Celonis has firmly established itself as the leader in the process mining software market.
Let‘s review the latest market share figures, Celonis strengths and limitations, overview key selection criteria for top alternatives, and highlight competitors that excel where Celonis falls short.
By the end, you‘ll have an informed perspective on viable Celonis alternatives aligning to your specific process enhancement priorities now and in the years ahead.
Celonis Market Leadership – By the Numbers
An Everest Group study pegged Celonis‘ share of the global process mining market at 63% by revenue as of mid-2022.
As shown in Figure 1 below, Celonis leads its next closest rival, UiPath, by over 3x market share percentage:
Figure 1: Process mining market share breakdown. Source: Everest Group 2022
Celonis’ predominant market position comes after years of rapid growth. Its annual recurring revenue (ARR) skyrocketed from $1 million to $100 million between 2016 to 2020 before reaching $500 million ARR by 2022.
Its execution management vision clearly resonates. But some limitations around usability and pricing leave the door open for alternatives to meet specialized process enhancement needs or regional buyer preferences.
The worldwide process mining market also shows no signs of slowing expansion, projected to grow at a 40% CAGR to exceed $10 billion by 2028 according to Grand View Research.
So while Celonis leads today, there’s still enormous runway for altnerative vendors as process excellence investments accelerate globally.
Celonis Capabilities and Limitations
Before profiling top alternatives, let‘s recap core Celonis strengths as well as limitations reported by hands-on users:
Key Celonis Execution Management System capabilities:
- Rapid process discovery across source systems
- Customizable process dashboards and live process monitoring
- Conformance checking to surface process deviations
- Task mining for work pattern analysis
- A.I. enabled insights around bottlenecks, root causes
- Collaboration features to annotate processes
- Automation via Celonis Actions to trigger interventions
Limitations highlighted by users:
- Steep learning curve given technical complexity
- Processing scale limitations with high data volumes
- Brittleness of some pre-configured algorithms
- Limited flexibility to tweak analytics approaches
- Integration overhead with external tools
- Opaque commercial terms and high pricing
So while Celonis enables end-to-end automated process enhancement, alternatives vie for market share by targeting usability, adaptability, pricing, and augmentation of capabilities via partnerships.
Key Evaluation Criteria for Celonis Alternatives
Based on the limitations above and the evolving function needs emerging in process excellence initiatives, here are key dimensions to evaluate alternatives:
Core process mining capabilities:
- Breadth of discovery, analytics, monitoring features
- Accuracy and rigor of analysis algorithms
- Scalability across data volumes, sources, and use cases
Ease of use and TCO:
- Learning curve for users with varying skill levels
- Setup and admin complexity
- Tool flexibility and customization options
- Total cost model and license portability
Adjacent tool integration:
- Compatibility with data platforms
- BI, analytics, and reporting tool connectivity
- Ability to embed process analytics in operational apps
- Integration with leading RPA, workflows, and other automation
These dimensions determine whether a solution empowers or hinders adoption and outcomes from process mining initiatives.
Top 3 Celonis Alternatives by Strength
Now let‘s analyze leading alternatives that address Celonis limitations around flexibility, usability, and connectivity.
1. ARIS Process Mining: matched breadth + better accessibility
Offered by enterprise architecture leader Software AG, ARIS Process Mining matches Celonis’ functional footprint while exceeding ease of use.
ARIS enables end-to-end discovery, analysis, monitoring and automation with strengths around:
- Spreadsheet-style interface for simpler adoption
- Top-rated vendor support model
- Custom scripting to tailor analytics
- prebuilt integrations with leading BPM platforms
For organizations seeking broader process mining access without sacrificing rigor, ARIS warrants close consideration.
2. IBM Process Mining: ease of use + integrated AI
Designed for business self-service, IBM Process Mining makes experience tradeoffs to provide the most intuitive navigation.
IBM PM strengths include:
- Single click process discovery and mapping
- Interactive autogenerated dashboards
- Growing library of prebuilt data connectors
- Watson AI assisting user analysis
- Cost effective licensing model
For organizations that prioritize user adoption and TCO over advanced analytics, IBM warrants evaluation.
3. UiPath Process Mining: ease of use + native RPA
As an RPA native vendor, UiPath Process Mining brings natural automation strengths:
Key UiPath PM advantages:
- Top rated for novice user accessibility
- End-to-end automation orchestration
- Advanced process analytics assistant
- Seamless Celonis migration
- Generous free trial license
For organizations running UiPath bots, UiPath PM merits consideration to enable integrated process and task automation.
The Rapid Evolution of Process Mining Capabilities
Beyond the core process discovery and analysis features covered above, new product capabilities come to market rapidly that warrant consideration for certain process uses cases:
Process Simulation
New tools like myInvenio Process Simulation allow modeling, simulation and predicted outcome analysis for not-yet-deployed process designs, enabling safer innovation.
Environmental Mining
With environmental mining, tools like Everflow Green Mining incorporate emissions data to optimize processes for sustainability.
Low-Code Mining Configuration
Vendors like QPR ProcessAnalyzer enable intuitive process mining administration via low-code platforms instead of relying on IT specialists.
These innovations expand the outcomes attainable from process analytics while making capabilities more accessible to business teams.
The Economics of Process Mining and Intelligent Automation
Beyond assessing features, understanding process mining value also requires examining economic outcomes attainable.
According to research by Everest Group, top benefits realized from process mining adoption include:
- 8-12% increased process efficiency and productivity
- 90% quicker root cause identification
- 20-30% reduction in compliance violation incidents
These efficiency gains and risk reductions directly translate to financial return across process-intensive domains like manufacturing, financial services, healthcare, and call centers.
And combining process mining with attended and unattended automation via platforms like Automation Anywhere, Blue Prism, and UiPath unlocks further benefits:
- 65% quicker automation development and deployment
- 8-15% higher automation ROI
- 90%+ reduction in business process defects
As shown in Figure 2 below, integrated process mining and intelligent automation drives significant bottom line savings:
Figure 2: Modeled 5 year ROI combining process mining and RPA. Source: Everest Group
So when evaluating process mining platforms, analyze their integration capabilities with leading run-time automation tools that can execute optimized processes designed in part through analytics.
Emerging Best Practices for Process Mining Success
Beyond software capabilities, process mining success depends heavily on implementation and adoption factors.
Here we’ll overview emerging best practices around planning, stakeholder engagement, analytics customization, and change management.
Realistic roadmaps aligned to capability maturity
The most successful process mining deployments align software acquisition to longer term data and analytics roadmaps.
Asshown in Figure 3 below, this lifecycle typically evolves across four stages:
Figure 3: Process analytics maturity progression. Source: Gartner
Attempting advanced analytics before attaining data quality and governance rarely succeeds. Set realistic milestones by aligning capability and culture.
Stakeholder inclusion across process domains
Since process mining shines light on cross-functional workflows, leaving out key stakeholders during capability scoping or analysis often degrades outcomes.
Analytics leaders like myInvenio advocate collaborative process governance where IT, automation, analytics, and domain experts mutually determine improvement roadmaps.
This model relies on cloud-based software that business teams directly access instead of funneling requests through a central analytics team – democratizing for greater engagement.
Retrofitting platforms to unique processes
Off-the-shelf process mining rarely optimizes unique processes without customization and elbow grease.
Leaders like Celonis recommend instrumenting domain apps to capture event logs purpose-built for mining algorithms instead of relying solely on generic enterprise software logs.
This retrofitting amplifies insights but adds integration overhead many initially underestimate.
Change management and capability building
Like any advanced technology, skills gaps undermine process mining outcomes. Staff across IT, automation, BI, and business domains need both general data literacy and specialized process analytics training to collaborate effectively.
Vendors like SoftwareAG provide extensive bootcamps and certifications to perpetuate capability building beyond technical specialists.
Without deliberate competency development, disjointed efforts slow or stall adoption.
The Future of Process Excellence: Augmented Process Intelligence
The combination of exponential data growth, accessible advanced analytics, and integrated automation points toward a future state Gartner terms Augmented Process Intelligence (API).
In this model, AI assists both process analysts and front line staffers in near real-time recommendation and automation triggering.
The system continuously improves via a feedback loop linking mining, monitoring, and intervention. No recent technology shift matches this potential for continuous, touchless process enhancement.
While AP inevitably produces disruption, the extent depends heavily on change management maturity. Proactively reskilling workers in adjacent digital competencies mitigates workforce risk.
The Bottom Line
Celonis maintains its market leading position via the end-to-end capabilities of its Execution Management System. But for organizations seeking alternatives more tailored to accessibility, analytics specialization, or regional market conditions, expanding options warrant consideration.
Between rapid feature expansion and exponentially growing data assets to mine, process excellence initiatives will only accelerate. This timeline demands proactive evaluation of enabling software, integration with automation platforms, and organizational readiness building to capture upside.
Hopefully this guide provides an insightful starting point to determine if unseating installed Celonis aligns to your needs or if complementary niche solutions sufficiently fill capability gaps.
