes Celonis, if there were tools within the application that [could] help lay the groundwork with process management, library, project tracking, it would be a total one-stop-shop to lead the organization's digital transformation.

Key Insights

Do you think Celonis delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Celonis's feature set?

Yes

Did Celonis live up to sales and marketing promises?

Did implementation of Celonis go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Celonis again?

Yes

Other Software Used

Microsoft Excel, Tableau Desktop

Likelihood to Recommend

Celonis is very powerful for quick analysis and user-friendly for individuals from all business units to quickly understand the analysis and leverage the filters to obtain the data they needed. There need to be better reporting options, basically have scheduled reporting available to send to end-users. Also, [it] needs to have the ability to send snapshots of the dashboard via the action flow. Currently, this can be done, but it is not straight forward and when the dashboard is sent to the end-user - it is not [a] very exact snapshot of what you see on the screen. The business views and studios need a serious overhaul. Not all analyses are aware of how to code in YAML to build the analysis and [are] very time consuming, once developed and what Celonis has [shown] is very nice, but configuring this view is not very easy and is very time consuming and frustrating. We really like the potential of Celonis and we see the upside of the opportunities, but it often feels like Celonis may overcommit [to] what they can accomplish. Celonis needs to have more webinars and offer more learning opportunities to further build the skill set of the user base. I understand with the pandemic this may have impacted their plans, but the stronger the user base the better the product can be.

Users and Roles

75 - Accounts Receivable, CFO, Customer Service, Finance, Service Contracts, Accounts Payable, Procurement.

Support Headcount Required

1 - You need to have a strong understanding of SQL, PQL, YAML to understand how these analytics are built. The analytics are not easily built and cannot be built by any end users.

Business Processes Supported

Being able to see data, past historical data from SAP.
Visibility [of] data without looking at tons of Excel documents.

Innovative Uses

It is driving engagement with end-users - by tracking dashboards to an individual level. This is driving the team to perform with clear visibility to all team members.

Future Planned Uses

We are making Celonis at the center of excellence program that we are launching.

Likelihood to Renew

We have been able to leverage Celonis [greatly] because of the commitment and support we receive from our data scientist. I strongly believe that we would not be able to accomplish this without her assistance. Moreover, when we escalate matters, the product development is engaged and commits resources to make sure our initiatives/business cases are supported.

Products Replaced

Key Differentiators

Price
Product Features
Product Usability

The demo Celonis did in the proof of concept demo stole the show.

Support Rating

We submit tickets to Celonis through product support. No assistance is generally provided, have to wait and the ticket is then escalated to product support in Germany. Many times we submit the ticket and the support desk asks us the same questions back where they should already have this information.

Celonis Customer Support Pros and Cons

Pros	Cons
None	Slow Resolution Poor followup Less knowledgeable Problems left unsolved Escalation required Difficult to get immediate help Need to explain problems multiple times

Premium Support

We were [given] premium support because the current support team was lackluster. The premium support was not any better. We have escalated our concerns to our success manager.

Bug Resolution

Yes - It was ok, the issue was resolved several months later.

Exceptional Examples of Celonis Support

Yes, They listened to us and helped us with a business case. We wanted to have benchmarking and performance tracking of our A/R Collections team. This was all being done in Excel. Celonis heard about [the] business case and helped us with [developing] a full GUI front end and [transformed] our excel document to full blow actionable model in Business views. This was awesome and drives tremendous value to our A/R team.

Usability

Celonis is very powerful to the end-user, but if you are not a SQL/PQL power user the building of the analysis is a challenge. When Celonis says any user can build an analysis, that is not true. However, once this is developed - we are driving value and [are] providing insights.

Usability Pros and Cons

Pros	Cons
Like to use Quick to learn Convenient	Unnecessarily complex Requires technical support Lots to learn

Celonis engages users at all levels of the organization to make powerful, knowledge/data-based decisions!!!

Overall Satisfaction with Celonis