Introduced by Celonis
The State of Oklahoma found its blind spots the laborious means. In April 2023, a legislative report revealed its companies had spent $3 billion with out correct oversight. Janet Morrow, Director of Oklahoma's Danger, Evaluation and Compliance Division, got down to observe 1000’s of month-to-month transactions throughout dozens of disconnected methods.
The Sooner State turned the primary U.S. state to use course of intelligence (PI) expertise for procurement oversight. The transformation, Morrow says, was rapid. Actual-time monitoring changed multi-year audit cycles. The platform from market-leader Celonis shortly recognized greater than $10 million of inappropriate spending. And the oversight workforce was capable of redeploy employees from 13 to five members whereas dramatically rising effectiveness.
“Course of for Progress”: A worldwide motion
Oklahoma's pioneering success utilizing highly effective new course of expertise spotlights an rising world development. Morrow was amongst greater than 3,000 leaders gathered at Celosphere, Celonis’s latest annual convention, to discover how AI, powered with enterprise context by PI, can ship business returns in addition to environmental and monetary advantages worldwide.
The imaginative and prescient: course of intelligence as a basis for public and social progress.
The motion sees the mixture of AI and PI like Oklahoma’s as a robust means to assist governments and different organizations ship important providers extra cheaply, with improved choices and better-informed insurance policies. From procurement to juvenile justice to healthcare and atmosphere, scores of organizations at the moment are getting a primary have a look at the famously byzantine, opaque means issues get executed.
For veteran monetary chief Aubrey Vaughan — now Vice President of Technique for Public Sector at Celonis and previously a high government at a serious monetary software program agency — the transfer towards actual course of enchancment has been a very long time coming. He remembers testifying proudly earlier than Congress just a few years in the past about uncovering $10 billion in improper authorities funds at his earlier firm. Afterward, a senior authorities official pulled him apart and urged he downplay the achievement.
The rationale, he was instructed: "The following query they're going to ask you is, ‘Why is that occuring?’” says Vaughn. “In the present day we will reply not solely why, however how we repair it."
Throughout the U.S. and the globe, public companies are tightening budgets. Want to deploy AI to shut the hole is colliding with a tough actuality: you may't automate what you don't perceive. Listed below are three real-world examples of organizations utilizing PI and AI for higher outcomes.
Oklahoma: Actual-time AI spending evaluation boosts accountability
Inside simply 60 days of implementation, Celonis reviewed $29.4 billion price of buy order strains, figuring out $8.48 billion in statutory exempt purchases and flagging problematic transactions. The system now gives real-time suggestions to patrons inside quarter-hour of purchases, permitting rapid course correction.
The system revealed companies had been buying from a vendor at costs 45% decrease than the statewide contract, forcing renegotiation.
"Actual-time AI evaluation has elevated accountability by offering key insights into spending patterns and streamlining contract utilization," Morrow explains.
Final 12 months, Oklahoma adopted Celonis's Copilot characteristic, which makes use of conversational AI to let executives ask questions in plain language. Now, when the Governor or a cupboard member wonders a few contract, they get solutions in seconds, not weeks, Morrow says. Her group is increasing the expertise to different companies. It’s additionally exploring how rising AI agent capabilities can additional automate compliance and spending evaluation.
In Texas, uncovering a startling hidden sample in younger offenders
At Evident Change, a social analysis non-profit, Erin Espinosa's work is about good stewardship — not of taxpayer cash, however of younger lives.
Analyzing 400,000 information factors from juvenile justice and public well being methods in Texas, the previous probation officer-turned Ph.D. made a startling discovery: the psychological well being therapy that younger offenders acquired (or didn’t) was a stronger predictor of incarceration than the seriousness of the offense that introduced them into the system. Espinosa instructed courts, legislatures, Congress. No one believed it.
Pissed off, she partnered with Monica Chiarini Tremblay, a professor at William & Mary School. Whereas conventional evaluation confirmed correlation, Celonis course of intelligence helped the pair present a transparent, quantitative causation: A fragmented psychological well being system was actively pushing children towards worse outcomes. Additional machine studying evaluation additionally demonstrated that doubling down on the identical interventions elevated chance of undesirable out-of-home placement for juvenile offenders.
Just lately accepted for educational publication, the real-world findings signify each indictment and alternative. Espinosa and Tremblay are planning a bigger 2026 pilot implementation of PI-based evaluation, bringing collectively social providers, juvenile justice, psychological well being suppliers, and schooling officers.
"It is a good intersection of enterprise, social work, adolescent improvement, and neighborhood monetary implications," Espinosa says.
They’re now exploring how AI agent applied sciences might flag at-risk youth and set off coordinated responses earlier than patterns grow to be entrenched.
A $1-trillion protection finances — that has by no means handed a clear audit
The U.S. Division of Protection faces monetary challenges on an exponentially bigger scale. As Performing Secretary of the Military, Robert M. Speer employed a big-three accounting agency to map the service’s monetary processes. Three years later, the evaluation was out of date — processes had modified dramatically.
So, when Speer first noticed course of intelligence, he was actually enthusiastic about what it revealed. "I can see not solely the info,” he defined, “however the place it's coming from, the enterprise course of delivering it."
Tom Steffens, former Deputy Chief Monetary Officer of Protection, agrees: "There's clearly a lacking piece to the puzzle." Each not too long ago joined Celonis's Public Sector Advisory Board. They see potential for AI brokers to automate compliance monitoring throughout DoD's complicated ecosystem.
The stakes are unimaginably big. The Division of Protection will obtain greater than a trillion {dollars} in funding in FY 2026. It’s additionally the one federal cupboard company that's by no means handed a clear audit.
Past accounting, fast-changing geopolitics and trendy warfare calls for methods as dynamic as present battle environments.
"We're speaking in regards to the means to shift in actual time," says Speer. "We all know that’s what occurs on the battlefield, however we want one thing on the again finish of these enabling processes and methods to make sure that occurs appropriately."
The pair is working with protection leaders to indicate how course of intelligence can create the muse for transformation — enabling modeling and situation planning that may help battlefield choices with data-driven confidence somewhat than delayed, out of date info.
Efforts to modernize and optimize complicated authorities methods and processes received an enormous enhance not too long ago. Working with accomplice Knox Programs, Celonis acquired FedRAMP authorization earlier this 12 months, the safety credential required for federal cloud providers.
"Knox powers probably the most safe and longest-running managed federal cloud," notes CEO Irina Denisenko, supporting 15+ federal companies. The authorization positions the expertise "because the spine of compliance for the following technology of presidency SaaS."
The place course of meets function
Early public sector adopters are proving what's attainable with course of intelligence — from figuring out billions in potential financial savings to revealing why youngsters enter the jail pipeline. The potential extends wherever public funds form public good: local weather response, schooling, infrastructure, emergency providers.
Advocates usually communicate of “course of for progress” or "course of for empathy" — utilizing transparency to vary minds and hearts, not simply insurance policies.
Says Chiarini Tremblay, who labored on the Texas juvenile offenders’ system: "Now we have to know complicated methods and make data-driven choices, however the aim is at all times enhancing outcomes for individuals."
It’s not only a U.S. motion. Within the UK, for instance, College Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Belief have deployed PI with dramatic impact. Director Andy Hardy used Celonis to investigate 244,000 outpatient circumstances, revealing huge variation in care supply.
By optimizing appointment reminders from 4 to 14 days earlier than visits, the belief enabled earlier cancellations and noticed a further 1,800 sufferers weekly. The ready listing was decreased by 5,300 sufferers in eight weeks.
Concludes Hardy: "Information comprehensible to clinicians is as necessary as scalpels."
Know-how continues to race forward. At Celosphere 2025, Celonis unveiled a bunch of latest choices and platform updates for private and non-private sector organizations together with the Orchestration Engine, which coordinates actions throughout workflows involving AI brokers, human duties, and legacy methods.
All are constructed on the Celonis Course of Intelligence Graph, which creates a "dwelling digital twin" of a enterprise or public company’s processes. It’s system-agnostic, working throughout disconnected methods typical to authorities operations — integrating decades-old mainframes and cutting-edge cloud purposes concurrently.
Company heads and others word, nevertheless, that success calls for greater than software program. For instance, when Oklahoma decreased its oversight workforce from 13 to five, resistance emerged. Morrow's workforce invested closely in coaching and alter administration. Course of intelligence reveals enchancment alternatives, however individuals implement options’ she explains.
Ongoing, long-term schooling and cultural change are wanted.
“Steady operational enchancment is a way of life,” says Celonis’s Vaughn. “It’s essential have a tradition that wishes to construct higher processes, higher methods, extra environment friendly methods.”
The instruments are prepared. The enterprise case is confirmed. What stays is the need to vary — and the braveness to look clearly on the methods meant to serve the general public good.
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