Executive Intelligence - Celonis President Carsten Thoma on why enterprise AI needs operational truth before it can deliver

After a recent taste of market vindication against the SaaSpocalypse, diginomica's Jon Reed sat down with Workday's Gerrit Kazmaier, President, Product and Technology at Workday, for a candid look at how Workday has achieved agentic traction with customers - and the obstacles still to overcome. As Kazmaier explains, for Workday to gain external momentum, the company had to make significant internal changes first. Another vital lesson? Paring down the number of agents in favor of a different platform strategy. Enterprise AI is at an adoption crossroads - how can we get this right? Time to dig in.

Reckitt Senior Vice President Global Business Services & AI Bastien Parizot joins the diginomica network podcast to explain why the consumer goods giant behind Dettol, Durex, Finish and Nurofen is using its shared services division as the driving force for AI adoption. Parizot discusses the proof of value test that replaced proof of concept at Reckitt, the rollout of AI to thousands of marketers and R&D practitioners across marketing, R&D and procurement, and how digital simulation has gone from a few hundred runs a year to tens of thousands - making packaging more sustainable in the process. He also reflects on why he won't wait for perfect data before deploying, the human in the lead principle that governs Reckitt's AI and hallucination risk, and whether AI can shift the dial in a tight-margin industry.

UiPath's Daniel Dines is applying philosophical research to enterprise AI. In this Executive Intelligence podcast, he explains why the founder of an enterprise automation and AI company is thinking hard about the human at the gate - the point in a workflow where actions have consequences, and where a person still has to stand. Along the way we discuss why he's quoting Harry G. Frankfurt, why he thinks the word "exactness" beats "determinism," and why the executives cutting people first are putting their architecture stability at risk.

Enterprise AI is in the pressure cooker: questionable results on the one hand, rising token costs on the other. But enterprise vendors like Oracle are pressing hard down a different path to value - one that reduces model costs and breaks away from frontier model hype. Can Oracle build a "system of outcomes"? And, speaking of building, can customers and partners build on Oracle's SaaS and AI foundations? In our latest Executive Intelligence podcast, Jon Reed airs out his concerns on enterprise AI, and Leone makes his case.

Community Fibre CIO Chris Williams joins the diginomica network podcast to explain how a clean-sheet approach to technology has taken the London full-fibre provider from 30,000 to over 430,000 customers in four years. Williams discusses why he chose modern, scalable vendors like Yext, Domo and AWS over legacy telco systems, and how AI is now embedded across self-service, procurement, development and customer call handling - including cutting a 120-hour security job down to two. He also reflects on his BT and EE heritage, the case for regional ISPs over national giants, and what's next for connectivity as customer demands keep growing.

Debbie Baldwin, Director of Product Management, Acumatica Manufacturing has seen manufacturing hit turning points before - but this one seems different. To understand AI's impact on manufacturing, we need to go deeper - into how global markets have changed, along with customer expectations and need for supply chain visibility. Before Baldwin built cloud ERP for manufacturing with Acumatica, she spent 15 years in manufacturing operations.  Baldwin joins diginomica host Jon Reed to make sense of the changes afoot.

Xero CTO and CPO Divya Jolly joins the diginomica network podcast to discuss why the agentic AI moment is set to mirror the cloud accounting revolution - elevating the profession rather than replacing it - and why human judgment remains the one thing no AI agent can replicate. With a career spanning YouTube and Okta, Jolly also reflects on the data, AI and security lessons she is now applying to one of the world's most global SaaS platforms, serving 4.9 million small businesses around the world. 

Every enterprise vendor is talking about AI agents — but without understanding how your business actually operates, the returns will fall short. In this episode, diginomica's Derek du Preez talks with Carsten Thoma, President of Celonis, about why operational context is the missing ingredient for enterprise AI. From freeing processes from vendor lock-in to the SaaS-pocalypse debate to a renegotiation of the social contract, Thoma makes the case for operational truth before automation.

Every enterprise vendor has an AI strategy - but Zoho's approach is different. During this two-in-one podcast, diginomica's Jon Reed talks with Ram Ramamoorthy is Director - AI Research at Zoho & ManageEngine. followed by Raju Vegesna, Zoho Chief Evangelist. From data sovereignty to delayering the stack, from data privacy to the dangers of outsourcing your "intelligence," Ramamoorthy and Vegesna take us inside Zoho's unique AI philosophy.

EBRD CIO Subhash Chandra Jose joins the diginomica network podcast to discuss leading a five-year technology modernisation at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development — a bank that was never meant to last this long — and why geopolitical upheaval has made its mission more critical than ever.