Epicor has acquired DSPanel, the vendor behind Performance Canvas, a fully integrated solution for reporting, budgeting, forecasting, analytics, and financial and non-financial data consolidation. DSPanel was already an Epicor ISV partner, and its solution is integrated into Epicor Kinetic, Enterprise, iScala and Prophet21.
Performance Canvas is Epicor Financial Planner
Performance Canvas is already sold and marketed by Epicor as Epicor Financial Planner. It means that Epicor will now control the roadmap of the FP&A solution. Founded in 1999 DSPanel’s Performance Canvas also integrates with Microsoft Dynamics, SAP and others. It also leverages Power BI to deliver its analytics elements.
It brings over 1500 customers, though some may not be using Epicor. Customers include Kaman, WD-40, Bullguard, Huhtamaki, Celestyal Cruises, CBN, and Heartland Dental. It is unclear what the roadmap for these customers is. However, in the past, Epicor has allowed some acquisitions to continue to work with other applications.
Epicor CEO Steve Murphy commented, “Agility is paramount in today’s complex landscape of ever-changing market dynamics. Our acquisition of DSPanel will give CFOs and other business leaders a highly scalable FP&A solution to get to the right insights at the right time and take action to maximize business performance.”
Jan Morath, DSPanel CEO and owner commented, “At DSPanel, we’ve always been focused on helping organizations optimize their financial and reporting processes to support strategic decision-making across the business. By joining with Epicor, we’re excited to expand on our long-time relationship and strengthen our work to help companies increase profitability, manage and improve departmental performance, and facilitate organizational change.”
The acquisition provides an exit for Morath, who helped to evolve the company from a services base organisation to a software vendor com. In 2007, he took on the role of CEO in 2007. He is now the EFP Lead at Epicor, but how long he will stay is unclear.
Epicor Financial Planner
Epicor Financial Planner is a strong FP&A solution that leverages Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to generate financial models and can quickly consume, understand and process data volumes. Its deep learning capabilities can identify errors in data and predict when customer payments are made.
Fully integrated into the Epicor platform, it can leverage finance, HR and supply chain data to help provide further insights for finance teams. The core solution automates processes across financial consolidation, period closing and other financial processes.
As for the future, a blog on the PerformanceCanvas site states: ”In joining Epicor, DSPanel customers will benefit from significant scale, development, and investment in the Performance Canvas FP&A solution – currently offered to Epicor customers as Epicor Financial Planner – over time giving you even more capabilities and product options.
“ In acquiring DSPanel, Epicor is complementing and strengthening its portfolio of best-in-class financial management solutions, helping makers, movers, and sellers worldwide streamline and simplify budgeting, planning, forecasting, scenario modelling, and financial reporting.”
Enterprise Times: What does this mean
Epicor has made another acquisition. Again this is from its partner network. It seems likely that this was a mutual agreement by the founders and owners of DSPanel as they look to leave the company in good hands. Morath is joining Epicor to help with the transition. Another co-founder, Jan Wogel, VP of Operations, is now free to focus on his passion for peace issues.
It means that Epicor has secured its FPNA solution within its portfolio. It can now continue to develop it, supporting the development team to take its roadmap further and faster. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. RocketReach estimates the revenue of DSPanel at around $2 million, with both RocketReach and LinkedIn estimating it will add around 20 employees to Epicor.
