Celonis, a provider of a new category of big data analytics technology dubbed Process Mining, has secured a USD27.5 million Series A investment led by Accel and 83North (formerly Greylock IL).
Celonis will use the funds to accelerate the global adoption of its solution, which aims to help organisations of all sizes improve their operational efficiency by 20-30 per cent.
Over the years, the complex world of enterprise processes has become more and more difficult to navigate, and the efficiency of many companies’ key business processes has suffered as a result. Because of this, crucial process weak spots can easily be missed, ultimately at significant cost to a business.
Celonis’ Process Mining big data technology automatically analyses enterprise event data to bring end-to-end transparency and efficiency to these business-critical processes. The technology provides full insight into how a company’s business processes are being executed, uncovering cost-drivers and hidden weak spots. Delivering these insights in real time means that companies no longer lose time searching for root causes, and can instead focus on implementing measures to increase their operational efficiency and bottom line. The technology can be easily implemented for any digitise processes, and is already in use by over 200 customers across 15 different industries.
Celonis was founded in 2011 by three former students of the Technical University of Munich, Alexander Rinke, Bastian Nominacher, and Martin Klenk, and was bootstrapped through strong customer demand. The company’s clients span 25 countries and include global Fortune 500 companies such as Siemens, KPMG, Deloitte, Bayer, Vodafone, as well as a wide range of medium-sized companies.
“Everything about Celonis thrilled us,” says Laurel Bowden, Partner at 83North. “Celonis offers an outstanding product that finally delivers a ‘true and holistic view’ of how organisations create value. By that it goes way beyond what traditional analytics could ever accomplish. Its benefits are clearly and quickly understood by customers and can be easily translated into business and bottom line benefits. The market is enormous. All enterprises, large and small, could use Celonis. We are just at the beginning of seeing process mining use-cases.”
Harry Nelis, Partner at Accel, says: “We are excited to partner with the Celonis team to help them achieve their mission of taking the Process Mining category worldwide. Alex, Bastian and Martin have built a high-growth and profitable company straight out of university, and already serve a long list of large multinational customers, all without raising any external funding to date. We look forward to helping them reach their next stage of growth, particularly in the US market.”
In 2015, Celonis signed a global reseller agreement with SAP, for whom Process Mining has played a pivotal role alongside its new in-memory database, SAP HANA. Later in the year, Celonis was named Germany’s fastest-growing technology company in the Deloitte Fast50 Awards, following a four-year revenue growth of 3,951 per cent.
“With Accel and 83North, we’re honoured to have two partners on our side who are experienced with tech companies and the challenges of scaling globally,” says Alexander Rinke, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Celonis. “Not only will this funding give us more flexibility to plan and execute our growth strategy, but both investors can support us with valuable practical experience, infrastructure and strategically-important contacts.”
The funding will be mainly used to boost go-to-market operations, improve technology, and further global expansion. Rinke, who was recently listed in Forbes’ 30-under-30 list, says: “Our goal is to create a new category in the analytics space and bring Process Mining technology to customers all over the world. The partnership with Accel and 83North is a crucial milestone in our journey.”
