Celonis Research: 89% of Enterprise Executives Believe AI Lacking Process Intelligence Will Fail to Achieve Expected Results
On February 7, 2025, Celonis released the "2025 Process Optimization Report," based on interviews with over 1,600 global business leaders, revealing the critical role of process intelligence in AI implementation. The report shows that 89% of respondents believe AI must understand business processes to produce effective results, 81% plan to use AI to improve processes within the next 12 months, and 58% are concerned that inefficient processes will limit AI's value.
New York —Celonis, the global leader in process mining and process intelligence, released research findings on February 7, 2025, showing that the industry has widely recognized that AI needs Process Intelligence as a foundation to deliver real impact and relevance for businesses. With Celonis Process Intelligence, AI gains the contextual information needed to understand how businesses operate and how to optimize them.
Key Finding: Process Intelligence Is the Foundation for AI Effectiveness
The 2025 Process Optimization Report shows that the vast majority of business leaders (89%) believe that AI must understand the context of business processes to deliver meaningful results and improve operational efficiency. 58% of respondents worry that flaws in their processes could hinder AI's effectiveness. Feedback from more than 1,600 leaders worldwide highlights the critical role of Process Intelligence in ensuring AI provides actionable insights, makes impactful recommendations, and takes effective actions.
Nearly all surveyed companies are deploying AI, with only 1% of leaders saying their organizations have not yet done so. Expectations for AI in the coming year are high, with leaders generally recognizing that effective AI is inseparable from business processes.
- 89% of leaders believe AI must understand how business processes work to deliver effective results.
- 81% of companies plan to use AI specifically to improve business processes in the next 12 months.
- 74% of respondents say their AI budgets are increasing.
- 64% of respondents believe AI will deliver significant ROI.
- 61% of companies report that AI applications such as GenAI chatbots and assistants have been deployed to improve operational efficiency.
- 58% of leaders worry that process inefficiencies may limit the value they derive from AI initiatives.
"AI agents need to be process-aware—just like GPS needs a map," said Alex Rinke, co-founder and co-CEO of Celonis. "The research clearly shows that business leaders have recognized that without Process Intelligence, there is no effective AI. Our platform, powered by the Process Intelligence Graph, provides enterprise AI with the data and context needed for true transformation."
How Celonis Empowers Enterprise AI
The Celonis platform provides AI agents with unique cross-system, system-agnostic Process Intelligence, enabling them to make accurate decisions, make impactful recommendations, and take appropriate actions.
At the 2024 Celosphere conference, Celonis launched AgentC—a suite of AI agent tools, integrations, and partner ecosystem that enables the Celonis community to use pre-built AI agents or develop agents powered by Celonis Process Intelligence on mainstream AI agent platforms.
Celonis' role in enterprise AI has been recognized by both analysts and enterprise customers. Gartner named Celonis a Leader in the 2024 Magic Quadrant™ for Process Mining Platforms, recognizing its ability to provide system-agnostic process insights and incorporate AI-driven capabilities. Additionally, Celonis ranked 13th on the Forbes 2024 Cloud 100 list, which honors the world's leading private cloud companies in AI, software, infrastructure, security, and more.
How Effective Enterprise AI Drives Productivity and Profitability
To learn more about strategies for business leaders to optimize processes, download the full report:https://www.celonis.com/processreport/In addition to the data above, the report also covers how leaders improve productivity through automation, what factors limit their full understanding of processes, and their methods for gaining process visibility. Four department-specific reports are also available: Finance & Shared Services, Supply Chain, Process & Operations, and IT.
Research Methodology
To compile the 2025 Process Optimization Report, Celonis partnered with an independent B2B and technology research consultancy to interview 1,620 business leaders between July and August 2024. Respondents came from companies with revenues exceeding $500 million, located in Australia, Austria, France, Germany, Japan, South Korea, Spain, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States. All leaders held roles in Finance & Shared Services, Supply Chain, IT & Digital, or Process Improvement & Operations.
About Celonis
Celonis makes processes work for people, companies, and the planet. The Celonis Process Intelligence platform, powered by process mining and AI, combines process data with business context to create a living digital twin of the enterprise, connecting people to processes, teams to teams, and AI to business. Thousands of companies worldwide—including half of the top 200 on the Forbes Global 2000—use Celonis to understand their business, optimize operations, and create significant value in revenue, profit, and green performance.
Celonis is headquartered in Munich, Germany, and New York, USA, with more than 20 offices worldwide.
© 2025 Celonis SE. All rights reserved. Celonis and the Celonis "water drop" logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Celonis SE in Germany and other jurisdictions. All other product and company names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.
