Lars Reinkemeyer is Chief Evangelist at Celonis, the global pioneer and leader in process mining and process intelligence, which makes processes work for people, companies and the planet.
In this role, he advises Celonis customers on how to move from valuable insights gained with process mining – transparency, seeing where issues are – to driving action across an organization and ultimately realizing value.
You are Chief Evangelist for Celonis, the pioneer and global leader in process mining and process intelligence, but what is process mining and process intelligence?
25 years ago, process mining started out as an academic theory. Today, it’s a well-established business technology, used by thousands of organizations around the world, which have realized multiple billions of value to date.
To give some context, every process step in an organization leaves digital traces in the transactional systems. Process mining extracts those digital traces – event log data – and connects them to help companies understand their business better. At Celonis we use the event log data from process mining to create a digital twin of business processes, helping companies visualize every process step in real time. The digital twin shows their processes as they really are, allowing them to uncover opportunities for value, and to identify and fix inefficiencies.
This means that process mining can reveal how their business processes actually run and can help change them for the better. This is very important because many businesses don’t realize that they have large complexities in their processes, and the impact that variability has on everything. You can’t fix what you can’t see, and most businesses aren’t seeing the full picture of how everything’s actually getting done across programs, systems, and departments.
With Process Intelligence (PI) we bring AI and intelligent automation to the equation. It goes beyond process mining to connect them to their processes, their teams to each other, and emerging technologies to their business fast. That’s why we call it the connective tissue of the enterprise.
It takes data from systems like your ERPs, CRMs, and Excel, and then uses process mining technology to turn that data into a living, system-agnostic digital twin of your end-to-end processes.
This is where it one-ups process mining. After the data is in, Process Intelligence uses specialized process improvement knowledge built up from thousands of implementations over the last decade, plus AI algorithms to show where value is hiding.
Finally, Process Intelligence gives companies the tools to capture that value. For instance, by empowering employees with easy-to-action insights, and by helping them effectively deploy technologies like AI and automation to improve processes.
The Process Intelligence Graph is taking process mining to the next level, how does it work?
The Celonis Process Intelligence Graph is the connective tissue at the heart of Celonis’s process mining platform, helping companies understand how objects and events interact, how processes are interconnected, how their business runs, and how it can run even better.
The Process Intelligence Graph provides one central data backbone, which combines process data from Process Mining with process knowledge available in the organization. As one concise data layer, it enables AI to become a powerful copilot. As reliable data is of the essence, there is no AI without PI.
The PI Graph helps organizations to generate automated, actionable insights across processes, systems and departments, identify and remove replicated processes faster, build applications that are enhanced by the entire ecosystem, deliver a better customer experience, backed by reduced emissions and more sustainable supply chains, and make Process Intelligence an imperative layer in their enterprise technology stack for AI to work most effectively.
The PI Graph is also being constantly enriched and extended with external partner data, such as carrier information, and process knowledge on occurrences like high safety stocks impacting working capital; and machine learning technology and models that are unique to process mining on objects that can cause bottlenecks, such as duplicate invoices, late orders, or mismatched terms.
What is Celonis and what are your key products and solutions?
In addition to the Process Intelligence Graph as our data backbone, Celonis Copilot supports business and analytics users in their daily operations. Leveraging intelligent process insights, users can make immediate queries and get proactive decisions support.
About the recent publication of Process Intelligence in Action, What main message do you hope readers will take away after reading your book?
The book is structured in three parts and I hope to achieve three take-aways:
- Process mining has taken an evolutionary step towards Process Intelligence. This is not only fueled by bringing intelligence into the technology platform, but also by an approach which moves from insights to action and ultimately value. To this respect, Part 1 provides the readers with a wealth of experiences from value methodology to operating model to success factors.
- Part 2 presents 12 operational use cases, written by experienced practitioners. The cases cover a wide range of different topics such as Supply Chain, Value Methodology, Operating Model, System Transformation across multiple industry – hopefully providing the readers with tangible take-aways for their own journey.
- The third part provides the reader with an outlook, written by Wil van der Aalst for an academic perspective and myself for a business perspective. Key take-aways will be future user scenarios, the influence of AI to provide intelligent copilots and prerequisites to build a Process Intelligence Platform.
What has been the biggest challenge in writing this book?
Getting experienced practitioners to spend several days on sharing their experiences on 10 to 15 pages has been a challenge and I am extremely grateful for all the contributions. This gives testimonial to the strong community which has grown around our capabilities, with amazing change makers openly talking about successes and failures, willing to give and take for the benefit of the global community.
Do you have any other literary projects you are currently working on?
Well, the book was written less than 50 miles away from the spot in Jamaica where Ian Fleming wrote a James Bond novel every winter. Taking him as a role model, I am tempted by the idea of writing a book every winter in sunny Jamaica, but have not yet got the right compelling idea. 🙂
Is there anything you would like readers to know about the book that hasn’t been mentioned yet?
The book “Process Intelligence in Action” presents a logical evolution on the book “Process Mining in Action” published by Springer in 2020. While the new book obviously presents the latest innovations and state of the art use cases, the first book covers more fundaments e.g. on the principle of process mining and use cases on core processes such as Accounts Payables and Order to Cash.
And – last but not least – I am always keen on receiving feedback, suggestions or any kind of observations – thank you!
"Process mining extracts digital traces" - Interview with Lars Reinkemeyer
