A decade of research underpins investment in spin-out business process mining company.
University spin-out company Apromore Pty Ltd has raised $A6.8 million through a Series A investment. German software vendor GBTEC is the lead investor. Australian consulting and technology firm, Leonardo, and the University of Melbourne also invested in Apromore.
Apromore offers process mining software for analysing and improving business processes. Traditionally, business processes are analysed by observing and interviewing the people who use them. This is labour intensive and error-prone.
With its process-mining software, Apromore can instead mine the vast data sets contained in modern business IT systems, such as customer relationship management systems or CRMSs.
The software can, for example, reverse-engineer the processes supported by these systems. This allows it to identify process bottlenecks, deviations from policy or compliance violations, and issues that affect customer experience.
The software is built on a decade of research at the University of Melbourne,Queensland University of Technology, University of Tartu, Estonia, and several other universities worldwide.
Apromore was co-founded by Professor Marcello La Rosa of the University of Melbourne and Professor Marlon Dumas of the University of Tartu, with their former PhD student Dr Ilya Verenich and Apromore's Chief Architect, Dr Simon Raboczi.
Apromore founders, from left: Prof. Marcello La Rosa, Prof. Marlon Dumas, Dr Simon Raboczi and Dr Ilya Verenich.
Major investor GBTEC is also entering into a strategic partnership with Apromore. The partnership strengthens Apromore’s product development capacity, says La Rosa, who is now CEO at Apromore. This includes enabling the development of AI-driven automation capabilities.
Prior to the Series A investment, the University research received more than $A10 million from Australian and European granting schemes, including four ARC projects and one ERC Advanced Grant.
The core of Apromore’s software is open source. A Community Edition is free to download and use, allowing researchers, students and professionals to study, change and redistribute the tool.
The proprietary Enterprise Edition for professional use builds on this with commercial add-ons and system integrators. Apromore supports and maintains the Enterprise Edition.
Apromore clients include organisations in different sectors, such as banking, insurance, superannuation, utilities, engineering, manufacturing and the government.
The Apromore product incorporates the results of nine PhD theses, and is the subject of over 100 scientific publications. It has received eight awards, including three best paper awards at conferences such as the International Conference on Business Process Management.
Read more about Apromore in the Australian Financial Review and the company's press release.
Banner image: wocintechchat.com
Banner image: Apromore mines the vast data contained in modern business IT systems.
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