German process mining specialist Celonis has filed a lawsuit against ERP giant SAP. The Munich-based startup accuses SAP of abusing its market power and harming competition, and thereby negatively impacting customers, according to the 61-page indictment filed by Celonis in San Francisco District Court on March 13.

At issue is how third-party software is allowed access to data within SAP systems. Celonis accuses SAP of abusing its control over its own ERP system to exclude process mining competitors and other third-party providers from the SAP ecosystem. The software company is making it virtually impossible for its customers to work with non-SAP process mining solutions. The reason: Sharing data from the SAP system with third-party solutions is subject to excessive fees.

Process mining enables organizations gather together data for the purpose of evaluating the reliability, efficiency, and productivity of business processes. Blending data science and process improvement, it is viewed by some IT leaders as a helpful technology in modernizing business operations. Celonis is among top vendors in the process mining space.

Celonis accuses SAP of damaging its business

SAP has introduced new rules and restrictions with the goal of destroying Celonis’ business and thus harming SAP’s ERP customers, Celonis argues. Customers, Celonis contends, are more or less trapped in this system because switching ERP providers is generally associated with high effort and expense. SAP is ultimately hindering competition, Celonis says, to gain an advantage for its own process mining solution, which it acquired with the Signavio acquisition.

Comin Full Circle

Celonis was launched in 2011. The following year, the Munich-based company participated in SAP’s Startup Focus program — the starting point of a long-term business relationship between SAP and Celonis. The startup, which ranked 13th on the Forbes Cloud 100 list in August 2024 with a valuation of $13 billion, closely integrated its process mining software with the SAP universe. This involved considerable costs, the lawsuit states. But SAP and its customers benefited. Ultimately, with the help of Celonis tools, it was possible to monitor, analyze, and ultimately optimize processes using data from SAP systems.