Exclusive: Celonis' Pascal Coubard shares APAC ambitions and growth

Pascal Coubard, Vice‑President APAC at Celonis has opened up about what the company's refreshed platform means for its future growth in Asia‑Pacific.

It comes after Celonis revealed that its customers globally have realised USD $8.1 billion in business value through its Process Intelligence platform, during the Celosphere conference in Munich last month.

"We are probably one of the only companies that are able to track the value. We could assume the value; we could estimate the value. But as part of the core Celonis, one of the capabilities for the team and for us is to be able, along the way, to say specifically how much value our customer has been capturing," said Pascal Coubard, Vice‑President APAC, Celonis.

"That number comes because we tackle mission‑critical processes at some of the biggest companies on the planet. For example, Queensland Health in Australia saved USD $14 million over two years, by optimising just one process and two product sets," he said.

For Celonis, that figure serves not just as a headline, but as a baseline: proof that process‑level visibility and optimisation can produce concrete return - and a reference point for what could be achieved in APAC.

Platform overhaul

At its global conference, Celonis introduced a significantly upgraded version of its core platform. Central to this is the Process Intelligence Graph - a "living digital twin" of business operations that brings together data from systems, applications, desktops and even unstructured sources. 

New features include a broader data‑integration layer, support for data lakes without duplication, and tools that enable companies to map and monitor their workflows in real time. 

Celonis community

"AI and GenAI have been front of mind in the last two or three years. From the beginning, Celonis had AI - we called it machine learning at that time. Even 14 years ago, it was already part of what we were delivering," said Coubard.

He explained that what's new is not just AI, but how Celonis now embeds AI in a way that connects clean process data with real‑world business flows - enabling companies to scale beyond pilots and deploy AI with confidence.

Partnerships set the pace

The relaunch also came with tight integration of Celonis with major data and cloud platforms - part of a deliberate push to embed process intelligence within the broader enterprise software ecosystem. The company's updated data‑core supports "zero‑copy" integration with data-lake platforms such as Databricks. 

That, Coubard argues, "solves a common blocker for enterprise AI adoption: data duplication, governance overhead and siloed workflows."

With the new architecture, enterprises can feed live, contextual process data into AI agents - while preserving compliance, and retaining the trust of other systems.

That foundation makes Celonis more than a niche analytics tool: in his view, it becomes the "intelligence layer" that firms need to operate modern, AI‑driven businesses at scale.

APAC ambitions

Celonis only formally began building out its presence in Asia‑Pacific around 18 months ago - but Coubard believes that timing might now work in its favour.

"We only started in APAC 18 months ago, where we built the company 14 years ago," he said. He argued this delay gives Celonis the benefit of hindsight: they can learn from what went well (and what did not) in other markets - and apply lessons directly.

"In APAC, AI is very central. It's a topic we're talking about in nearly each meeting," he added. With the upgraded platform and stronger ecosystem links, he expects Celonis to shift local firms from experimenting with AI to embedding it into core operations: supply chain, finance, service, or compliance.

Early proof in Australia

Coubard described a recent proof‑of‑value project with a major retail chain in Australia. The chain had already tried automation and process‑mining with another vendor - without satisfactory results. Celonis was invited to run a proof of value on a key warehouse process.

"In three weeks we identified that we could help them save more than USD $2 million straight on this process and this warehouse. They have dozens of them," he said.

He contrasted this with the retailer's previous efforts: "It took them three years and millions to get to a portion of what we delivered in three weeks."

While the retailer has not yet committed fully - the pilot remains under evaluation - Coubard said that outcome has generated serious interest at executive level. He believes such use cases offer a clear blueprint for what Celonis can deliver across multiple warehouses and processes in the region.

With the refreshed platform, stronger ecosystem, and a growing local presence, Celonis is positioning itself to turn the momentum from Celosphere into tangible outcomes in APAC.

As Coubard put it, Celonis is no longer about potential, it's about delivering measurable value.