Celonis names Ewan Henderson North America GM for AI push

Celonis has appointed Ewan Henderson as General Manager for North America, handing him responsibility for regional go-to-market strategy and operations as the company steps up its pitch to large enterprises investing in artificial intelligence.

Henderson joins at a time when many large organisations report difficulty in demonstrating financial returns from AI programmes. Celonis positions its Process Intelligence software as a way for companies to connect AI systems to day-to-day operations and measure outcomes.

The company's Co-CEO and Co-Founder, Alex Rinke, framed the appointment around that gap between AI spending and results.

"Only 11% of companies are seeing measurable benefits from their AI investments today. That's not an adoption problem, it's a context problem," said Alex Rinke, Co-CEO and Co-Founder, Celonis. "Ewan has spent his career building and scaling enterprise software businesses that deliver real outcomes. He is the right leader to help customers turn AI potential into business value."

Henderson brings more than 20 years of leadership experience across enterprise software. He spent 13 years at Informatica, where he led the enterprise business. He also worked on Informatica's shift towards cloud services and was part of the leadership team through the company's post-IPO growth. Earlier in his career, Henderson spent seven years at Oracle.

In the new role, Henderson takes charge of sales and operational execution for Celonis across North America. The region is a key market for enterprise software companies given the concentration of Fortune 500 headquarters and the scale of IT budgets, particularly in sectors such as financial services, manufacturing, telecoms and retail.

Henderson said the operational link between AI deployments and business processes sits at the centre of the challenge facing many companies. "Every enterprise is trying to figure out how to make AI actually work for their business," said Henderson. "The challenge isn't the technology, it's connecting AI to real operations and driving real outcomes. That's exactly what Celonis does with Process Intelligence. I'm excited to work with customers across North America to help them achieve tangible ROI from their AI investments."

Regional Changes

Henderson succeeds Rupal Karia, who remains responsible for North America go-to-market until 30 April. Karia will then take charge of go-to-market for the UK and Ireland, Benelux, the Nordics, the Middle East and Africa from 1 May.

The change points to a broader reshuffle of senior commercial leadership as software firms recalibrate around AI-related spending. Many vendors have shifted messaging from experimentation to productivity gains, governance and measurable savings, as boards demand clearer reporting on investment performance.

Celonis has built its business around process mining and process intelligence, which use event logs and operational data to model how work moves through systems such as enterprise resource planning, customer relationship management and service platforms. In practice, the approach maps actual process flows against expected outcomes. It highlights bottlenecks, rework and compliance issues.

Product Focus

The Celonis Process Intelligence Platform combines data from systems, applications and devices with business context. Celonis describes the result as a living digital twin of operations. Customers use the platform to analyse processes and design changes. They also monitor process performance in production settings.

Celonis has increasingly linked this foundation to AI use cases, where organisations need trustworthy operational context before they automate decisions or apply generative AI in customer service, procurement or finance. The company argues that process intelligence provides a way to decide where AI should sit in a workflow and how it affects outcomes once deployed.

For large organisations, that focus aligns with the current stage of AI adoption. Many companies have moved beyond pilots. They now face issues such as fragmented data, inconsistent process execution across regions and teams, and difficulty in turning model outputs into actions inside operational systems.

Henderson's background suggests Celonis plans to keep emphasising enterprise-scale deployments and long sales cycles, where buyers often involve IT, operations and finance leadership. Informatica's customer base and product portfolio in data management and governance also reflects adjacent priorities for AI programmes, particularly where data quality and lineage affect results.

The appointment also underlines the competitive nature of the process intelligence market, where vendors position their platforms as a layer that sits across business systems. That market includes established enterprise software providers and specialists in process mining, automation and observability. Customers often evaluate products based on integration options, breadth of process coverage and the ability to track improvements in cost, cycle times and compliance.

Celonis said Henderson will lead the North America strategy and operations as it works with large companies seeking measurable returns from AI investments.