Celonis and IBM partner to deliver answers, not software, to enterprise clients

The Situation: Celonis and IBM have announced a flagship partnership to jointly help clients transform business execution by revealing and fixing inefficiencies they can’t see, enabling them to perform at levels they never thought possible. HFS analysts have delved deeper to understand more about the relationship.

Here at HFS, we are firm believers in the OneEcosystem™, when we look beyond the walls of our organizations to collaborate with an ecosystem of partners to drive the best possible client outcomes. In recent years, we have seen a pivot in how enterprises assess one another, with an enhanced focus on collaboration rather than competition. One organization championing this approach is Celonis, which embedded an ecosystem methodology at its core from the very beginning. It’s likely you have already seen its impressive partnership announcements, including the likes of IBM, Accenture, and DocuLabs—but are they delivering value?

HFS analysts connected with a handful of Celonis partners to delve deeper into these relationships to discover how these partnerships work in action. First up is IBM; you can listen to the videocast here.

IBM was Celonis’ first “Titanium” partner, and it is embedding Celonis’ capabilities at the very core of its business

This partnership isn’t as simple as IBM leveraging Celonis’ capabilities; it’s a real collaboration of three industry titans, Celonis, IBM, and Red Hat, with mutual benefit and, in turn, improved outcomes for clients. IBM has embedded Celonis Execution Management System (EMS) at the core of its services and solutions portfolio, with Celonis EMS combined with IBM’s capabilities leveraged throughout its engagements. IBM advised that since the partnership announcement in April 2021, it has trained thousands of practitioners on Celonis EMS. It plans to make it available to every single consultant and practitioner in the coming years. Scott Layton explained it:

Our ambition is to make Celonis EMS available in every single consultant’s toolbox—and certifying them all too. Why wouldn’t we?

– Scott Layton, VP, Global Leader of Finance Transformation, IBM

Scott told us how the partnership is already bearing fruit. For example, IBM was working with a premium freight business client to help it identify the inefficiencies in its supply chains. Leveraging Celonis for Consulting (C4C+), the team built a new application, which became the IBM Transportation Management Freight Excellence App. It assessed around 4,000,000 transactions and identified 275,000 different paths. Every transaction was completely different, creating what he called a “spaghetti process path.” This sounds daunting, but once the insight was visualized, IBM could provide the client with actionable insights to streamline operations, driving significant business value. In his own words, Scott explained engagements like this are about selling “answers, not software,” which is exactly what Celonis has allowed them to deliver.

Celonis leverages Red Hat OpenShift’s hybrid-cloud approach and hopes to benefit from IBM’s industry expertise

On the other side of the partnership, Celonis will leverage Red Hat OpenShift and embrace an open-cloud strategy, which it hopes will deliver improved flexibility and choice for its customers. But the real selling point of the partnership, explained Celonis’ Nicole Gallant, was IBM’s deep expertise across such a broad range of industries:

As one of our largest partners, IBM’s ability to really accelerate our industry conversation, to help us grow and scale—that’s interesting.”

– Nicole Gallant, VP, Alliances, Celonis

Celonis already has strong capabilities to apply across a spectrum of industries and processes. Moreover, Nicole explained that speaking the same language as your customers, specifically around industry-specific challenges and jargon, is fundamental to delivering the best possible outcomes. This is where IBM comes in. As Celonis’ industry strategy matures, it will work closely with IBM’s many industry experts to ensure they deliver the best possible outcomes for their clients, regardless of industry.

The Bottom Line: Answers, not software, is at the core of Celonis’ partnership with IBM, but time will tell if this becomes a scalable reality.

We’ve already described the partnership as a collaboration of two industry titans, which means there’s serious potential for this to deliver next-generation business performance for its clients. We already see early signs of success. However, two organizations as big as Celonis and IBM may face challenges as they look to scale the partnership across their entire organizations. We’ll just have to wait and see how they execute and deliver to their full potential—there’s plenty of it!