Microsoft acquires process mining vendor Minit to expand automation business

“Minit currently enables businesses to transform the way they analyse, monitor and optimise their processes. Minit’s solutions have helped businesses gain deep insights into how processes run, uncover root causes of operational challenges and help mitigate undesired process outcomes,” Justin Graham, Microsoft’s general manager of process insights, wrote in a post on Microsoft’s corporate blog. Customers will be able to better understand their process data, uncover what operations look like in reality, and drive process standardisation and improvement across the entire organisation to ensure compliance at every step.”

Microsoft entered the Power Automate sector in 2019 and acquired Softomotive, an RPA software provider, a year later. With Minit, the tech giant is doubling down on a software category that could be worth over $11 billion by 2030, according to a report from Polaris Market Research.

Minit is currently headquartered in Amsterdam, with satellite offices in London and New York.) CEO James Dening said customers shouldn’t expect a change in the level of support they’re currently receiving.

“We are looking forward to what it means to become part of an industry leader like Microsoft and what that brings us — how we can use that scale and excellence to continue to deliver great solutions to our customers,” Dening wrote in a blog post on Minit’s website. “It has been a privilege to lead the company for the last year, and I’m excited to continue my journey with the team, as part of what I consider to be the world’s leading software company.”

Minit, which was founded in 2015 by Rasto Hlavac, had raised €10.3 million (~$11.40 million) prior to the acquisition. It is among an expanding number of startups developing process mining tools aimed at enterprise clientele. Process mining, also known as task discovery, involves spotting root cause workflow issues and bottlenecks by pulling data from systems, including desktop, email apps and workflows. It’s a key part of robotic process automation (RPA), a technology that promises to automate monotonous, repetitive tasks traditionally performed by human workers while at the same time generating logs to identify potential cost savings.

Microsoft’s acquisition of Minit comes at a time when the broader business process automation industry heads toward general consolidation. SAP acquired German process automation company Signavio in January 2021, just before ServiceNow got into the RPA segment with the buyout of India-based Intellibot.io. IBM acquired process mining software company MyInvenio in April. And Salesforce’s MuleSoft and Microsoft followed suit with the purchases of automation tech providers Servicetrace and Clear Software, respectively.

Organisations across the globe are seeking to be more operationally resilient and accelerate their digital transformation plans. Seamless operations and ensuring that every component of each business process runs smoothly is critical, but most leaders are not able to understand the actual performance of their processes and end up making decisions based on subjective information. Gartner notes that “Recent trends in automation and knowledge of the underlying processes and interactions are key to digital transformation.” 

Minit enables businesses to transform the way they analyze, monitor and optimize their processes. Minit’s solutions have helped businesses gain deep insights into how processes run, uncover root causes of operational challenges and help mitigate undesired process outcomes. 

This acquisition will further empower Microsoft to help our customers digitally transform and drive operational excellence by creating a complete picture of their business processes, enabling every process to be easily and automatically analyzed and improved. Customers will be able to better understand their process data, uncover what operations look like in reality and drive process standardization and improvement across the entire organization to ensure compliance at every step, Microsoft stated.

Today’s announcement further signals Microsoft’s commitment to help organizations quickly discover and optimize their business processes by bringing data and execution together to unlock powerful insights, it added.