Celonis sues SAP over market exploitation & “egregious conduct”

Process mining and process intelligence leader Celonis has sued SAP for allegedly monopolizing the process mining software market.

In a lawsuit filed in federal court in San Francisco, California, Celonis accused SAP of violating US antitrust law and other provisions by making it harder and more expensive for Celonis to access client data stored in SAP’s applications.

SAP has “deliberately sought to exploit its market power” over its large, entrenched enterprise resource planning (ERP) customer base by imposing new policies and restrictions in an attempt to destroy Celonis’ business, the lawsuit stated.

What’s more, Celonis accused SAP of engaging in increasingly egregious conduct targeting its customers to coerce them into using Signavio, SAP’s own process mining offering.

Lawsuit targets SAP’s “campaign of anticompetitive conduct”

“This case is about SAP’s campaign of anticompetitive conduct designed to exclude third-party application and technology providers from its dominant ecosystem, including its acts of tortious interference and false advertising in furtherance of that campaign, in contravention of the promises SAP has made to the market and regulators,” the lawsuit read.

For example, SAP has been using its control over its ERP ecosystem to exclude process mining competitors and third parties that rely upon access to that ecosystem, it added.

“SAP has done so not through a superior competitive offering, but through naked exclusion of rivals by making it de facto impossible for customers to work with non-SAP process mining solutions, a reversal of SAP’s prior policies.”

Given the extremely high costs of switching ERP providers, SAP’s ERP customers are effectively locked into the restrictions SAP imposes on how those customers may use their own data on their ERP system, Celonis claimed. “SAP is now attempting to use those restrictions on data access to prevent Celonis from competing with SAP’s own process mining company, Signavio.”

SAP has “broken” antitrust promises

When SAP acquired Signavio in 2021, there was concern that SAP would change its policies or begin self-preferencing its own integrated Signavio process mining solution, to the detriment of competitors and consumers, Celonis stated. “Antitrust regulators relied on SAP’s explicit assurances that its ecosystem would remain open and competitive in approving SAP’s acquisition of Signavio, specifically SAP’s representation that it would not self-preference its own product by charging fees for data access by third parties, such as Celonis.”

SAP has broken those promises, the lawsuit read, with Celonis accusing SAP of “using its control of its ERP ecosystem to try to achieve what it could not through competition on the merits – widespread adoption of its Signavio offering.”

SAP has also engaged in “increasingly egregious conduct” targeting Celonis’ customers to coerce them into using Signavio by threatening customers with punitively high fees and costs if they choose to work with a third party for data extraction, simultaneously offering its inferior process mining product at an extremely low cost or even for free and making false and misleading statements to customers about the risks of using non-SAP solutions like Celonis and about the future capabilities of Signavio.

SAP’s “anticompetitive scheme” has caused, and will cause, irreparable and ongoing harm to Celonis, according to the lawsuit. Celonis seeks an injunction prohibiting SAP’s illegal conduct, monetary damages and all other legal and equitable relief available under law and which the court may deem proper.

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