Provided by Selonis
AI adoption is accelerating, and results often exceed expectations. Business leaders are also under pressure to prove measurable ROI from AI solutions, especially as the use of autonomous agents increases and global tariffs disrupt supply chains.
The problem isn’t AI itself, says Alex Linke, co-founder and co-CEO of Celonis, a global leader in process intelligence. “To be successful, enterprise AI must understand the context of a business’s processes and how to improve those processes,” he explains. Without this business background, AI risks becoming “just an internal social experiment,” as Linke puts it.
Next week at Celosphere 2025, we’ll tackle the AI ROI challenge head-on. The three-day event will feature customer strategy, hands-on workshops, and live demonstrations, focusing on enhancements to the Celonis Process Intelligence (PI) platform that helps companies leverage PI-powered “enterprise AI” to continuously improve operations and create measurable business value at scale.
Focus on measurable ROI
Focused on achieving AI ROI, the event reflects three challenges facing technology and business leaders as they move from pilot to production: outdated systems, rapid industry change, and agentic AI. According to Gartner, 64% of board members consider AI a top three priority, yet only 10% of organizations report meaningful financial benefits.
Celonis customers are bucking that trend. The Forrester Total Economy Impact study found that organizations using the company’s platform achieved a 383% ROI over three years and a payback in just six months. One company improved sales order automation from 33% to 86%, saving $24.5 million. The study estimates a total of $44.1 million in benefits over three years from faster automation, reduced inefficiencies, and increased process visibility. These numbers confirm a broader pattern. Companies that modernize outdated systems and align AI with process optimization realize faster return on investment and sustainable profits.
Real companies, real results
Celosphere focuses on how global companies are building “future-fit” businesses. Mercedes-Benz Group AG and Vinmar Group will showcase AI-driven composable solutions powered by PI, and attendees will see a demonstration of PI enabling agents in real-world production environments.
Some notable success stories include:
Pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca reduced overstock while keeping critical medicines flowing by using Celonis as the foundation of an OpenAI partnership.
Oklahoma can answer procurement status questions at scale and unlock more than $10 million in value.
Cosentino uses an AI-powered credit management assistant to clear blocked sales orders up to 5x faster.
Elevating the potential of agent AI
Many sessions will focus on orchestrating AI agents. The shift from AI as an advisor to AI as an actor changes everything, Linke says.
“Agents need to understand not just what to do, but how a particular business actually works,” he explains. “Process intelligence provides that rail."
The leap from recommendation to autonomous action dramatically increases risk. When agents can independently issue purchase orders, reroute shipments, and approve exceptions, bad context can have catastrophically bad outcomes at scale.
Celosphere attendees will see first-hand how companies are using the Celonis Orchestration Engine to connect AI agents with people and systems. Effective orchestration is a key way to protect against confusion where agents work cross-purposes, duplicate actions, or miss important steps.
Overcoming tariffs and supply chain shocks
Changes in global trade are more than just headlines, Linke says, they are an operational nightmare that will reshape how companies deploy AI.
New tariffs will have cascading effects across procurement, logistics and compliance. Each policy change can cascade across thousands of SKUs, forcing new supplier contracts, rerouting shipments, and realigning inventory. For AI systems trained in static conditions, it is almost impossible to predict their variability. Traditional AI systems suffer from this variability, but process intelligence gives organizations real-time visibility into how changes impact their operations.
The Celosphere story shows how companies can turn disruption into an advantage. Smurfit Westrock leverages PI to optimize inventory and reduce costs amid tariff uncertainty. Meanwhile, ASOS continues to leverage PI to optimize supply chain operations, increase efficiency, reduce costs, and deliver a superior customer experience.
Platform over point solution
Rinke argues that Celonis’ advantage lies in treating process intelligence as the foundation of the enterprise stack, rather than as an add-on. Unlike bolt-on optimization tools, the Celonis platform creates a living digital twin of your business operations. It is a context-enriched, continuously updated model that enables AI to operate effectively from analysis to execution.
“What sets Celonis apart is visibility across systems and offline tasks, which is essential for true intelligent automation,” Linke says. “Rather than being a point solution, this platform provides comprehensive capabilities across process analysis, design, and orchestration.”
“Liberating processes” and the future of AI
Celonis continues to champion openness through its “Free the Process” movement, promoting fair competition and freeing companies from traditional lock-in. Celonis is building the connective tissue for a new era of interoperable automation by giving organizations complete access to proprietary process data, open APIs, and a growing network of partners including Hackett Group, ClearOps, and Lobster.
For Rinke, this open foundation transforms AI from a series of experiments to an enterprise engine. “Process intelligence creates a flywheel,” he says. “Better understanding leads to better optimization, which enables better AI, which in turn drives deeper understanding. There is no AI without PI."
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