It is 2021, and Celonis has already revolutionized process mining, a technology which uses log data from a business’ IT systems to visualize processes as they really are, uncovering inefficiencies: within a decade, its software and business model have propelled it from a student bedroom to unicorn status. But founders Martin Klenk, Bastian Nominacher and Alex Rinke are focusing on a new challenge.
They are about to respond to a changing tech landscape and increasing customer demand by creating an execution management system (EMS) that requires them to rethink core features of Celonis’ business model – including its approach to collaboration and external partnerships.
What can other businesses learn from what happened next?
1. Listen to customer demand
The question of whether to create more specialized features for specific industries had come up again and again for Celonis. Clients including Dell and BMW that had already achieved success with Celonis’s software had been asking for more specialized tools.
But Celonis estimated that 80% of customers were using its services for managing orders and accounts payable, which supported the case for making products that could be used in any industry. Specialization might attract new customers, but Celonis was reassured that industry agnosticism would still create plenty of business.
There was another reason why the company had not specialized by industry. Originally, end users had been responsible for addressing areas of improvement identified by the Celonis software based on their own sector- and company-specific expertise – which minimized the need for specialization.