Over the past decade, process mining specialist Celonis has been helping businesses optimize processes around their ERP systems-and recently branched out to help them optimize their use of workflow automation. platform, too. Now it is hiring Process Analytics Factory to enhance its mining process offering and help businesses automate using Microsoft’s Power Platform.
Businesses can save time and money by automating processes-but only if they automate the right ones. Determining which processes to focus on first can be done using simple heuristics – or through process mining: analyzing data from logs to discover the most used processes with the most inefficiencies.
This analysis is key, according to R. “Ray” Wang, founder and chief analyst at Constellation Research.
Robotic process automation (RPA) tools only automate; they do not evaluate or optimize processes, he said. “The mining process uses mathematics to understand how processes are connected, what works, what doesn’t. This is a level of intelligence that most RPA vendors cannot provide and thus partner, build, or acquire. “
The branches of Celonis
The mining process has been the only focus for Celonis for many years, initially around SAP systems. As SAP prepares to launch its own mining tool by acquiring Contextor and Signavio, however, Celonis has begun to expand its capabilities.
In October 2020, it launched its Execution Management System (EMS) to visualize and design better processes, and in April 2021 developed a partnership with Microsoft to deliver process analytics through Power BI and to integrate its process enhancement tools on the Microsoft power Platform. Then, in October 2021, it partnered with ServiceNow to deliver mining process capabilities to the Now platform. It also has technology partnerships with Appian, Coupa, IBM, Oracle, Salesforce, Snowflake, Splunk, and several other software vendors.
Celonis has grown organically since it was founded in 2011, with two other significant acquisitions in its history: automation software vendor Integromat in October 2020, and streaming data software developer Lenses.io in October 2021.
Now, its acquisition of Process Analytics Factory, the developer of fellow leading process mining tool PAFnow, is bringing with it new capabilities in the mining process and expanding its access to the Power BI and Power Platform markets.
“Power BI has a 13% market share in the business intelligence market,” a market that is worth $ 21 billion today and will grow to $ 41 billion by 2026, Wang of Constellation said.
Marc Kerremans, a vice president and analyst at Gartner who specializes in managing business operations, said, “Process Analytics Factory became the first vendor in the process mining market to integrate BI software and mining technology services. PAFnow is embedded in Microsoft’s Power Platform, and it extends Microsoft Power BI with process mining capabilities, allowing Power BI users to enhance their existing BI infrastructures using the mining process.
“With the acquisition of PAF, Celonis not only gains other capabilities in the mining process; it also adds capabilities that give it a direct and proven strong connection to the successful Power Platform and Office365, ”he said.
The benefits also flow the other way, Kerremans said. “If PAFnow’s existing backend capabilities are extended by the powerful and scalable capabilities of Celonis’ EMS engine, it brings a world-class process of mining and execution management-putting insights into action-to those hands of the broader Microsoft community. ”
The Microsoft user community is key for Celonis co-founder and co-CEO Bastian Nominacher. “If you look at a typical customer, they may be in the several hundred users currently working on EMS but there may be thousands of additional users on the Power Platform, so it really gives us a powerful extension of reach and our approach to democracy has doubled. process and execution insight for everyone, “he said.
The mining process has come of age
Celonis was cited by some business leaders during shareholder earnings calls as the key to rooting the inefficiencies. BP, Siemens, and Scandinavian telco Telia said they were using it, and in December 2020, Deutsche Bank Chief Transformation Officer Fabrizio Campelli told investors he expected the company’s work at Celonis to lead to € 60 million on cost efficiencies from the reengineering of 40 processes.
Gartner’s Kerremans also saw a role for Celonis in enabling effective deployment of low-code and no code application development in the enterprise, especially-in this latest acquisition-on the Power Platform.
“By continuously using the mining process to track and capture the working process, a low-code application development environment can consume this knowledge, reverse-engineer the outcome, and create and continue to adapt applications to reflect the actual organization, ”he said. Instead of organizations having to adapt to their applications, applications will have to adapt to the organization, he said.
Now that it has a taste for growth through acquisitions, Celonis is unlikely to stop there, Wang of Constellation said: “I see future acquisitions focused on deeper industry processes and more capabilities. AI. “