Surge Ventures Launches Its Inaugural Company, RegVerse and Unveils an Industry First Generative AI-Powered Regulatory Management Platform

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Korbyt Receives Significant Growth Investment from Clearhaven Partners

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Vista Equity Partners and Evergreen Coast Capital Announce the Completion of the Transaction to Acquire Citrix Systems and Combine it with TIBCO Software

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Surge Ventures Launches an Innovative Venture Studio Starting With a Focus in the Financial Services and Wealth Management Industry

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Zello Raises $20 Million for Voice-First Communication Platform for Frontline Workers

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Korbyt Reports a Breakout Year

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Citrix to be Acquired by Vista Equity Partners and Evergreen Coast Capital for $16.5 Billion

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TIBCO Completes Acquisition of Information Builders

Strategic Alignment Will Speed Customers’ Time to Data-Driven Insights.

Korbyt Announces Strong 2020

Korbyt Accelerates Business Momentum as Demand for SaaS-based Digital Workplace Platform Grows

TIBCO Announces Agreement to Acquire Information Builders, Inc.

Information Builders’ Rich, Data-Centric Portfolio Augments TIBCO’s Connected Intelligence Platform to Drive Innovation

RMG Networks Renames to Korbyt

New Brand Reflects the Company’s Mission to Help Enterprises Engage with their Employees and Customers

SirsiDynix Sees Robust Growth in 2019

Committed to Continued Growth for 2020

TIBCO Acquires MDM Leader Orchestra Networks

Single, Robust Solution Offers Collective Management, Governance, and Consumption of Shared Data Assets

Virgo Acquires RMG Networks

Virgo Capital acquires digital signage leader RMG Networks.

Sayers Announces New Investment

Sayers Technology receives investment from Mosaic Capital Partners as part of a new Employee Stock Ownership Plan.

TIBCO Acquires Data Virtualization Business from Cisco

Analytics Users to Benefit from Improved Data Agility, Enhanced Scalability, and Better Business Insights

Get Smart Content Announces Corporate Rebranding, Changes Name to Bound

Launches 360 Persona Technology to Help B2B Marketers Create Digital Engagement at Scale

Get Smart Content Adds $1.75 Million Financing Round to Expand Adoption of its Cross-Channel Personalization Platform

Get Smart Content Adds $1.75 Million Financing Round to Expand Adoption of its Cross-Channel Personalization Platform

Chris Callahan, CEO

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Private Equity Accounted For 66 Percent Of Channel M&A Transactions In 2015

Private equity participation in channel mergers and acquisitions in 2015 accounted for approximately 66 percent of the revenue of the 21 North American transactions identified by Martinwolf M&A Advisors, a global IT investment firm.

TIBCO Software to Acquire API Management Leader Mashery

TIBCO Software Inc., a global leader in integration, analytics, and event processing, today announced it will acquire Mashery, the industry leader in Application Programming Interface (API) management. The transaction is expected to close in the coming weeks.

Get Smart Content Adds $3.5 Million in Funding to Expand Sales

Get Smart Content, a leading multi-channel personalization platform, today announced that it has raised a round of funding worth $3.5 million. The round was led by Origin Ventures with participation by Chicago Ventures and Virgo Capital.

DiscoverOrg Acquires iProfile to Fuel Global Expansion

DiscoverOrg (http://www.discoverorg.com), the leading sales and marketing intelligence solution, has acquired iProfile, the pioneer of sales intelligence for the technology industry. The acquisition combines iProfile’s comprehensive global professional contact and sales intelligence database with DiscoverOrg’s proprietary sales intelligence and analytics.

Sayers Announces Recapitalization Led By Virgo Capital

Sayers, a leading IT solutions company in the data center infrastructure, enterprise security, and networking sectors, today announced that it closed on a recapitalization transaction led by Virgo Capital.

The Meaning of Stickiness

In our last article we talked about what high renewal rates mean for your business, but how do you set your business up to achieve those renewal rates? As we said, it comes down to customer success with your product and stickiness in the face of market changes and competitive pressures.

Let’s talk about stickiness (a term everyone seems to talk about) – just what does it really mean? A quick definition is the nature of your customers to continue to use your products or services, to “stick” with you.

The traditional (and now outdated) approach to keeping your customers sticky was to sign them up to long-term contracts or be a black box in one of their main business processes. Such an attitude could not be further from the spirit of adding value and customer success.

As we look at the stickiness of businesses today, we focus on a few key areas that drive value and make a customer successful – which leads to them to renew, upgrade, and never leave.

What’s in a Renewal Rate?

One of the key value questions for any software or services business is the rate of customer renewal. Whether it is measured in dollars, customers, subscriptions, maintenance agreements, or some other metric, higher renewal rates usually indicate better products and stickier customers, and they directly translate to more predictable revenue and lower selling costs.

Typically, good services businesses have renewal rates of more than 80%, while more sticky software renewal rates hit 90% or more. But what is the difference between a company which has a 90% renewal rate vs. one with a 95% renewal rate? Both are clearly leaders among their peers, but, as just one example, the 95% renewal rate company can spend half what the other must spend on selling and still come out ahead.

In order to get to that conclusion, we need to look at renewals from the other angle – by considering attrition. While a 90% renewal rate is great, it means that attrition is 10%. So the company with a 95% renewal rate has only 5% attrition, meaning on average it loses half as many customers per year as its rival in this example.

Software, Software Everywhere

Across almost every industry in the U.S., businesses both large and small are highly dependent on software technology to support their operations. Whether they are manufacturing a product, managing a sales force, invoicing a customer, or paying employees, more often than not software plays a major role in getting the job done. With the increasing amount of software technology, including third-party applications, databases, operating systems, websites, and propriety applications, one of the key challenges that companies face is how to manage and maintain all of this software, in many cases mission-critical software, in a cost-effective manner. For software and technology providers themselves, the increasingly competitive marketplace is making it important to not only provide a lower total cost of ownership but also be fast and efficient in improving products and expanding feature sets.

Non-Newtonian Liquid(ity)

Many investors have found it challenging to generate yield in a “low for long” interest rate environment. Not surprisingly, this topic often comes up in our casual conversations with limited partners. As a service to our constituents we decided to not only explore what has been happening in the credit markets, but also provide some ideas on where they can find yield. These learnings also help Virgo and its portfolio companies plan for strategic initiatives in 2016, such as the level of debt available to help fund add-on acquisitions. In the spirit of holiday giving, we would like to share some of these findings with our Virgo View readers.

HIMSS14 Postmortem: From Shakedown to Shakeout

Like many of those in attendance, my post-HIMSS14 recovery weekend was spent on a variety of therapeutic activities such as spending time with family, attempting to work off one too many breakfast/lunch/happy hour/dinner/reverse happy hour meetings, and flipping through a stack of special edition publications picked up at the conference (thank you FedEx!). I also had time to reflect on some of the key conference takeaways that I wanted to discuss with my colleagues this week.

TA Associates Announces Majority Investment in Accruent

TA Associates, a leading global growth private equity firm, today announced it has completed a majority investment in Accruent, LLC, a leading provider of real estate and facilities management software solutions. Existing investor Vista Equity Partners will retain a significant ownership position, while Virgo Capital has exited its investment in Accruent. Additional terms of the investment were not disclosed.

Since 1995, Accruent has offered a comprehensive facilities and real estate management system that delivers long-term, world class operational and financial performance for its customers. The company provides market planning, site selection, project management, lease administration, facilities and space management software that is purpose-built for specific industries to deliver greater customer value. Accruent has been executing a strategy to bring together the best people and products within the real estate and facilities software market to drive innovation and increase the value delivered to customers.

Dale Hageman, CEO

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Scott Klososky

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Steve Andrade

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Nathaniel Robinson

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Arun Prakash

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Guhan Swaminathan

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Hemanth Parasuram

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Nonprofit and Association Management Software

Associations are a relatively recession-resistant business, but as the professional labor force grows during economic recovery, professional and trade associations specifically need to be ready to engage potential new members who seek to advance their careers through membership. For national organizations, as opposed to state-level organizations, membership is voluntary, so these groups need sophisticated tools and technology, including social media, to continually attract and engage members, especially the younger generation of professionals, and fend off competition from for-profit entities who can also provide relevant content and experiences to members.

Accruent Announces Acquisition of Expesite

Accruent, LLC, the leading provider of real estate and facilities software, today announced that it has acquired Expesite. This is the seventh acquisition that Accruent has completed in executing its strategy to consolidate the best people and products, and positions Accruent as the largest provider of real estate and facilities software in the industry.

Based in Columbus, Ohio, Expesite provides a suite of SaaS solutions highlighted by VisionPM, its design and construction project management product. Expesite’s impressive customer list includes The Wendy’s Company and Jo-Ann Fabrics and Craft Stores. More than 63,000 users in 72 countries use Expesite to manage over 470,000 construction projects.

Accruent Announces Acquisition of Evoco

Accruent, LLC, a provider of software used by many of the world’s leading corporations and institutions to manage their real estate and facilities, today announced that it has acquired Evoco, Inc. The acquisition will result in an expanded suite of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions for customers of both companies.

Evoco, based in Calgary, Canada, provides retail chains, including Luxottica (a leader in premium fashion, luxury and sports eyewear) with SaaS solutions to improve the time to revenue associated with complex store construction programs. Retailers use Evoco to control project expenditures and manage the many document exchanges that occur between external stakeholders, such as contractors, vendors, architects and engineers, and internal stakeholders, including project managers, finance, procurement and facilities management. Using Evoco, customers compress the time taken to plan, design and construct new locations, store expansions and remodels.

ERP Systems for the Manufacturing Sector

As the economy emerges from the recession, middle market manufacturing companies are growing and have built up demand for quality IT systems to give them the edge in being their sector’s low-cost providers and reducing delivery cycles. Established manufacturing-focused ERP software providers with proven solutions and strong customer support are well positioned to succeed in the next decade as the middle market manufacturing sector grows. Further, in the middle market, software providers with domain expertise in manufacturing have an edge on large vendors, such as SAP and Oracle, as their solutions are specialized for their customers’ niche processes, and they can better implement and respond to changes.

TriNet Announces Acquisition of Accord Human Resources

TriNet announced today its acquisition of Accord HR. With the addition of Accord, TriNet is creating a multi-tiered HR platform that will more effectively serve the needs of small businesses across America.

The acquisition of Accord provides TriNet with an additional service model and expanded geographical coverage that addresses segments of the market not yet served by TriNet. Accord has a significant complimentary presence in several core TriNet markets including the Northeast and Florida and also a strong geographic footprint in places where TriNet has a limited presence, such as Oklahoma, Nevada and Arizona. In this respect, the addition of the Accord service model augments and broadens TriNet’s ability to serve more clients and prospects than ever before.

Accruent Announces Completion of Accruent 8.2 Release

Accruent, LLC, the leading provider of real estate and facilities solutions, has announced availability of a significant upgrade to Accruent 8, a member of the most popular and widely-deployed real estate management product family for the retail industry. Accruent 8.2 delivers expanded functionality, technology upgrades and improved performance and ease-of-use, in order to reduce total cost of ownership and improve value for customers.

Healthaxis Expands Infrastructure to Support Growth and Improve Performance for Claims Processing

Healthaxis announced today that it is implementing major changes to its ASP hardware infrastructure that will improve systems performance and provide substantial room for growth in its operations. The company said that it will be installing a new IBM storage area network solution and upgrading its server environment. These changes will allow Healthaxis to further enhance its ASP Healthcare Benefits Platform, significantly improving performance in claims processing and payer administration for customers.

Accruent Announces Acquisition of 360Facility

Accruent, LLC, the leading provider of real estate and facilities solutions, announced today its acquisition of 360Facility, a leading SaaS-based facilities management solution company. 360Facility has an impressive customer base, highly-capable and easily-installed products, and a leadership position in important market segments. 360Facility has rapidly emerged as the preferred SaaS-based facilities solution provider to the global corporate and commercial property market, having 418 customers in 56 countries managing 64,000 properties. 360Facility solutions cover the full spectrum of facilities operations, including property management, maintenance and asset management, emergency preparedness, and incident management.

Integrated Medical Solutions Chooses Healthaxis for End-to-End Benefits Administration

Healthaxis announced today that it has been selected by Integrated Medical Solutions (IMS) to provide a fully integrated benefits administration software and services solution. IMS develops healthcare networks to provide comprehensive medical services for patients housed in correctional facilities. IMS also provides care coordination for such patients when they have medical needs requiring services not provided by the correctional facility itself. Healthaxis will provide IMS with a full range of services, including front-end claims services, administration and claims software systems capability, re-pricing, and Web capabilities.

TechTarget Partners with iProfile for Activity Intelligence

Technology media company TechTarget, Inc. (NASDAQ: TTGT) today announced a major upgrade to its Activity Intelligence™ suite of products and services. TechTarget’s new Activity Intelligence dashboard gives marketers and sales representatives an industry-changing view of their prospects with Enhanced Contact Profiles™ and Account Intelligence™ activity details including insights on the research activities of technology buying teams across entire companies.

The new Enhanced Contact Profiles, which are powered by TechTarget’s partner iProfile, provide needed improvements to contact information, increasing the potential for sales representatives to connect with prospects in meaningful discussions.

Healthaxis’ Enhanced Self-Service Applications Significantly Improve Member and Administrator Access

Healthaxis recently launched its latest Web-based self-service portals for member, administrator and provider access to comprehensive health plan information. Healthaxis’ Self-Service solutions extend the capabilities of core benefits technologies to include critical information exchange and transaction processing with members, employers, plan administrators, and providers over the Web, in addition to internal users. Customer satisfaction has been high with the solution, as Healthaxis continues to pave the way for innovation in healthcare.

Accruent Announces Acquisition of Siterra

Accruent, LLC, the leading provider of Enterprise Location Management (ELM) solutions, announced today that it has acquired Siterra Corporation. This strategic acquisition further solidifies Accruent’s position as the most comprehensive ELM solution with fully-integrated, end-to-end solutions for the entire marketplace.

Siterra is the preeminent SaaS-based real estate and facilities solution in the market and has a reputation for excellence in customer service. Siterra solutions are at work at over 500,000 locations across nearly 100 organizations in the wireless communications, renewable energy, retail, and corporate real estate industries. Siterra’s solutions are utilized to manage approximately 60 percent of the cell towers in the United States. The combined entity provides unparalleled solution choice for customers looking for location management software.

NFP and Accord HR Announce Preferred Partner Relationship

National Financial Partners Corp. (NYSE: NFP), a leading provider of benefits, insurance and wealth management services, and Accord Human Resources announced today that NFP Insurance Services, Inc., NFP’s licensed insurance agency and insurance marketing organization, has entered into a preferred partner relationship with Accord Human Resources. This agreement will offer NFP’s corporate benefits professionals a comprehensive, outsourced human resource management solution for their clients.

Accruent Opens Austin Office

Accruent today announced that it has opened an office in Austin, Texas. The company, a leader in real estate and facilities management software, selected Austin for its deep technology assets, established business climate, and talented workforce. The company sees Austin as a place to create and innovate. Accruent, LLC. Is headquartered in Santa Monica, California, and has office in Irvine, CA and Chicago, IL.

iProfile Announces First Real Time Sales Intelligence Application for CRM and Sales Force Automation Systems

iProfile, pioneers of sales intelligence for the technology industry, announced today the availability of SalesIQ, the first IT focused sales intelligence application for CRM and sales force automation systems.
SalesIQ enables sales managers and their teams to shorten time to revenue and maximize team productivity by delivering real time business information, contacts, connections and sales triggers directly inside the CRM environment.

Healthaxis Acquired by Virgo Capital

Healthaxis, a leading provider of healthcare benefits administration and claims management software and solutions, announced that Virgo Capital completed its merger and acquisition of 100% of its outstanding capital stock from the Company’s former parent BPO Management Services, Inc. in January of this year.

Healthaxis, originally founded in 1965 and headquartered in Irving, Texas, has for over 30 years provided world class benefits administration system software and outsourced healthcare transaction services on a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) basis for leading TPAs, insurance companies and other healthcare payers. In 2009 alone, the Company’s software platforms processed more than $5 billion in healthcare claims and serviced more than 500,000 lives.

iProfile Launches Asia Pacific 400 for IT Sales Intelligence

iProfile, leaders in IT sales intelligence and research announced the launch of its Asia Pacific 400 edition, covering 400 of the largest companies and their IT departments in Asia Pacific by order of revenue, market share and assets.

Dale Hageman of Accord Human Resources Nominated for Most Admired CEO

A company is defined by it relationship to its clients, and as president and CEO of Accord Human Resources, Dale Hageman makes sure all his employees follow this creed. He consistently pushes himself, and them, to provide the highest level of service for every client.

Hageman was one of the pioneers of the professional employer organization (PEO) industry and has been instrumental in developing legislation that protects both employees and employers. Through his leadership, Hageman has grown Accord from a small office with only four employees to a thriving multistate organization with more than 500 clients and 10,000 work-site employees.

Accord Human Resources is Named One of the Top Payroll Service Providers in OKC

Accord Human Resources, a leading provider of outsourced HR management solutions, was recently named one of the winners of the OKC Business’ Best of Business 2008 for Payroll Service Providers. The award was given to the most outstanding payroll service providers in OKC, and Accord, the only PEO among the award recipients, was recognized for its key role in this extremely competitive market.

Private Equity in the Lower Middle Market

Glance at the front page of the Wall Street Journal on any given day, and there is a good chance the term “private equity” will be mentioned at least once. Whether in a discussion on federal tax policy or in an announcement of the latest multi-billion dollar buyout, it seems everyone is talking about private equity. Despite the term’s newfound ubiquity, it is important to avoid painting the entire industry with the same brush. In this article, we note some key differences between various types of private equity and discuss our views on the opportunities and challenges present in an often overlooked sector, the lower middle market.

An Equity Fund of Their Own

Guhan Swaminathan was making a good living in the world of high finance, buying and selling companies for financial titan Goldman Sachs and later for WestBridge Capital Partners. But as an employee of a large firm, “a lot of the entrepreneurial excitement of making these investments was gone,” says Swaminathan, 32. So in 2005, he and colleague Hemanth Parasuram, 30, started Virgo Capital, a private equity firm that closed its first fund of $50 million last year.

Virgo Capital Purchases Stake in Research Firm

Virgo Capital has doubled its portfolio of technology-based companies by buying a majority stake in California based iProfile, a “business intelligence” research firm, officials said Thursday in Oklahoma City.

With iProfile, Virgo has added a company with offices in Palo Alto, Calif., and London that packages information about the IT departments of some of the largest companies in the United States and Europe. It sells that information through a subscription service to sales and marketing organizations targeting the sector.

Enterprise Profiling Services

It should come as no surprise that in our ever-modernizing and increasingly connected world, spending in the information technology (IT) industry is on the rise. The worldwide IT market will exceed $1.2 trillion in 2007 with an associated five year CAGR of over 6%1. Sales quotas for companies which serve this market are on the rise as well, increasing 10-15% over last year, while sales budgets are only projected to rise 9%2. As a result, technology sales personnel need to work smarter to hit their quotas, which in turn means maximizing their leads from both a quantity and quality perspective. Virgo Capital believes that Enterprise Profiling Services (EPS) provide a clear solution to these issues and that the sector as a whole represents a promising area for investment.

The Emergence of Nearshoring

Few business trends in recent memory have garnered the type of attention that outsourcing has. Driven by increasingly strong pressure to cut costs and focus on core competencies, companies are continuing to look to outside firms to handle non-core business functions such as collections, customer care, and human resources. In the 1990s, many companies in the U.S. began looking into offshoring, sending work over to places such as India and the Philippines. Recently, however, numerous issues have emerged with the offshore model, and executives are starting to look to nearshore providers for their business process outsourcing needs. At Virgo Capital, we believe the nearshoring model offers a unique value proposition when compared to domestic and offshore outsourcing providers, and that it represents an attractive opportunity for the right investors.

Virgo Capital Buys Accord HR Firm

When Virgo Capital was organized as a private equity company last year, managing director Hemanth Parasuram said the company would invest in mature companies that might need investment capital to expand their business operations.

Virgo made good on that mission Wednesday by announcing that it has bought Oklahoma City-based Accord Human Resources for an undisclosed amount. Accord has been ranked as one of the nation’s 10 largest privately-held professional employer organizations and listed four times on Inc. magazine’s list of America’s fastest growing companies.

Professional Employer Organizations

Human resources management is one of the most substantial and promising areas in outsourcing today. One of our favorite models is the professional employer organization, or PEO. The value proposition PEOs provide enables clients to cost-effectively outsource the management of human resources, employee benefits, payroll, and workers’ compensation, allowing them to focus on core business functions. PEOs deliver these services by establishing and maintaining an employer relationship with the client employees and by contractually assuming certain employer rights, responsibilities, and risk. We believe that significant investment opportunities exist in this consolidating market given the fast growth and low overall market penetration.

In Praise of the No-Fee Approach

Deal fees, monitoring fees and exit fees have become big business for buyout firms. Case in point: The Blackstone Group recently paid itself a $200 million deal fee for the $39 billion buyout of Equity Office Properties Trust, keeping half for itself per its deal with limited partners.

Surprisingly, a handful of buyout firms decline to charge such fees, although they’re hardly motivated by a desire for martyrdom. Veteran firms Hellman & Friedman LLC, San Francisco, and Warburg Pincus LLC, New York, along with start-up Virgo Capital, with offices in Oklahoma City, Okla., and Austin, Texas, either don’t charge their portfolio companies fees or, in the case of H&F and Warburg Pincus, do so only when participating in club deals (in which case they either give 100 percent to their limited partners or use the fees to buy additional equity).

Ex-Goldman Bankers Set Up Shop in Austin

A new private-equity firm with a $50 million fund has arrived in Austin. Virgo Capital is scouting services and technology companies that sell to the financial services industry.

The firm is led by former Goldman Sachs investment bankers Guhan Swaminathan, who is based in Austin, and Hemanth Parasuram, based in Oklahoma City.

Oklahoma City Investment Firm Marks $50 Million Turning Point

Oklahoma City-based Virgo Capital Fund LLP has crossed another milestone in raising investment capital, its founding partners said Friday. Virgo Capital recently closed on the second round of capital investment that puts nearly $50 million under its management.

Virgo Capital was founded last year by Hemanth Parasuram, 29, and Guhan Swaminathan, 31, two former Goldman Sachs investment bankers.

Venture Capital Fund Starts With $20 million

When Richard Wilkes was introduced to a pair of young former Goldman Sachs investment bankers last year, he was impressed by their audacious goal to build a $75 million private capital investment fund in Oklahoma City.

“The venture capital business is dominated by youthful people,” said Wilkes, a Houston-based financial consultant and former president of the Texas Mortgage Bankers Association. “These are exceptionally bright guys.” So when Virgo Capital co-founders Hemanth Parasuram, 28, and Guhan Swaminathan, 31, asked Wilkes to serve as the chairman of their advisory board, he didn’t hesitate to sign on.