Celonis’ Alex Lowe discusses how AI is transforming decision-making
Written on October 24th, 2024 by Alex Lowe
I was interviewed by Melania Watson of TelcoNews to share a perspective about Enterprise AI and how the Celonis process intelligence platform is a key enabler. The article is reproduced below:
By Melania Watson, Interview Editor
Celonis’ AI-powered solutions have been carefully designed to boost productivity and business outcomes sucessfully.
During an interview, Senior Vice President of Product Management, Alex Lowe, outlined the company’s vision for AI-driven decision-making.
A major benefit of AI agents, according to Lowe, is their ability to process vast quantities of unstructured data that traditional reporting tools struggle to handle. “A big part of where we see the help of AI, of LLMs, is in decision-making… in parsing through vast quantities of information,” he said. These AI-driven agents can evaluate large datasets, deliver actionable insights, and, in some cases, automate decisions that would otherwise require human intervention.
Lowe highlighted that this in particular is “significantly enhancing efficiency”.
“That decision-making can be outsourced to a machine that can do this really efficiently, versus one person having to go record by record or review document by document.”
Celonis has been researching how to apply AI and large language models (LLMs) for years. As Lowe explained, the challenge has been “ensuring accuracy” and “building trust in AI’s decision-making abilities”.
“LLMs are not always precise… how do you get the right amount of trust if this machine is going to make a decision for you that can impact your business?” he added.
The company’s research has led to the development of two strategic approaches. First, instead of trying to comprehend the entirety of a business, Celonis’ AI focuses on specific problems to ensure high-confidence results. This is where the Celonis Co-Pilot builder comes into play, allowing users to train AI agents to address specialised challenges.
“We do the Co-Pilot builder, so you can train and use [it] to solve specific problems,” Lowe explained. This targeted focus increases the accuracy of AI decisions while allowing companies to trust the technology for business-critical processes.
Lowe also stressed the importance of process intelligence in AI success.
“Process intelligence is something we’ve been doing for a long time to power humans so they’re powered with the right context to make decisions,” he said. Just as human decision-makers rely on relevant data, so do AI systems.
One of Celonis’ notable success stories is its work with Cosentino, a company that has used Celonis’ AI assistants for credit block management. Although Lowe was hesitant to dive too deeply into the technical details, he underscored the overall impact of such solutions. He said, “We see the biggest two business drivers of adoption, regardless of the use case, [are] driving more productivity and more throughput.”
A key to Celonis’ offering is the seamless integration of its AI tools into existing enterprise systems. The company has built its platform with composability in mind, allowing businesses to integrate its solutions with various AI and workflow tools. “We know that, working with LLMs, there’s a lot of vendors out there… we have built the APIs or intelligence APIs to enable that connectivity,” Lowe explained. This approach has allowed Celonis to collaborate with industry giants like Microsoft and IBM, making it easier for companies to adopt Celonis’ technology without overhauling their existing infrastructure.
These partnerships have proven vital in enhancing Celonis’ capabilities.
“The partner ecosystem is really important because it allows us to integrate and work really nicely with the Microsofts of the world, the Amazons, everyone else,” Lowe said. He also pointed to the evolving role of enterprise systems, which have shifted from monolithic structures to more modular, tailored approaches. This shift allows businesses to select the best tools for their unique needs, and Celonis’ composability ensures that their AI solutions fit seamlessly into these ecosystems.
At the heart of Celonis’ AI strategy is its powerful data stack, referred to as Celonis Data Core - aggregating data from multiple sources to provide an unbiased view of a company’s operations.
“We are in a good position to aggregate all this data and give you an unbiased view of what’s actually happening in the business,” Lowe explained. He highlighted how this data, once collected and processed, gives businesses a comprehensive and actionable understanding of their processes, regardless of the complexity or scale of the systems involved. “The level of scale and performance to get that level of visibility really is unrivalled,” he added.
Lowe’s technical background informs his enthusiasm for Celonis’ process intelligence graph, a core part of the company’s product offering.
“The more we can get data into the system, augment that data using AI… the more knowledge we can bring into the system,” he said.
By structuring data the right way and enriching it with AI-driven insights, Celonis provides businesses with more meaningful dashboards, more effective AI agents, and smarter automation capabilities.
Looking ahead, Celonis is doubling down on enhancing the power of process intelligence and AI in tandem. “Process intelligence powers AI,” Lowe explained, noting that AI can simultaneously improve process intelligence. For instance, the AI Annotation Builder can analyse unstructured data in emails or PDF documents, bringing that information into the system to make better decisions. “AI can enrich the graph… getting more data, more meaning, more knowledge into it,” Lowe said.
Despite the technical complexities, Lowe emphasised that at its core, Celonis’ success comes from its people.
“The culture, the people behind Celonis are just so great,” he said, describing the company’s culture as one where “smart, humble individuals come together to create products that make a real difference for customers”.
“It all really starts with the people, and then hopefully that shines through in the products and our interactions.”
