The initial situation
As part of its internal digitalization efforts and SAP S/4HANA rollout, the company sought solutions to optimize its largely SAP-supported service processes – initially in purchasing, sales, and accounting and later in production and logistics as well. Process mining was identified as an extremely valuable tool for improving operational processes in many different areas of the company.
The solution
In the first step, the envisaged solution had to be capable of mapping the processes exactly as they run in reality (actual processes). It also had to present suitable KPIs that could be used to identify potential vulnerabilities and their root causes. The goal of a future step is to notify operations staff, proactively and quickly, whenever potential problems become apparent while processing a transaction, such as a sales order. To improve both the quality and efficiency of processing, the solution also needed to provide intelligent action recommendations to operations staff in real time, or near-real time, and in the best case even execute processing steps autonomously through automation workflows.
After an extremely successful and promising proof-of-value for the purchasing process, the company immediately began exploring the interaction between the purchasing and sales processes, which are strategically critical for a distribution company. The Celonis Multi-Event Log solution proved to be an ideal choice.
In a subsequent step, the company also decided to use Celonis to analyze its transportation processes, which HELM AG manages in the SAP TM (Transportation Management) module. But because the Celonis Marketplace did not offer any SAP TM-specific solutions at the time of the project, the Scheer consulting team created both a matching connector and a Process Cockpit application for the TM module, based on the customer’s specific requirements.
Once these initial process-specific applications were completed, numerous meaningful KPIs were available. The SAP rollout in a number of national companies also continued to pick up pace. As a result, the company identified the need for a hypercare dashboard that encompassed all processes. This was realized using SAP Business Transformation Center, which both provides transparency regarding country-specific process adoption and automatically sends weekly status e-mails to process owners to keep them up to date.
After initially focusing on supply chain processes, later project phases also addressed financial processes – for both customers and vendors. In addition to the standard connectors and process cockpits, the project team was able to use “starter kits” for the first time: validation cockpits, process cockpits, and value cockpits that already contain a number of best-practice KPI definitions and dashboards. These preconfigured apps made it possible to verify the determined KPIs step by step and adapt them to company-specific requirements and circumstances as needed.
The project also focused on Credit Management, a process which is primarily associated with order management, but which also has strong implications for the accounts payable process. The new features of the EMS platform that had been implemented previously proved to be very effective here. It was possible to analyze KPIs within an individual app from a variety of processes, using views and profile views and based on knowledge models, and use them for notifications, recommendations, and process automation.
The implemented starter kits also provided a valid foundation for using use case-specific apps. A “Shipped-Not-Invoiced” app was implemented, for instance, to identify goods issues that had not been invoiced yet, notify Sales and Accounting in near-real time, and recommend actions for the next most logical processing step to employees.
To fully utilize the many possibilities of the Celonis platform in sustainability management in particular, the project also focused on business partner management. Action flows reliably ensure that when a new supplier is created in the SAP S/4HANA system, for example, it is synchronized with sustainability platforms that are also integrated with Celonis, such as EcoVadis and IntegrityNext. This ensures that all stakeholders are informed of the transaction and that the correct next steps can be initiated to ensure that the quota of purchasing volume classified as sustainable continues to increase.
"The implementation of Celonis enables HELM AG to work more strongly in the direction of optimized processes and to manage the company according to real-time data and key performance indicators."
Niels Müller – Corporate Quality & Processes, HELM AG
The added value
- Qualitative and quantitative transparency for actual processes
- Permanent prevention of processing non-compliant cases
- Reliable recognition of duplicate supplier invoices not identified by the system
- Reliable recognition of goods issues that have not been invoiced (yet)
- Continuous monitoring and optimization of payment flows and terms and conditions of payment
All in all, HELM AG has shown that process mining with the Celonis Execution Management System represents a valuable tool for improving operational workflows. It has enabled the qualitative and quantitative optimization of processes in the areas of supply chain management, financials, and ESG – successfully and permanently.
