celonis process mapping company, has had good experiences in recent years, forging significant partnerships with IBM and ServiceNow, while announcing a Series D of $1 billion in 2021 at an $11 billion valuation.
With that level of capitalization, the company decided to expand its reach by acquiring the process analysis factorypafnow.com (PAF) for 100 million. celonis thus incorporates a German company with eight years of experience in mapping processes of the Microsoft ecosystem, which should help celonis to enter that space.
The CEO and co-founder of celonisAlexander Rinke said his company has played a major role in the automated workflow ecosystem, figuring out how work moves in automated ways to help point out inefficiencies and find ways to make work flow smoothly through of the organization. He says that includes automation, collaboration and virtual platforms.
“Obviously a big part of that is Microsoft with Microsoft Teams and Microsoft Office. so we acquire FAP to include these tools and deliver the unique insights and specific actions that we deliver to Microsoft users,” Rinke said.
The founder and CEO of FAP, Tobias Rother, gave the familiar argument that the two companies will be better off together. “This combination builds on the strength of the market leadership of celonis with the basis that FAP you've built on the Microsoft Power Platform. This allows our companies to build the bridge between the Microsoft Power Platform and celonis Execution Management System,” it said in a statement.
FAP was launched in 2014 with the goal of incorporating process mining insights into the Microsoft platform. “They have a huge advantage in this space, and we thought that if we can bring this functionality to the world of celonis, there will be a huge benefit to your customers, our customers and prospects, and everyone who uses Microsoft,” Rinke said.
As he points out, that's pretty much everyone in his target market. In fact, 97% of Fortune 500 companies use Microsoft Office.
The company has capitalized on a positive and savvy relationship trend in recent years, forging relationships with much larger companies such as IBM, SAP and ServiceNow, while also building a large presence with consulting firms such as Deloitte, Accenture and WiPro, among many others. All this drives sales and the rise in valuation.
It has also made several strategic acquisitions. FAP represents the company's fourth acquisition. Rinke said the deal closed at the end of 2021 and they are in the process of incorporating PAF functionality into the broader platform of celonis. The plan is to implement it in May. The deal included 30 employees transferred to celonis. The company should reach 3.000 employees by the end of 2022.
celonis was launched in 2011 and raised 1.4 billion dollars, according to data from Crunchbase. While the company has ambitions to go public at some point, Rinke was not sharing any timetable.
