RATIONAL

Anyone who goes out to eat from time to time has probably had their meals prepared with the help of RATIONAL kitchen appliances. After all, 140 million meals are prepared in RATIONAL kitchen appliances every day worldwide. One example would be the Combi steamers of which the company has produced 1 million units so far. In just 46 years, RATIONAL AG has built up 31 subsidiaries that supply large commercial kitchens in the world's 120 most important markets.

This impressive growth is based on a clear principle: RATIONAL consistently focuses on customer satisfaction. Anyone who grows as steadily as RATIONAL and wants to offer their customers a smooth experience in the long term, can only do so through efficient internal processes. These require transparency and a constant effort to uncover and eliminate inefficiencies.

Lack of transparency in the order-to-cash process

As part of your Sales Excellence initiative, RATIONAL has set itself the goal of increasing efficiency in the order-to-cash process, reducing lead times and thereby increasing customer value. At the beginning of this initiative, the existing process steps were initially documented. Ms. Gebhart, was entrusted with this task and reported: "Together with the subsidiaries worldwide, I coordinated and documented all processes and summarized them in a process map." - Michaela Gebhart, Data Analyst, Rational AG. The result was a static overview of the target processes. "Our eyes were then opened during process optimization workshops: The documentation was good, but the lived reality was a different story.” - Martina Biegler, Director Global Customer Service Operations, Rational AG.

Process Mining with the Celonis EMS and support from Processand.

The selection of a suitable tool was quickly completed: RATIONAL chose Celonis and is one of the first customers to use the software entirely as a cloud application. For the initial implementation of Celonis, RATIONAL chose Processand as its implementation partner. "Celonis presented us with three possible implementation partners. [...] After the first conversation with Mr. Kerschbaumer, we agreed: Processand is a very good fit for us, both professionally and personally." – Michaela Gebhart

Processand's initial implementation of Celonis included

• Connection to the SAP system
• Installation of data extractors
• Data transformation of the relevant tables
• Creation of data models
• Setting up initial basic analyses and KPIs

But mere implementation was not enough. RATIONAL quickly benefited from improved process transparency, initial analyses, and clearly defined process KPIs, but the exciting part of the collaboration began after implementation. Ms. Gebhart explains: "Having data is good, but you also have to be able to interpret it correctly: Which metrics show me how good a process is and where it needs improvement? Recognizing the connections between the collected data - that's where Processand has helped us enormously." Therefore, Processand complements the technical implementation with its consulting services. Instead of just documenting processes and setting up analysis dashboards, the consultants and data scientists help interpret this data. This is the only way to derive decisions that offer added value for the company. "Celonis provides a powerful analytics tool. But sometimes we look at the numbers and can't connect the dots, even though we're working with the processes. How Processand looks at and interprets the data is a tremendous support." - Martina Biegler

RATIONAL monitors its approval workflow, inspects the allocation of special conditions and uses various alerts to proactively avoid errors

The approval workflow

One example of a process mapped with Processand and Celonis was the approval workflow for blocked documents. "We had implemented a systemic workflow and wanted to find out how it really works in reality. Due to the high complexity of the approval process, a process analysis would not have been possible without Processand's support. With the help of the analysis, we can track the use of the workflow and the turnaround time and derive targeted measures, such as training, system adjustments, etc.“

The analysis reduced the turnaround time for approval by 40%. RATIONAL has now recorded a usage rate of over 90% for the specified approval workflows.

The special conditions analysis

The allocation of conditions and special terms also slowed down the process and required a more detailed analysis. Processand provided a very meaningful analysis for this. For example, it was possible to discover behavioral patterns in the systemic entry of special conditions that had developed in some organizations and were not intended in this way. The transparency gained made it possible to work on efficient solutions, such as systemic adjustments or new specifications.

Alerts for missing order information

Another example of value-driven collaboration was setting up proactive notifications through Celonis EMS for the missing order information.

RATIONAL works intensively with Celonis and continues to rely on the expertise of Processand

In the future, Processand will continue to support RATIONAL in topics such as data model adaptations, data transformations or in the realization of sophisticated use cases. "When it comes to assistance with more complex issues, I can simply get in touch with Processand - pragmatic and direct collaboration helps us move forward effectively." –Michaela Gebhart.

Martina Biegler also reports: "It is pleasant to approach Processand colleagues. Because of their deep process knowledge, Processand understands our requirements the right away, goes above and beyond to implement them, and often the analyses offer more insights than we thought possible.” When asked whether RATIONAL can recommend working with Processand, both interviewees don't have to think twice: "We are very happy to continue working with Processand in the future and would also recommend Processand as a contact for other companies."

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