Celonis Celosphere 2025 | Jan Malmendier, Allianz

Clips
More from Celonis Celosphere 2025

Jan Malmendier

Chief Operating Officer

Allianz

play_circle_outline Transforming Insurance: From Customer Satisfaction to Enthusiasm Through Process Mining Insights

play_circle_outline System thinking applied to enhance customer interactions and process understanding.

play_circle_outline Transforming Organizations: Real-World Applications of Process Mining in Accident Claims and Home Purchasing for Enhanced Efficiency

Info
Transcript

Jan Malmendier, Allianz

Jan Malmendier

Chief Operating Officer Allianz

In this Celosphere 2025 interview, Jan Malmendier of Allianz joins theCUBE’s Rob Strechay and Savannah Peterson to share how a customer-obsessed mindset is reshaping insurance operations with Celonis Process Intelligence. Malmendier explains the shift from deep process mining to process orchestration, the role of systems thinking and how building a digital twin of Allianz helps verify that intended customer experiences actually happen. He details tangible improvements – revamping accident claims from years to, in most cases, a few days, and simplifying house-... Read more

explore Keep Exploring

What steps is the insurance company taking to improve customer satisfaction and enthusiasm? add

What was the experience and impact of implementing system thinking in relation to customer interactions and processes? add

What processes have been revamped as a result of using Celonis to enhance customer interactions? add

bolt Powered by CUBE AI

Jan Malmendier, Allianz

search

Savannah Peterson

>> Good afternoon, process intelligence fans, and welcome back to Munich, Germany. We're here on day one of our two days of live coverage at Celosphere. My name's Savannah Peterson, joined with Rob Strechay for all the fun for the second year in a row. Rob, what a power-packed morning so far.

Rob Strechay

>> This has been such a great day. I think leading into this afternoon and where we're going I think is getting the true examples of how people are actually utilizing this to improve their organizations has been great.

Savannah Peterson

>> I know. This is one of the things that I love about this show. Our next guest is going to be telling us stories as well. Jan, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for being here.

Jan Malmendier

>> Thank you.

Savannah Peterson

>> This must be a super exciting week for you. You're kind of a celebrity here. You're one of the key stories. You're on stage, got a lot going on. Tell us how you're feeling.

Jan Malmendier

>> Great. No, it's really an outstanding day. It's a really inspiring experience here. So, I think we get all these things from really deep process mining now, turning to process orchestration and there's so much going on. Obviously with AI. Everyone talks about AI. So, it's really, really great to see how this whole story is moving.

Savannah Peterson

>> Absolutely. It's one thing, and this is going to be fun to talk to you about, it's one thing to know a process, it's another thing to understand it. How are you applying this methodology and leveraging Celonis internally?

Jan Malmendier

>> Yeah, we are an insurance company, so traditionally, we are probably not the one company that really thought about processes a lot. And also customers were not always at the heart of what we are doing. We are changing that, and so really coming from customer satisfaction to customer enthusiasm, really saying, "We want that customers love our products and processes." And that's where process mining helps us a lot and Celonis helps us a lot

Savannah Peterson

>> I love that passion.

Rob Strechay

>> I was going to say with that passion, I think as you start to look at it, both of us are fans of system thinking. Go into the mindset that you're connecting between that and what Celonis is bringing to the table. And really, the whole idea of digital twin, of Allianz and of the organization and different processes within the organization.

Jan Malmendier

>> Yeah, maybe quickly coming back to system thinking. So, in Germany or the Continental Europe, it's not that famous, but we acquired a company in UK and they have some really great system thinking coaches. And so, we flew them over and say, "Let's really do some system thinking," listening to calls, understanding processes, and that was really mind-blowing for us. So, that was really cool stuff. But on the other hand, that's always the individual interaction with a customer and Celonis helps us to really do that on large scale, so we can build all our transaction into a digital twin and then check if the processes we envision to make our customers truly happy really happen in real life. And so, we make sure that it's turned out as we really want processes to happen.

Savannah Peterson

>> Which makes a lot of sense. I'm curious if you don't mind sharing, are there any processes that you've completely revamped as a result of this exercise?

Jan Malmendier

>> Yeah, I think we definitely have revamped few of them. So, one was really the accidents claims process we completely revamped, where it took, in the past, years until we were really ready to pay. Now, we can pay in most cases after a few days and that really make a difference. We completely changed house purchasing process when a house moves to a new owner. And so, also this process, we got rid of all the documents required in the past and a very complex triangle process, we made very two-dimensional and that's very good.

Rob Strechay

>> Again, I actually ran part of an insurance company, Manulife Financial and John Hancock. I was running data centers and storage and DR for them way back. I didn't have as much gray hair back then. I think that started me on my path of gray hair. So, I understand insurance companies very well, but like you said, we had a lot of process, but the process was very, very laborious and things of that nature. When you look at this, do you look at things like generative AI and the object-centric model that Celonis brings to bear as helping you into the future and helping you really be able to capture these processes quicker?

Jan Malmendier

>> Yeah, absolutely. So, one thing we do actually with this object-oriented model is to rethink our churn process, but more even really go into detecting churn before it actually happens. So, we basically do all our data and say, "Okay." We check what are the processes that might lead to churn, and then we use AI to also check the sentiment in writing and on the call side, and put this all in this one big data where we say, "Okay, now the customer stated that he's unhappy." And in the past it was quite often unheard. And now, we can really react to this and say, "Okay, some not-so-good things maybe happened to this customer. It was a lengthy process. He stated that he's uncomfortable with us, might want to churn." So, we give them a call, maybe in the future also on call by AI, we will see, and then make sure that the customer is getting happy, we can offer him something and really prevent a churn before it actually happens.

Rob Strechay

>> I was going to say, so what you've gone through is looked at the processes that really have tangible impact and when you go through and rank where you're going to bring AI and process to bear, have you gone through with the different departments and said, "Hey, here's how we're going to rank these and where we want to start"?

Jan Malmendier

>> Partially yes, partially no. What is, I think we have a very solid overview of all our processes. We know where the potential of AI is pretty high, so there's one part of the very structural. On the other hand, things are changing dramatically. One year ago, AI speech was not so big, so it was okay-ish, but not really the game changer. Now, within the past month, it's fundamentally changed. So, obviously, there are new opportunities coming up and we have to reassess where are we going next with AI and integrating it into our processes, and those are some big changes happening right away. And so, then we recalibrate our prioritization, but of course, we have a prioritization and Celonis is helping us for that.

Savannah Peterson

>> What's the reception like internally as you've integrated Celonis? How has your team responded to the new tool?

Jan Malmendier

>> To be quite honest, it was probably a longer process than for a lot of these companies around here using SAP and standard manufacturing. Now, Celonis has all these interfaces. So, in insurance there's not this big player with all these pre-configured interfaces. So, honestly, it took us a little bit longer than for most of the companies so that it really worked well. But now, it's really fantastic so you can get all these insights out of it and once you really cracked the data challenge and the interface challenge and make really sense out of the data, then it's really cool.

Savannah Peterson

>> It is really cool.

Rob Strechay

>> Just following up on that, when you went and deployed it to the end users who were actually doing these processes, did they find satisfaction where they didn't have to swivel their chair from one system to another system or to a spreadsheet and back again? And did that help them feel better about what they're doing with their job as well?

Jan Malmendier

>> Yes, I think absolutely. So, it simplifies their life, but it also shows what they're not seeing anymore because a lot of processes, also with the help of AI, are now straight through and don't appear anymore. So, what's on their desk is slightly more complex than it was before. So, it's very important to give them a good overview and use also Celonis for that to have a dashboards, showing them what are all the other processes they're not anymore on their desk doing, how the customer likes them. So, we get the voice of customer. And yes, straight-through processes in general get excellent feedback. So, 4.7, 4.8, sometimes even 4.9 stars, so that's really excellent feedback. And that also give them a good feeling that even though they don't see these processes anymore, they're still there and they work fine for the customer.

Rob Strechay

>> That is great.

Savannah Peterson

>> It's confidence across the board from end-to-end on that front.

Jan Malmendier

>> Absolutely.

Savannah Peterson

>> That's exciting. That's actually kind of what Celonis says, it increases confidence. Jan, I've got a unique question for you. You're obviously moving quite quickly and it sounds like there are many exciting things going on. When we're hanging out at Celosphere 2026. What do you hope to be able to say then that you can't yet say today?

Jan Malmendier

>> Yeah, I would really love that we have really made agentic AI really work. So, I think we are good at gen AI and integrating that in voiceboards and tags and a lot of things going on, but agentic, as I think, really integrating that into process orchestration. So, that would be cool if we could really say that is kicking off. We have Celonis MCP servers working directly with other agents, so that will be cool if that really picks up and is really delivering value. So, that would be cool.

Savannah Peterson

>> Well, we hope to talk about all that coolness right here on the stage. Jan, thank you so much for squeezing us in today.

Jan Malmendier

>> Yep, perfect. It was a lot of fun.

Rob Strechay

>> Thank you.

Savannah Peterson

>> Thank you, Rob. Yeah, it's always fun.

Jan Malmendier

>> Thank you.

Savannah Peterson

>> It's such a pleasure. I hope you're having as great of a time as we're having here in beautiful Bavaria at Celosphere. My name's Savannah Peterson, you're watching theCUBE, the leading source for enterprise tech news.