The software behemoth has been charged by the German firm Celonis with exploiting its market dominance to stifle competition, namely to favor its data mining solution over competing products.

ERP behemoth SAP is being sued by German process mining expert Celonis. According to the 61-page indictment filed by Celonis in San Francisco District Court, the Munich-based company charges SAP with abusing its market position and hurting competition, which has a detrimental effect on customers.

The way that SAP systems grant third-party applications access to data is in question. In order to keep rivals in process mining and other outside suppliers out of the SAP ecosystem, Celonis claims SAP has abused its authority over its own ERP system. Working with non-SAP process mining solutions is becoming difficult for the software company's clients. The cause: Exorbitant fees apply when sharing data from the SAP system with outside solutions.

Organizations can collect data through process mining to assess the productivity, dependability, and efficiency of business processes. Some IT leaders see it as a useful solution for upgrading corporate processes since it combines data science with process enhancement. One of the leading suppliers in the process mining market is Celonis.

According to Celonis, SAP has imposed new regulations and limitations in an attempt to ruin the company and hurt SAP's ERP clients. Celonis argues that because switching ERP suppliers is typically linked with significant work and money, customers are essentially locked in this system. According to Celonis, SAP is ultimately stifling competition in order to benefit from its process mining technology, which it obtained through the Signavio acquisition.