In a surprise move, Certinia has announced a new investment from leading private equity investor, TA Associates (“TA”). The investment comes just over a year after Haveli Investments bought a majority shareholding in the company from TCV and Advent International. The other existing investors, General Atlantic and Salesforce Ventures, will retain their meaningful stakes in the organisation. Haveli Investments, L.P. (“Haveli”) will maintain a majority shareholding.
Correction: It was previously stated that Haveli divested some shares, they did not. Certinia issued the following clarification.
“Haveli did not sell any of their original investment. Under Haveli’s majority ownership since August 2023, there have been and continue to be several minority institutional investors. As part of this transaction, we had some investors who sold some of their August 2023 investment in Certinia.”
TA brings deep experience in both the ERP and PSA markets. Its portfolio includes vendors such as The Access Group, Aptean, IFS, Planview, Priority and Unit4. Some of these compete with Certinia.
Hythem El-Nazer, Managing Director at TA, commented, “Certinia has made impressive strides in reshaping how services teams operate, setting new standards in professional services automation and customer success. We’re excited to support Certinia’s continued growth and help accelerate its mission of delivering exceptional value to customers on a global scale.”
Jason Werlin, Managing Director at TA, added, “TA’s investment underscores the strong foundation Certinia has built and our belief in the significant growth opportunities ahead. We look forward to collaborating on Certinia’s strategic roadmap and exploring new paths for expansion.”
While the announcement does not state how much money will be made available for Certinia, the inference is that there will be funds to assist decisions. As a consequence of this investment, El-Nazer has joined the Certinia board.
Investing in a growing company
Certinia has an increasing portfolio of solutions that now include Professional Services Automation (PSA), Customer Success and Finance & Accounting software. It supports over 1,400 customers across more than 30 countries. It is to provide a full end-to-end solution for services business when coupled with Salesforce, on whose platform the firm bases its solutions.
Its most recent product launch was its eagerly awaiting Customer Success Cloud. This became generally available in September with customers that include Dell, Cisco and Salesforce. One of its most successful is it’s the PSA solution, which it recently announced has surpassed one million users.
DJ Paoni, CEO of Certinia, commented, “Over the last 18 months since our evolution from FinancialForce to Certinia, we’ve achieved major growth milestones – including surpassing one million monthly active users – and TA’s investment is strong validation of Certinia’s positive momentum and the value our solutions deliver to our customers every day. This is also an important step as we accelerate our PSA and Customer Success market leadership, broaden our global presence, and explore opportunities to grow our business.”
Is Haveli taking a step back?
It does seem unlikely that Haveli will take a big step away from the firm it only invested in just over a year ago. However, getting the expertise of TA to the table to help support Certinia in its international growth makes sense. Haveli is still a young investment firm, while TA has a breadth of expertise and a much larger portfolio of companies.
Haveli has not relinquished any of its shares and clearly sees the opportunity for Certinia is still good and will improve by bringing on the additional investor.
Ian Loring, Senior Managing Director at Haveli. “We’re pleased to welcome TA to Certinia’s investment team. Haveli is highly optimistic about Certinia’s potential as a market leader supporting technology and services organizations from opportunity to renewal, built on the strength of the Salesforce platform. With TA’s expertise now alongside our continued support, we believe Certinia is primed to deliver even greater value for services organizations and their customers.”
Enterprise Times: What does this mean
There are several unanswered questions from this release. There are also a few answers that can be guessed at. First, the ownership split of Certinia is unclear. That El-Nazer now sits on the board of Certinia would infer the investment is significant, presumably above 10%. There is also no indication whether there are funds for DJ Paoni to use to aid expansion.
What can be surmised from Paoni’s comment is that Certinia is now ready to expand internationally. This will no doubt please Salesforce Ventures. As the leading ERP on the Salesforce platform, having Certinia alongside it in more regions will grow the relationship. What will be interesting to see is whether the focus is Customer Success in these regions or its other solutions.
In addition, will Paoni seek to invest in product expansion through acquisition? This might be by acquiring tech tuck-ins from the Salesforce Ecosystem. Or will they consider purchasing a complimentary solution to further expand the platform?
