Professor Marcello La Rosa spent over a decade advancing process mining research alongside collaborators from the University of Melbourne, Queensland University of Technology, the University of Tartu, and institutions worldwide. Together, they spun that work into Apromore – an enterprise-grade process intelligence platform enabling businesses gain deeper insights into their operations and optimise their performance.
Apromore joined Melbourne Connect as a co-located partner in 2021, embedding itself in an ecosystem designed to close the gap between research and industry. Over four years, the company scaled its platform, grew its enterprise client base, and built the kind of commercial credibility that attracts serious attention. In November 2025, Salesforce acquired the company. It was a landmark moment for Apromore and the University of Melbourne, and highlighted what is possible when research is given the right environment to flourish.
When we first sat down with Professor La Rosa in 2023, he told us he wanted Apromore to become “a strategic topic within an organisation” within five years. This time, we caught up with him to reflect on how far Apromore has come, what the Salesforce acquisition means for the platform, and what he'd tell the next generation of founders and researchers standing at the beginning of a similar path.
Being at Melbourne Connect was instrumental to Apromore’s growth. It gave us much more than office space – it placed us at the intersection of academia, industry, and entrepreneurship. That proximity to the University of Melbourne allowed us to maintain a strong research backbone while translating cutting-edge process mining techniques into a commercial product.
We benefited enormously from direct access to talent – students, PhDs, and researchers – as well as opportunities to collaborate across disciplines. At the same time, being embedded in a vibrant innovation ecosystem meant constant exposure to startups, corporates, and partners, which helped us refine our value proposition and expand our network.
In many ways, Melbourne Connect accelerated our journey from a research-driven initiative into a globally relevant software company.
There wasn’t a single “aha” moment – it was a gradual realisation driven by external validation. Early on, when we started seeing interest from organisations outside Australia, particularly in Europe and North America, it became clear that the problems we were solving were universal. Another key signal was when large enterprises began trusting Apromore for mission-critical process insights. That level of adoption told us we weren’t just trying to commercialise an academic tool – we were addressing a global market need. From that point on, we became much more intentional about scalability, enterprise readiness, and building a platform that could compete on the world stage.
The acquisition is a strong validation of what can happen when deep research is successfully translated into industry impact. Apromore started as a research project grounded in process science, and through sustained collaboration between academia and industry, it evolved into a product with real commercial value. This demonstrates that research-led innovation can scale globally when paired with the right execution, partnerships, and ecosystem support. Importantly, it also highlights the role institutions like the University of Melbourne and environments like Melbourne Connect play in bridging that gap. For Salesforce, the acquisition underscores the strategic importance of process mining, and for the broader community, it reinforces that world-class innovation can emerge from university ecosystems.
My advice would be to embrace the ecosystem fully. Don’t stay confined to your lab or your immediate team – engage with the people around you. Some of the most valuable opportunities may come from unexpected conversations. Secondly, focus early on the problem, not just the technology. It’s easy, especially in a research environment, to become absorbed in technical excellence. But impact comes from solving real, pressing problems for users. Finally, be patient, hyper-resilient, and incredibly ambitious. Building something meaningful takes time, but if you combine strong research foundations with a willingness to test and fail fast, continuously iterate to improve, and engage with the market to understand real-world challenges, you can create something truly global.
Melbourne Connect is a fantastic launchpad – make the most of it!
Image credit: The University of Melbourne Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology
