Salesforce backs Melbourne Uni’s $15.8 million Series B spinout
A startup that sprang from Melbourne University to help companies improve their processes has raised $10.3 million (A$15.8 million) in a Series B.
Apromore enables business teams to quickly visualize and analyze their processes to unlock value or identify strategies for transformation or optimization. The increase was supported by Salesforce and German software vendor GBTEC, which also led a $6.8 million increase in July 2020.
With the new funds, the startup will expand globally, in addition to enhancing its product capabilities and product portfolio in prescriptive process analytics and AI-enhanced process optimization.
The company also has a partnership with Salesforce to provide transparent connectivity between Salesforce Clouds and the Apromore process mining platform, leveraging MuleSoft technology. The software engages in what is known as “process mining” for users to analyze business processes and pinpoint areas of friction, inefficiency, and non-compliance. Apromore also allows companies to simulate the impact of changes to avoid costly missteps.
Marcello La Rosa, a University of Melbourne professor and CEO of Apromore, spent more than a decade researching business process management to develop the solution.
“As companies look for solutions to improve profitability, customer experience and efficient delivery to counter rising costs, process mining offers a competitive advantage through greater agility against ongoing economic disruption,” he said.
“Combined with the investment, the partnership with Salesforce confirms the need for process mining solutions that are system neutral and can be deployed quickly to empower citizen process experts.”
Using the Apromore connector, companies can discover the actual paths and performance of their lead-to-quote or incident management processes in Salesforce Sales Cloud or Service Cloud, respectively. Apromore also identifies customer pain points, reasons for delays and violations of Service Level Agreements (SLAs), violations of company policies and other opportunities for improvement.
Liam Doyle, senior vice president and general manager of automation at MuleSof,t said accelerated digital transformation is critical for businesses to keep pace with increasing demands from customers and employees.
“Salesforce Flow is an end-to-end automation platform, powered by MuleSoft, that can bring automation to any system or data source, anywhere,” he said.
“This partnership enables our mutual customers to map and analyze business processes orchestrated by Salesforce and discover opportunities to drive business agility and efficient growth through automation.”
