Presented by Celonis
Oklahoma State discovered its weaknesses the strenuous way. In April 2023, a legislative report revealed that its agencies spent $3 billion without proper oversight. Janet Morrow, Oklahoma’s director of risk, assessment and compliance, set out to track thousands of monthly transactions across dozens of disconnected systems.
The Sooner State became the first state in the U.S. to operate process intelligence (PI) technology to oversee purchasing. Morrow says the transformation was immediate. Real-time monitoring has replaced multi-year audit cycles. Market leader Celonis’ platform quickly identified more than $10 million in inappropriate spending. The governance team was able to shift staff from 13 to 5 people while dramatically increasing efficiency.
“Process of progress”: global movement
Oklahoma’s pioneering success using powerful up-to-date process technology sheds featherlight on an emerging global trend. Morrow was one of more than 3,000 leaders gathered for the Cellospherethe recent Celonis Annual Conference, which aimed to explore how AI, powered by business context through PI, can deliver commercial returns, as well as environmental and financial benefits around the world.
Vision: process intelligence as the basis for public and social progress.
The movement sees the combination of AI and personal data, like the one in Oklahoma, as an effective way to aid governments and other organizations provide critical services more cost-effectively through better decisions and better-informed policies. From public procurement to juvenile justice to health care and the environment, dozens of organizations now have their first look at the notoriously byzantine, cloudy way of dealing with issues.
For seasoned finance leader Aubrey Vaughan – currently vice president of public sector strategy at Celonis and previously CEO of a vast financial software company – the move towards real process improvement has been a long time coming. He recalls proudly testifying before Congress several years ago regarding the discovery of $10 billion in improper government payments at his former company. Then a senior government official pulled him aside and suggested he downplay the achievement.
The reason, he was told: “The next question they ask you is, ‘Why is this happening?'” Vaughn says. “Today we can answer not only why, but also how to fix it.”
In the United States and around the world, public agencies are cutting budgets. The desire to implement artificial intelligence to fill the gap is met with a harsh reality: you can’t automate what you don’t understand. Here are three real-world examples of organizations using PI and AI to drive better results.
Oklahoma: Real-time AI spend analysis increases accountability
In just 60 days of implementation, Celonis reviewed $29.4 billion in procurement items, identifying $8.48 billion in legally exempt purchases and flagging problematic transactions. The system now provides buyers with real-time feedback within 15 minutes of purchase, allowing for immediate course corrections.
The system revealed that the agencies were purchasing from the supplier at prices 45% below the statewide contract, forcing a renegotiation.
“Real-time AI analysis has increased accountability by providing key insight into spending patterns and improving contract utilization,” explains Morrow.
Last year, Oklahoma rolled out Celonis’ Copilot feature, which uses conversational AI to enable executives to ask questions in plain language. Morrow says now when a governor or cabinet member considers a deal, he gets answers in seconds, not weeks. Her group is expanding the technology to other agencies. It also explores how emerging capabilities of AI agents can further automate compliance and spend analysis.
In Texas, we discover a surprising hidden pattern among youthful criminals
At Evident Change, a nonprofit social research organization, Erin Espinosa is concerned with good stewardship—not of taxpayer money, but of youthful lives.
Analyzing 400,000 data points from Texas’ juvenile justice and public health systems, a former probation officer who earned a Ph.D. made a surprising discovery: the mental health treatment youthful offenders received (or did not receive) was a stronger predictor of prison time than the seriousness of the crime that brought them into the system. Espinosa told the courts, legislatures and Congress. Nobody believed it.
Frustrated, she started working with Monica Chiarini Tremblay, a professor at William & Mary College. While customary analysis showed correlation, Celonis’ process intelligence helped both sides demonstrate clear, quantitative causation: a fragmented mental health system was actively pushing children to perform worse. Further machine learning analysis also found that increasing the number of the same interventions increased the likelihood of undesirable out-of-home placements for juvenile offenders.
Real-world findings recently accepted for academic publication represent both an indictment and an opportunity. Espinosa and Tremblay plan a broader pilot implementation of PI-based analysis for 2026, involving social services, juvenile justice, mental health providers and education officials.
“It’s the perfect combination of business, social work, youth development and financial impact for the community,” Espinosa says.
They are currently exploring how AI agent technologies can detect at-risk youth and trigger coordinated responses before patterns become established.
A $1 trillion defense budget – that has never passed a tidy audit
The U.S. Department of Defense faces financial challenges on an exponentially larger scale. As acting secretary of the Army, Robert M. Speer hired a Massive Three accounting firm to map the service’s financial processes. Three years later, the analysis was archaic – processes had changed radically.
So when Speer first encountered process intelligence, he was really excited by what it revealed. “I not only see the data,” he explained, “but I see where it comes from and what business process delivers it.”
Tom Steffens, former deputy director of defense finance, agrees: “There’s no doubt a piece of the puzzle is missing.” Both recently joined Celonis’ Public Sector Advisory Board. They see the potential for AI agents to automate compliance monitoring in the complicated Department of Defense ecosystem.
The stakes are unimaginably huge. The Department of Defense will receive more than $1 trillion in funding in fiscal year 2026. It is also the only federal government agency that has never had a tidy audit.
Beyond accounting, rapidly changing geopolitics and state-of-the-art warfare require systems as vigorous as today’s combat environments.
“We’re talking about being able to change gears in real time,” Speer says. “We know this is what happens on the battlefield, but we need something on the back end of these processes and systems to make sure it’s happening correctly.”
The two are working with defense leaders to demonstrate how process intelligence can form the basis for transformation – enabling modeling and scenario planning that can support decisions on the battlefield with confidence based on data, rather than delayed and archaic information.
Efforts to modernize and optimize complicated government systems and processes have gained momentum recently. Working with partner Knox Systems, Celonis received FedRAMP authorization, a security clearance required for federal cloud services, earlier this year.
“Knox operates the most secure and longest-lasting managed federal cloud,” notes CEO Irina Denisenko, who supports more than 15 federal agencies. The approval positions the technology “as the compliance foundation for a next-generation government SaaS service.”
Where the process meets the goal
From identifying billions in potential savings to revealing why children end up in prison, public sector early adopters are proving what’s possible with process intelligence. The potential extends wherever public funds shape the public good: climate response, education, infrastructure, emergency services.
Advocates often talk about the “process of progress” or the “process of empathy” – using transparency to change minds and hearts, not just policies.
Says Chiarini Tremblay, who worked on Texas’ juvenile offender system: “We have to understand complex systems and make data-driven decisions, but the goal is always to improve outcomes for people.”
This is not just an American movement. For example, in the UK, University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust has implemented PI with dramatic success. Director Andy Hardy used Celonis to analyze 244,000 outpatient cases, revealing huge differences in care delivery.
By optimizing appointment reminders four to 14 days in advance, the center enabled early cancellations and saw an additional 1,800 patients per week. Within eight weeks, the waiting list was reduced by 5,300 patients.
Hardy concludes: “Data that clinicians can understand is as important as scalpels.”
Technology continues to move forward. At Celosphere 2025, Celonis unveiled a range of up-to-date offerings and platform updates for public and private sector organizations, including an orchestration engine that coordinates activities across workflows involving AI agents, human tasks and legacy systems.
All of them are based on the Celonis process intelligence graph, which creates a “living digital twin” of the processes of a company or public institution. It is system agnostic and runs on disconnected systems typical of government operations, while integrating decades-old mainframes and cutting-edge cloud applications.
But agency leaders and others note that success requires more than just software. For example, when Oklahoma reduced the size of its surveillance team from 13 to five, there was resistance. Morrow’s team has invested heavily in training and change management. Process intelligence discovers opportunities for improvement, but people implement solutions, he explains.
Continuous, long-term education and cultural change are needed.
“Continuous operational improvement is a way of life,” says Celonis’ Vaughn. “You have to have a culture that wants to build better processes, better systems, more efficient systems.”
The tools are ready. The business case is proven. What remains is the will to change and the courage to take a clear look at systems that are intended to serve the public good.
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