Offered by Celonis
The State of Oklahoma found its blind spots the laborious manner. In April 2023, a legislative report revealed its businesses had spent $3 billion with out correct oversight. Janet Morrow, Director of Oklahoma's Threat, Evaluation and Compliance Division, got down to observe hundreds of month-to-month transactions throughout dozens of disconnected techniques.
The Sooner State grew to become the primary U.S. state to use course of intelligence (PI) know-how for procurement oversight. The transformation, Morrow says, was fast. 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 group was capable of redeploy workers from 13 to five members whereas dramatically growing effectiveness.
“Course of for Progress”: A world motion
Oklahoma's pioneering success utilizing highly effective new course of know-how spotlights an rising world pattern. 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 industrial 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 mix of AI and PI like Oklahoma’s as a strong manner to assist governments and different organizations ship important companies extra affordably, with improved choices and better-informed insurance policies. From procurement to juvenile justice to healthcare and surroundings, scores of organizations at the moment are getting a primary take a look at the famously byzantine, opaque manner issues get performed.
For veteran monetary chief Aubrey Vaughan — now Vice President of Technique for Public Sector at Celonis and previously a high government at a significant 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 advised: "The following query they're going to ask you is, ‘Why is that occuring?’” says Vaughn. “Right now we will reply not solely why, however how we repair it."
Throughout the U.S. and the globe, public businesses are tightening budgets. Need to deploy AI to shut the hole is colliding with a tough actuality: you may't automate what you don't perceive. Listed here 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 value of buy order strains, figuring out $8.48 billion in statutory exempt purchases and flagging problematic transactions. The system now supplies real-time suggestions to consumers inside quarter-hour of purchases, permitting fast course correction.
The system revealed businesses have 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 yr, Oklahoma adopted Celonis's Copilot function, which makes use of conversational AI to let executives ask questions in plain language. Now, when the Governor or a cupboard member wonders a couple of contract, they get solutions in seconds, not weeks, Morrow says. Her group is increasing the know-how to different businesses. 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 knowledge factors from juvenile justice and public well being techniques 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 advised 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 tutorial publication, the real-world findings symbolize each indictment and alternative. Espinosa and Tremblay are planning a bigger 2026 pilot implementation of PI-based evaluation, bringing collectively social companies, juvenile justice, psychological well being suppliers, and schooling officers.
"It is a good intersection of enterprise, social work, adolescent growth, and group 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 develop into entrenched.
A $1-trillion protection price range — 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 lately 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 large. 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 techniques as dynamic as present battle environments.
"We're speaking concerning the capacity 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 techniques to make sure that occurs accurately."
The pair is working with protection leaders to indicate how course of intelligence can create the inspiration for transformation — enabling modeling and situation planning that may assist battlefield choices with data-driven confidence fairly than delayed, out of date info.
Efforts to modernize and optimize complicated authorities techniques and processes acquired an enormous enhance lately. Working with associate Knox Programs, Celonis acquired FedRAMP authorization earlier this yr, the safety credential required for federal cloud companies.
"Knox powers probably the most safe and longest-running managed federal cloud," notes CEO Irina Denisenko, supporting 15+ federal businesses. The authorization positions the know-how "because the spine of compliance for the following technology of presidency SaaS."
The place course of meets goal
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 companies.
Advocates typically converse 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: "We’ve to grasp complicated techniques and make data-driven choices, however the objective is all the time 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 an extra 1,800 sufferers weekly. The ready record was lowered by 5,300 sufferers in eight weeks.
Concludes Hardy: "Information comprehensible to clinicians is as necessary as scalpels."
Expertise 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 techniques.
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 techniques typical to authorities operations — integrating decades-old mainframes and cutting-edge cloud functions concurrently.
Company heads and others notice, nonetheless, that success calls for greater than software program. For instance, when Oklahoma lowered its oversight group from 13 to five, resistance emerged. Morrow's group 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 life-style,” says Celonis’s Vaughn. “It is advisable have a tradition that wishes to construct higher processes, higher techniques, extra environment friendly techniques.”
The instruments are prepared. The enterprise case is confirmed. What stays is the desire to vary — and the braveness to look clearly on the techniques meant to serve the general public good.
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