Getting started with object-centric process mining
Object-centric process mining (OCPM) analyzes how multiple business objects (such as orders, invoices, deliveries, and payments) interact over time. Unlike traditional case-centric mining, events are not forced into a single case. Instead, events are linked to the objects they affect, giving you a complete and realistic view of how processes actually run.
Object-centric process mining helps you:
Understand complex, interconnected processes.
Analyze processes from multiple perspectives (order, invoice, supplier, customer).
Avoid data duplication and misleading results caused by case definitions.
Discover bottlenecks, rework, and dependencies that case-centric models miss.
If your process involves many-to-many relationships (for example, one order with multiple invoices or deliveries), object-centric mining is the right approach.
Case-centric follows a single “thread” of events. Object-centric connects events to all relevant objects, giving a realistic view of how processes actually work.
Case-centric: Case-centric process mining examines a process from the viewpoint of a single case, such as one order or one invoice. Each event belongs to only one case, making it easy to analyze simple, linear processes, however, it can miss complexity when multiple objects interact.
For example, one case is one linear chain of events:
Object-centric: Whereas object-centric process mining looks at processes across multiple connected objects, like orders, invoices, deliveries, and payments. Events can link to several objects at once, giving a more complete picture of real-world processes with many interactions.
The example object-centric version shows two invoices for the same order because, in real business processes, this happens frequently. Reasons for this could include, an order being partially invoiced, items billed at different times, corrections or additional charges resulting in multiple invoices, and different deliveries from the same order invoiced separately.
Before working with OCPM, we recommend understanding the key concepts involved:
Objects: These are the key business entities you work with, such as Orders, Invoices, Customers, or Suppliers. They exist over time and often connect to many other objects. In object-centric process mining, they serve as anchors that help you understand how work flows through your business.
Events: Actions or state changes that happen to one or more objects, such as Invoice Created, Order Shipped, or Payment Received. Each event has a timestamp and can link to multiple objects at once, capturing real-world interactions without duplicating events across cases.
Relationships: Connections between objects that show how they are related, for example, which invoices belong to an order or which deliveries fulfill it. These links are critical for understanding dependencies, handovers, and many-to-many interactions, forming the foundation for meaningful object-centric analysis.
Example of an object in the Celonis Platform:
Example of an event in the Celonis Platform:
To learn more about objects, events, and relationships see: Objects, events, and relationships
Object-centric data model (OCDM): A structure that combines objects, events, and relationships into a single framework. Celonis provides a prebuilt model with commonly used object and event types to help you get started quickly, ensuring consistency and enabling reusable analytics across processes.
To learn more about the object-centric data model, see: The object-centric data model (OCDM).
Perspectives: Views that determine which objects, events, and relationships are relevant for a specific process or analysis. They let you examine the same data from different angles, such as order-centric, invoice-centric, or supplier-centric, guiding how Celonis applications visualize and analyze processes.
To learn more about perspectives, see: Perspectives and event logs.
An example of a duplicate invoice checker in the Celonis Platform:
While you can configure your own object-centric data model (OCDM), the quickest way to start modeling objects and events is to use the Celonis provided core processes. These core processes provide you with the object types, event types, relationships, and perspectives for your chosen process. You can then use these assets to view your Process Intelligence Graph and then create content using Celonis Platform features such as Studio.
The following core processes can be enabled for your team:
Accounts payable
Accounts receivable
Inventory management
Order management
Procurement
To learn more about using these core processes, see: Quickstart: Extract and transform your data into objects and events.
