Celonis buys German process miner with Power BI links in $100m deal

Move follows Microsoft's own tools to find out how things are really done

Celonis has bought Process Analytics Factory (PAF), a firm that integrates its technology with Microsoft's Power BI platform, in a deal said to be worth $100m.

The two German companies claim the merger will help users on Microsoft's popular Power Platform benefit from output data from Celonis's process mining, automation, and collaboration tech.

Process mining is the analysis of application logs to figure out how people actually run processes across multiple applications – as opposed to how management think they run or how they were designed to run. The argument goes that a detailed understanding of processes is a vital element of application strategy and underpins modernization and workarounds like robotic process automation.

PAF's process-mining software is completely integrated into Microsoft Power BI and Microsoft Office 365 for the analysis, visualization, and optimization of almost any process, the company claims.

Phil Fersht, CEO and chief analyst of HFS Research, said: "The acquisition of PAF demonstrates why Celonis is ranked alongside Microsoft, Salesforce, Amazon, Adobe, and Google for shaping the future of native automation, data, and process design."

Founded in 2011 as a college project for consulting businesses, Celonis cut its teeth looking at processes at German engineering giant Siemens and its complex estate of SAP ERP systems.

It has been working to define the activity ever since. Perhaps successfully – because big hitters have come into the market.

Microsoft has added process-mining tools to its automation toolset Power Automate. Last year it said: "With process mining in Power Automate, organisations can leverage their business data to produce analytics and process maps to glean new insights into ways to optimize business processes."

As part of SAP's RISE strategy, in 2021 the German application giant bought Signavio, a specialist in business process analysis and management, in a deal said to be worth $1.2bn.

Last year, Celonis raised $1bn in a round of funding, valuing the company at a remarkable $11bn – more than four times its value two years earlier. ®