Microsoft To Boost Business Process Mining With Minit Purchase

‘This acquisition will further empower Microsoft to help our customers digitally transform and drive operational excellence …’ Justin Graham, Microsoft’s general manager of process insights, says in a post.

Microsoft plans to buy Netherlands-based automation and business process optimization company Minit.

Minit’s process mining technology aims to help businesses get an understanding of all their business processes and see which ones can improve and simplify, according to a Microsoft statement Thursday.

The companies did not disclose the terms of the deal. CRN has reached out to Microsoft for comment.

Customers use Minit’s technology to cut down the time for case duration, delivery to customer, reduce errors in the payment process and eliminate duplicate tasks, among other use cases.

“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,” according to the statement, authored by Justin Graham, Microsoft’s general manager of process insights.

[RELATED: IBM Closes Turbonomic Buy To Help Clients Automate Cloud, Entire Enterprise]

Graham continued: “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. 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.”

In a statement on the acquisition, Minit CEO James Dening said the acquisition will help the company scale and promised not to sacrifice customer support.

“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 said. “I want to reassure everyone that the level of our support and engagement with our customers stays the same as it has always been.”

Zac Paulson, CEO of TrueIT — a Fargo, N.D.-based Microsoft partner and member of CRN’s 2022 Managed Service Provider (MSP) 500 – told CRN in an interview that he’s excited to see Microsoft adding new capabilities.

“As they add products like this, it certainly increases Microsoft partners‘ access to these cool new offerings,” Paulson said.

Minit was founded in 2014 and has raised more than 10 million euros (USD$11 million) in funding, according to Crunchbase. Past investors include Salesforce Ventures, Earlybird VC, Target Global. and OTB Ventures.

The company’s algorithms work with Oracle, SAP, ServiceNow, Salesforce and other enterprise systems, according to Minit’s website.

Minit also has a partner program for independent software vendors (ISVs), resellers and consultants, according to the company’s website. Partners include Tech Mahindra and The Hackett Group.

Outside of the Minit acquisition, Microsoft has invested in process mining capabilities in its own products as well, even announcing a new capability for Power Platform last year.

Cloud rival IBM has also been investing in boosting its automation and process mining capabilities. Last year, IBM purchased Turbonomic and MyInvenio to grow its process automation and related services.