According to a Market Research Future report, the global big data analytics market is estimated to grow at 12% CAGR to $275 billion by 2023. German data analytics startup Celnois recently joined the Billion Dollar Unicorn club after bootstrapping for several years.

Celonis’ Offerings

Munich-based Celonis was founded in 2011 by three German university students Alexander Rinke, Bastian Nominacher, and Martin Klenk. It has been set up with a goal of analyzing existing processes to help businesses make themselves more efficient. It provides enterprise-ready process mining and process discovery solutions for analyzing and visualizing business processes worldwide. It offers solutions for various functions in the organization including procurement, human resource, information technology service management, logistics, production, accounting, sales, and audit both through on-premise and cloud-based platforms.

Through its systems, businesses can identify and control inefficiencies. For instance, for the procurement function, Celonis’s solutions track the entire process from the creation of a purchase order to the payment of the invoice; identify process inefficiencies in the steps that need manual work; provide details on suppliers including lead times and discount options; and finally identify organizations within the business that resort to the most maverick buying to help control them.

More recently, Celonis has been focused on improving its cloud offerings. It recently launched the Celonis Intelligent Business Cloud that allows customers to analyze a workflow, find inefficiencies, and offer improvements. Celonis integrates data such as that obtained from Salesforce.com or SAP-like ERP solutions and integrates it with machine learning tools to drive process efficiencies. It creates a visual view of the process flow and can identify the steps that will deliver the most impact when changed. It has also introduced an app store with over 300 pre-packaged options for solutions like Salesforce and ServiceNow and processes like orders to cash. The company has managed to build quite a following including Siemens, Vodafone, KPMG, and L’Oreal, to name a few.

Celonis’ Financials

Celonis is privately held and does not disclose detailed financials. But it has maintained rapid revenue growth. Recently, it announced that it grew 300% in revenues last year and has grown more than 5000% in the last four years. It has been profitable ever since it was launched. While it is still headquartered in Germany, Celonis has expanded its US presence. It opened a New York office in 2016 and now records more than half of its revenues from the US.

Celonis was bootstrapped for the first five years. Since 2016, it has raised $77.5 million from investors including Accel and 83North through two rounds of funding. Its last round of funding was held in June this year when it raised $50 million at a valuation of a billion dollars. It had raised $27.5 million in June 2016 at an undisclosed valuation. Celonis plans to use the latest funds to continue to drive R&D investment and market expansion.

Celonis’ competitors include Aris Process Mining, Minit, and QPR Process Analyzer that deliver similar services. But Celonis has been rated as a leading player by research firm Gartner.

As users of Celonis, I would like to know how valuable has the service been to you? Has it saved your teams costs and time through its analysis?