Operations intelligence automation platform as new type of software, Celonis approach
The software landscape for energy and commodity companies is becoming increasingly diverse. In the past, CTRM and ERP systems often complemented by a few analytical tools formed the core of technology ecosystems supporting the entire deal life cycle. Today, this landscape is expanding rapidly to include data management tools, operational platforms, and a growing range of AI-driven applications.
ComTech Advisory has recently introduced a new software category: Commodity Operations Automation. This category includes solutions designed to automate processes associated with complex deal lifecycles and logistics operations.
One notable company in this category is Celonis, a pioneer in process mining that has evolved its positioning toward process intelligence. Now a Decacorn, Celonis aims to create digital twins of business processes, enabling organizations to visualize, improve, monitor, and automate workflows with AI agents that execute tasks wherever possible. Its OCPM (Object-Centric Process Mining) technology builds knowledge graphs that map relationships between disparate data footprints across siloed systems such as ETRM, billing, and ERP platforms and more.
Recently, I spoke with James O’Leary (Celonis’ platform partnerships lead for Northern Europe) who explained that the company’s technology provides better context for AI by creating a living and interactive model of business operations; using their Process Intelligence Graph, which harmonizes data generated by different IT tools and gives that data meaning, in terms of how data sets are related to each other and how they should be interpreted, given the way the organization works, thinks and runs its operations. The Celonis process automation platform enhances complex workflows across diverse tools, saving time on manual back-office operations while delivering real business value through automation and operational risk reduction.
A practical example James shared was the meter-to-cash application in the utilities sector. In this case, a process spanning six different business functions from meter reading to customer payment collection was modeled within the Celonis platform. The result: one utility identified that over 25,000 customers were unbilled for more than 30 days, representing a 55M revenue risk. Given that U.S. utilities can only bill up to six months retroactively, this visibility is critical for preventing permanent revenue loss. The application also provides real-time insight into billing exceptions, late meter reads, and root cause analysis of billing delays.
Beyond this case, Celonis technology can be applied across the entire commodity deal life cycle from deal negotiation to adjustments, delivery logistics, confirmations, and payments.
The open developer platform can be extended to an ecosystem, enabling third-party developers to build custom applications using composable assets, which can then be co-sold with Celonis to earn a material portion of the ongoing software license revenues. Looking ahead, the company’s roadmap includes modelling agentic workflows to ensure efficient and controlled AI powered operations, James added.
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