Since May 2025, Celonis has had a location in Zurich to ensure that processes across systems, departments and organizations also function and are hosted in Switzerland. The 14-year-old company, founded in Munich, is particularly interesting with its high standards of data protection and process transparency. With a view to digitalization, increased efficiency and AI-supported process intelligence, Celonis is at a turning point between global tech player and local relevance.
Thebrokernews talks to Vincent Leber, Vice President Sales & Country Managing Director Switzerland at Celonis, about the vision, strategy and challenges for the Swiss market.
What was the main reason why Celonis opened an office in Zurich in May 2025 and not earlier?
Since Celonis was founded, we have also been active on the Swiss market. Early on, we were able to acquire important customers, whom we have been supporting ever since. The opening of our office in Zurich and the establishment of local data center capacities are the logical development of these close partnerships. We have deliberately coordinated the two steps. By providing data center capacities, we want to enable Swiss companies to process data in compliance with the GDPR and at the same time be closer to our customers. The fact that we did not take these steps earlier was due to our high quality standards: sustainable infrastructure requires time, precision and partnership-based coordination – values that we share with our Swiss customers such as Hitachi Energy, Novartis, Syngenta, Zurich Insurance and other Swiss insurance companies. We did not want to make any compromises here.
How important is the possibility of hosting data in Swiss data centers in the future, especially for regulated industries such as insurance companies and banks?
It is particularly important for banks and insurance companies to process data within Switzerland. With our local hosting, we make it easier to adhere to strict data protection and compliance requirements and at the same time create the basis for the legally compliant use of modern technologies such as process intelligence and AI.
How does Celonis make operational risks (compliance, waiting times, etc.) visible and what role does process intelligence play in identifying and systematically reducing waiting times, missing documents or breaks in the claims workflow?
Our process intelligence platform makes invisible processes visible – especially where traditional business intelligence systems reach their limits. To do this, it analyzes the internal processes in a company across all systems and shows where they deviate from the target, for example through bypassed approval steps or violations of segregation-of-duties rules (separation of functions). This end-to-end transparency makes regulatory risks in day-to-day business not only reviewable in retrospect, but also proactively controllable, for example through automated (control) mechanisms, alerts, AI-supported recommendations and AI agents.
At the same time, the platform identifies operational weaknesses such as waiting times, missing documents, duplicate checks or media disruptions. In this way, it shows where there is potential for optimization: data-based and tailored to the respective type of damage. We even go one step further: company processes can be controlled and improved directly from the Celonis platform using specially developed applications, automation and agent-based AI. The software therefore not only provides data-based recommendations for action, but also implements them automatically.
The result is more efficient, resilient and compliant processes. This enables companies to increase their process efficiency and achieve tangible added value.
What challenges do you see for Swiss companies in the area of tension between innovation pressure and regulation and how can Celonis provide useful support here?
The biggest challenge at the moment is to use new technologies such as AI and automation productively without incurring compliance risks. This is exactly where Celonis comes in: If you understand your processes, you can use new technologies such as AI in a controlled manner. Our platform creates the necessary transparency. This allows efficiency potential to be leveraged and regulatory requirements to be mapped and proactively managed at process level from the outset.
Companies that manage their processes intelligently benefit in the long term: they can react much faster to new regulatory framework conditions and at the same time strengthen their organization’s ability to innovate. Process intelligence is therefore becoming a decisive lever in the area of tension between innovation pressure and regulation.
Which market segments would you like to address primarily in Switzerland, and what level of maturity do you see in Swiss companies with regard to process mining?
In Switzerland, we primarily address sectors that place high demands on operational excellence and regulatory security. These include financial service providers, insurance companies, companies in the life sciences sector, manufacturing companies, energy suppliers and, increasingly, retailers and consumer goods manufacturers. Our platform creates transparency and controllable efficiency, particularly in areas with high process volumes, volatile supply chains or tight margins.
As far as the maturity of process mining is concerned, the picture is varied: some pioneers have already integrated the technology, while others are still in the early stages. It is important to note that process mining is only one component of our platform. Celonis stands for comprehensive process intelligence with the clear aim of not only analysing processes, but also managing them operationally, making AI productively usable and demonstrably optimizing business-critical processes.
Because without in-depth knowledge of your own processes, without real process intelligence, any AI strategy remains worthless. Our “No AI without PI” approach is no coincidence: process intelligence is a key enabler for the successful use of AI. Overall, we are observing increasing awareness and a significant increase in strategic relevance in Switzerland in this context.
How would you explain the added value of a digital process twin in a few sentences to a Swiss company that is hearing about process intelligence for the first time?
Process Intelligence is the basis for the digital twin of your business processes: a living image that shows how your processes actually work. This allows you to identify bottlenecks, inefficiencies or compliance risks in real time. On this basis, you can not only analyze business processes, but also intervene and optimize them in a targeted manner.
The digital twin is therefore not used for retrospective reporting, but is an operational control system. Only on this basis can technologies such as automation and AI develop their full potential. If you really understand your processes, you can make them resilient, secure them from a regulatory perspective and improve them effectively, thereby reconciling innovation and regulation
The round table showed how badly damaged or incomplete data can damage real claims processes. How does Celonis help to make these “blind spots” visible and identify conflicting objectives?
A lack of transparency is the main cause of problems in claims processing. This is precisely where our technology comes in. By revealing processes across all systems in real time and enriching them with full context, it makes process and data breaks visible, identifies inefficient manual handovers and highlights deviations from the target process.
This allows companies to recognize not only that a process is stalling, but also where and why, including the underlying causes. At the same time, internal conflicts of objectives are also uncovered, for example when the claims department prioritizes quick payouts while the finance team pays attention to budget compliance.
The result is a shared, fact-based basis for decision-making across departmental boundaries. Companies can thus optimize their processes and are customer-oriented, efficient and compliant.
For which industries in Switzerland do you currently see the greatest potential for process mining or process intelligence and where is the greatest measurable added value?
We see particularly great potential in the insurance, banking, life sciences, industry, retail and consumer goods sectors. They are all characterized by a high degree of digitalization and complex process landscapes and are characterized by the need to harmonize efficiency, customer experience and compliance.
Insurance companies need to speed up claims and underwriting processes, ensure regulatory compliance and offer an excellent customer experience at the same time. Process intelligence provides the necessary transparency to shorten throughput times, increase dark processing and identify operational risks at an early stage.
Banks benefit from automated control of regulatory requirements, improved straight-through processing rates and more targeted control of their front and back office processes.
Life sciences companies require complete end-to-end transparency across research and development, global production, quality, approval and R&D processes, the ideal field of application for digital twins.
The manufacturing industry is under massive pressure to be efficient, whether in supply chain, production or order-to-cash processes. Celonis makes material flows, bottlenecks and repetition loops visible and controllable in real time.
Retailers work with complex and often highly fragmented process chains that extend from purchasing and logistics to the point of sale. With the help of process intelligence, goods flows, stock ranges, returns and seasonal peaks can be better managed and availability improved.
Consumer goods manufacturers are under high pressure to innovate and reduce prices, while at the same time facing complex, internationally ramified supply chains. Process Intelligence enables data-supported synchronization of forecasting, production and distribution in order to react faster and more flexibly to market changes.
In concrete terms, this means that the added value of process intelligence can be seen where processes become measurably faster, more stable and more compliant. For example, companies can reduce throughput times in claims or invoicing processes, improve the first-time-right rate and thus avoid rework or significantly increase the degree of automation. In addition, complaint and escalation rates are reduced, working capital KPIs such as DSO, DPO or warehouse reach are improved and compliance KPIs, such as segregation-of-duties violations, are made transparent and controllable.
All these key figures only develop their full added value when they are viewed in context. Process intelligence not only makes it possible to measure what happens, but also to understand why it happens.
How long does it typically take for the first measurable successes to become visible?
As a rule, our customers see concrete results within a few weeks. These initial quick wins result, for example, from reduced throughput times or an increased automation rate. The sustainable added value then unfolds through continuous process improvement: many customers scale up from individual pilot processes to company-wide initiatives within a few months, thereby increasingly leveraging strategic potential.
Which aspects of claims processing are particularly suitable for process mining and why?
High volumes, complex inspection paths and regulatory pressure make claims processing the ideal field of application. Particularly well suited:
Process from claims notification to payout: process mining shows where things go wrong, for example due to media breaks, manual checks or redundant processing loops.
Identification of dark processing vs. manual processing: Companies recognize which types of claims are processed automatically and where there is potential for higher STP (Straight Through Processing) rates.
Checking compliance with regulations and adherence to audit trails: The platform makes it visible whether internal control systems are being adhered to and whether approvals, documentation or risk classifications are complete and correct.
Improvement in follow-up and escalation rates: Which types of claims lead to queries? Which ones lead to extra work? With this information, causes can be eliminated in a targeted manner.
Improving the customer experience: By making processing times and feedback loops transparent, customer contact points can be improved, especially for sensitive claims.
What technological developments do you expect in the area of process intelligence and AI over the next few years and how is Celonis positioning itself for this?
We expect process intelligence to become an even more central control layer for the use of AI in companies in the coming years.
A key topic here is agent-based AI: autonomous, data-supported software agents that not only monitor processes on the basis of process intelligence, but actively control them. This technology was the big tech hype of last year and is already in productive use today with Celonis. The potential is enormous and far from exhausted. We will therefore continue to systematically develop agent-based AI, particularly in conjunction with intelligent process orchestration.
Another future field is process networks, i.e. collaborative platforms that map cross-company processes, for example in claims settlement between insurers, partner companies and service providers. Here too, process intelligence forms the basis for transparency, efficiency and controllability.
In addition, we want to expand our platform to become the central operational basis for corporate AI. To this end, we are cooperating closely with hyperscalers and technology leaders such as Microsoft, Databricks and AWS. In this way, we are strengthening our pioneering role in the operationalization of AI in the context of real business processes.
Which operational model, e.g. cloud, on-premise, hybrid solution, do you use to serve Swiss customers and how flexible are you with regard to different IT infrastructures?
Celonis offers Swiss companies maximum flexibility in terms of technical implementation. Our platform is designed to be cloud-native, but also supports hybrid scenarios in which particularly sensitive data remains in the customer’s existing IT infrastructure (data-in-place models). Since May 2025, we have also been using a local data center in Switzerland. This enables us to provide GDPR-compliant data processing for highly regulated industries such as finance and insurance.
Celonis can be seamlessly integrated into existing system landscapes, including ERP and CRM systems such as SAP or Salesforce, and meets the highest security and governance requirements, for example with regard to FINMA, GxP or GDPR specifications.
Another advantage is our local presence in Zurich. It enables short distances in customer support and close coordination with the IT and security teams on site. This is a clear advantage, especially in a sensitive market environment.
Where do you see Celonis in five years’ time, particularly in Switzerland, and what are your most important strategic goals for this market?
Celonis has established itself as the standard for data-based process optimization and control. We have scaled our customer relationships, further expanded our local team and developed industry-specific solutions together with partners, for example for claims processing or regulatory requirements.
We follow a clear conviction: Artificial intelligence only develops its added value on the basis of genuine process intelligence. That is why we not only invest in technology, but also in know-how. In collaboration with Swiss universities, we are training the next generation of process mining and process intelligence experts.
“No AI without PI” is our guiding principle: it makes it clear that our customers can not only analyze their processes, but also control them operationally with the help of AI and thus make the leap from selective optimization to intelligent transformation.
The questions were asked by Binci Heeb.
Vincent Leber is Vice President & Country Leader Switzerland at Celonis and is responsible for the Swiss business of the global market leader for process intelligence. As a long-standing top manager – including in a senior role at Salesforce – he is a proven expert in digital transformation and enterprise sales. In this interview, he provides in-depth insights into process optimization and the technological development of the Swiss market.
Read also: From chaos to clarity: Simplifai’s CEO on AI in claims processing
Search:
Sponsors:
