Hi Team,

Why don't you try Celonis experiences for PowerBI - there is a connector so you can feed your PowerBI dashboards directly from Celonis EMS. That way you get also a "single-pane-of-glass" consolidating all your dashboards in PowerBI

https://docs.celonis.com/en/experiences.html

HTH

Hello @ravi.kumar23 ,

We might be on the same boat, hopefully by sharing our strategy give you a bit idea. My employer is engineering / manufacturing company, our ERP is SAP ECC with various flavor of analytics (our DW is SAP BW/4, Dashboard in Power BI and limited Tableau for story telling, Data Store with Azure SQL serverless). Then mid last year Celonis came into the picture.

Our initial solution was dominant by KPI and metrics which was competing against our own analytics dashboard at Power BI. Hence, late last year we pivot and rework Celonis on positioning. Finally we decided to limit Celonis strict to process analytics and improvement. Any KPI related must align with process and discussion around it where current out of the box Power BI solution is not able to provide natively. Trying to balance and ensure right positioning is the key otherwise it will be change management and adoption challenge which risk overall project / investment.

Let me know if you have further question, I might be wrong but this is our current direction.

Additional note:

• As organization we are mature enough from knowing what to monitor, most of the KPIs available from starter kit are already available in Power BI, makes little to no value trying to offer the same thing at the beginning of journey with Celonis. Knowing your organization maturity is key.
• The "Experience for Power BI" wont work for us because additional cost we have to explain to management and we already have mature pipeline supplying Power BI, why pivot and put Celonis in critical path? Offering analytics solution is not just what technically able to deliver but what is the right thing to deliver with performant and maintainable solution.

Thank you.

Hey Ravi,

This is a very recognizable topic for me and something that is often talked about and discussed. In my personal experience it's best to frame Power BI as a tool for signalling and dashboarding purposes whereas Celonis is really about insights and analytics. In our environment it doesn't make much sense to provide Celonis dashboards to business users, since these people are educated in power BI and are not actually analysing processes, they are just signalling if something is wrong.

With Celonis we often make the comparison of an MRI scanner and a doctor that can interpret those images whereas Power BI is more of the general practitioner that notices something is wrong.

Hope this gives a little insight in our way of looking at it, but there is definitely some degree of overlap between the 2 tools.

Hi @Teuku Faruq Thanks for sharing these insights!

These is in alignment with what we have been thinking, In addition what are your thoughts on below :

1)When we do process mining Dashboards may come as by product- Do we encourage them ?

2)Have you seen any parallels with using Action flows Vs using Power BI + Power apps for automation ?

3)Ho do you guide your users to take the decision on these points?

Thanks @1460069522  for the response please also look at some questions above.

I think is it a pretty interesting topic and conversation, I wonder if Celonis could set up a round-table session for this, inviting partners to discuss these pros and cons....

Hey Ravi,

1) This is always an interesting topic and can be handled different depending on the situation. In most cases power BI is the main dashboarding tool and also highly used by the business for dashboarding purposes. That in effect makes that the literacy of end-users to use power BI is high, while Celonis would be a new tool that needs to be educated before proper use. In those instances it might be more efficient to let a developer transfer the insights gained from Celonis analyses to a Power BI dashboard. If possible perhaps even connect power BI to Celonis with the connector that was developed, although I see this more as a convenience option to not have to transform PQL to DAX code and going through the process of validation than truly the solution to the dashboarding question at hand.

2) I have seen parallels between the 2. In my opinion Power apps have been further developed and allow for more customizability compared to action flows or skills, however back to the original question: "Where do you use process mining". I would advice to use action flows or skill on process related occurrences or patterns that are hard to detect with DAX code in Power BI. In other words, use the easiest tool to achieve automation.

3) This is inherent on the discussion we are having here. Crucial is that you form a clear guideline on what should and should not be taken up in Celonis. The vision of management and their investment/sponsorship of Celonis is a key factor here.

A round table on this topic could be very interesting, would love to hear others on their opinions.

Maurits

I would be very interested in joining such a round table and exchanging thoughts

Hello @ravi.kumar23  and @1460069522 , thanks for feedback, my two cents ..

1)When we do process mining dashboards may come as by product - do we encourage them?

Answer: Yes, why not? However careful not to overdo it and create dashboard fatigue. I cant emphasis enough on ensuring positioning, which mean they are encourage to do but limited to global process owner in your organization because for them Power BI dashboard only tell the story partially. If you expose and encourage the normal business they might get confused and ask unnessary question. Some audience wont appreciate the power of Celonis because of their background, find your right ally in organization :) 

2)Have you seen any parallels with using Action flows vs. using Power BI + Power Apps for automation?

Answer: In high level they look the same as RPA, however the difference is at the details where Celonis Action Flow may act based on process signal instead of common KPI / if-this-then-that, which mean there will be overlap between the two. Hence positioning is important, if your company already on Power Apps for RPA, the value for Action Flows will be automating those where the signal comes from process. 

3)How do you guide your users to take the decision on these points?

Answer: We just started, nothing much to share so far. However I think there are lots of interesting sharing session during last year Celosphere and you might reach your account manager to talk with more mature customer, im sure some of them happy to share. Link to celosphere https://www.celonis.com/celosphere/2022/recordings/watch/ 

Agree with @Guillermo Gost , perhaps virtual coffee session organize by Celonis will be interesting. If you check academy, they will host Procurement Roundtable on 7th Feb.

Have good weekend!

@Teuku Faruq @1460069522 @Guillermo Gost Thank you for your inputs! I do agree that roundtable on this will good and exciting to discuss.

@Arsalan Shahid Do you know how to organize one and help us with the same?

Haven't listened to the podcast yet, but the people at processand usually have a nice view on topics like this. Perhaps this could shed some other information on the topic:

https://www.processand.com/insights/podcast/process-mining-vs-business-intelligence/

Hi @1460069522 Thanks for this!

I watched and it liked the way they have explained the difference between PM & BI.

Hey Ravi,

Glad you liked it. I listened to it as well, it's a nice discussion on the reporting vs analyzing capabilities and that there is inherently always an overlap between the two fields.