What is our primary use case?
We use the solution for Process Mining for Order To Cash, Procure2Pay, and Finance (AR,AP) processes. O2C process was identified for mining as it spans multiple departments. Celoni from Order Management, Planning, Operations, and Finance and leveraging O2C Process Cockpit, we were able to quickly get details insights, anomalies, and discover bottlenecks.
We were able to understand how process variants have organically grown, with huge deviations, delays, human touches, reworks, and huge cycle times between department handovers. The potential Opportunity Cash Value identified was around $19 million.
Celonis EMS is hosted on Cloud integrated to Oracle EBS R12 on-prem database using an on-prem DB link agent.
How has it helped my organization?
Process mining helped us to discover, identify, and process anomalies, bottlenecks, cycle time, automate rates, and rework for O2C process spanned across multiple departments from Order Management, Planning, Operations, and Finance.
We managed to calculate 14 Industry standards process-centric KPIs like OnTimeDelivery, Shipment,1st-time-right, Touchless Rate, Rework Rate, Automation Rate, Pick-Pack-Ship Rate, Fulfillment Rate, DSO, DPOs, and Cost per Order. We managed to define and enforce process ownership across the business process and make Business Units accountable through KPI mappings. We leveraged Process Mined KPIs from APQC, DCMetrics, HighRadius, Celonis nd Novigo Platforms.
The Process Discovery and Opportunity Identification part was completed in three weeks.
What is most valuable?
1. It is super easy to integrate a cloud-hosted EMS platform with an on-premise Oracle EBS DB (we managed to import 7ears of Oracle EBS data - 6.8 million records in two hours).
2. There are abundant prebuild process connectors available in Celonis marketplace which has accelerated our onboarding to install the Oracle EBS O2C, AP, AR, P2P, and OOTB KPIs.
3. It provides seamless unified views with awesome drill down options.
4. It's easy to write PQL queries for extracting KPIs, and easy to add, and customize filters and dashboards.
5. It enables Touchless ERP automations leveraging EMS - action flows, automation, and action center for business units.
What needs improvement?
1. The marketplace should offer process connectors for Oracle JDEdwards, and Peoplesoft.
2. If we can have prebuilt apps and a process cockpit for Oracle EBS Warehouse Management and Inventory Management.
3. We need more documentation and examples of PQL language. That would be an improvement.
4. Importing data into Celonis should provide date/month/year import options so that you can import specific periods of data.
5. Licenses are costly and calculated based on APC and the number of users. It should offer a more flexible option for initial data uploads. A pay-as-you-go model is not available yet.
For how long have I used the solution?
We have been using Celonis Process Mining platform for more than six months now.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The platform has been completely stable and flawless since we have been using it.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
It's easily scalable to any business process within the enterprise.
How are customer service and support?
It's been excellent working with Celonis support engineers. CSM has been seamless, and very responsive. They take ownership and lead the issue and bring in expert SMEs when required.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We used UiPath Process Mining. We switched to Celonis as they had more cool out-of-box features compared to UiPath.
How was the initial setup?
The setup is very straightforward; the whole setup took us less than two days.
What about the implementation team?
We used our vendor and Celonis engineers.
What was our ROI?
The ROI depends on how fast you are able to find process anomalies and business cases that benefit the enterprise WRT Cost, Labor productivity, and employee efficiency. For O2C alone, we found automation opportunities for 7000 hours, making the ROI recovered within 9 to 11 months.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
If you are new to process mining you can try the Snap/Snap+ versions offered by Celonis which are free/ under $10,000 with a fixed APC data size and fixed set of analyst, admin, and member users. You can do a pilot leveraging the Snap+ version post that you could go for the full EMS version which provides more advanced features but comes with a cost. For example, Celonis EMS APC-100G and 10 Users = $80,000-$95,000/year.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
What other advice do I have?
Process Mining adoption within the organization is a cultural change especially if you have siloed business units across the business process. You have to onboard the business users and analysts and make them understand how this platform helps and empowers them to go from a reactive to a more proactive mode and be more strategic vs being tactical.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Hybrid Cloud
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
