Vista Equity Partners has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Acumatica from EQT. Vista has a long history of owning or having a share in enterprise software, data and technology-enabled businesses, especially ERP firms. It has previously held shares in Aptean and currently has stakes in vendors such as OneAdvanced. As well as others which are in and around the ERP space such as Trintech, Vena and Jaggaer.
Acumatica offers a cloud-native Enterprise Resource Planning (“ERP”) platform to mid-market organisations through an extensive network of partners. It also enabled some partners to white-label their products; an early investor, MYOB, did this. Unusually, it has no direct-sales organisation and has frequently been reported as being the fastest-growing ERP solution.
Acumatica offers a wide range of applications to a broad set of industries, including Construction, Distribution, Manufacturing, Professional Services, Retail, Agriculture, Cannabis, CPG, Field Service and others.
Its solutions include core financial management to payroll and Customer Relationship Management (“CRM”) in a single, unified system. The features are customised for each industry, with embedded AI to deliver insights enabling organisations to make data-driven strategic decisions.
John Case, CEO of Acumatica, commented, “Our partnership with Vista not only marks a significant milestone in Acumatica’s history but also is a strong endorsement of the real-world value we deliver to the market and our customers.
“Vista’s investment can help power our AI-first product strategy and further strengthen our thriving Community of partners, developers and customers. Working together to find better ways to work and redefine business management software for everyone. With Vista’s support and track record of growing software companies, we believe we’re positioned to accelerate product development, deepen partner engagement and extend our impact.”
EQT gives up its stake
EQT bought Acumatica in 2019 and added it to the IFS Group. The two firms planned to share some resources. Notably the service centre in Sri Lanka, which would have enabled Acumatica to offer follow-the-sum support. What is not clear from this announcement is what will now happen to that relationship.
Neither party disclosed the terms of the agreement, but EQT has sold all of its stake to Vista. This is different from previous EQT transactions. Where, for example, it sold part of its stake in IFS to Hg in 2022.
Monti Saroya, Co-Head of Vista’s Flagship Fund and Senior Managing Director, commented, “Acumatica is an ascendant, cloud-native ERP platform that has become a leading provider of mission-critical tools that enable small and mid-sized businesses to run more efficiently and effectively.
“With its industry-leading, strong partner ecosystem and growing presence in markets embracing cloud-based business technology, we believe Acumatica is well-positioned to lead the shift toward modern, integrated ERP solutions.”
John Stalder, Managing Director at Vista, added, “Acumatica has established a strong market position with differentiated, flexible and industry-specific ERP solutions as well as a uniquely dedicated channel of value-added resellers,” “We’re excited to partner with Acumatica and its outstanding community of partners to drive continued growth and product innovation and to deliver even greater value to customers worldwide.”
Enterprise Times: What does this mean
Once acquired, Vista has a history of helping to scale up organisations, sometimes organically and sometimes through acquisition strategy. It will be interesting to see what approach it takes with Acumatica. It will also be interesting to see whether the relationship with IFS continues and what the future holds for the partner network.
Acumatica is different from many other ERP firms. It has been developing its solution and expanding its footprint successfully over many years. How will Vista support further growth? Will it move up the market or into new industries and/or verticals?
