Who:
- Celonis, the process mining giant, surveying 1,649 senior leaders at $500M+ enterprises across 5 regions (June-July 2025).
What Happened:
- Over 1,600 global business leaders surveyed by Celonis for their 2026 Process Optimization Report, all from companies with $500M+ revenue.
- 85% of enterprises say they want to become "agentic enterprises" within 2-3 years, running AI agents that make decisions with minimal human input.
- Only 23% are actually building AI agents today. 71% are still "exploring" multi-agent systems.
- Meanwhile, 73% of those same leaders admit their processes "work well enough to get by" but have significant room for improvement.
Why It Matters:
- Revenue teams chasing agentic AI are building on a foundation of duct tape: 72% of departments have different views of the same process, and 54% lack a shared understanding of how the business runs.
- The biggest blocker is not resistance (only 6% cite that). 45% cannot align IT and business stakeholders, and 45% cannot get AI to understand business context.
- 90% say process improvement depends on accurate operational data, yet 52% still start with BI dashboards and workshops: tools that show KPIs, not how work actually flows.
ARM Impact:
- Tab Hoppers (Stage 1 (Tab Hopper)) will recognize themselves in the 54% still operating in departmental silos with no shared process language.
- SaaS Hoarders (Stage 2 (SaaS Hoarder)) are the 74% using BI tools but wondering why their stack cannot produce the operational context AI needs.
- AI Sprinklers (Stage 3 (AI Sprinkler)) are the 23% deploying agents without fixing the underlying process fragmentation: agents built on bad processes just automate bad outcomes faster.
- ARM (Stage 4 (Autonomous Revenue Master)) requires what only 6% are starting with: process intelligence that gives AI a truthful, end-to-end model of how revenue actually moves.
What to Watch:
- Process mining and digital twin adoption is about to spike: 50% plan to adopt both in the next 12 months, up from 38-41% current usage.
- 93% of operations leaders say a business-wide digital twin would be a "gamechanger." When ops leaders are that enthusiastic, budget follows.
- The US lags furthest on digital twins (26% adoption vs 45% in DACH), meaning American GTM teams have the most ground to make up.