The price has not been disclosed, but off the record, estimates tell me that TH Lee has made a tidy profit on their investment and that Hyland has not overpaid. However, as always, it is essential to note that no M&A transaction is without tears. Alfresco ran a long and steady race as an independent championing open source ECM
The RPA/DPA world is now righting itself. There’s a clear trend, as these three important process automation and/or content management vendors made RPA acquisitions in the past seven months, while showing how it can be done
In this short analyst note we discuss the importance of Information Governance in a world of home and hybrid working.
Deep Analysis is not an M&A Brokerage, but we do network widely and actively advise senior executives, both buyers, and sellers. So I would like to think we have a good idea of what is going on behind the scenes in the Information and Process Management world. I can tell you for sure that there are personal anguish and difficulties to resolve during the pandemic. Still, the business itself is thriving, for most.
Now IBM joins the party, making a modest acquisition of Sao Paolo based WDG Automation.
Whenever we discuss trends, the conversations inevitably turn to the future of artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) in process automation and robotic process automation (RPA). Frankly, I’ve found that most vendors latch on to the idea but have very little substance behind their words in terms of strategy and product roadmaps.
Increasingly, my colleague, Alan Pelz-Sharpe, and I are finding substantial convergence and common ground in our coverage areas. (Alan covers blockchain, content, compliance, and AI/ML, and I cover digital process automation, RPA, process mining, and customer experience.) The COVID-19 pandemic is pushing this trend even harder as companies struggle to get their arms around documents, tasks, processes, commerce, and customers so they can deliver products and services more rapidly across ever-morphing supply chains.
Have you ever wondered where all the Lean, Six Sigma, continuous improvement, and operational excellence practitioners have gone? When the BPM (methodology + software) conversation turned toward digital process automation (software and very little process methodology) much of the continuous improvement conversation went away. Poof–it disappeared, to be replaced by a lot of technical talk.
Though one can speculate that these deals may not have gone through had they been delayed a week or two, the fact is they did, and the industry continues to move forward. Recently Hyland acquired Learning Machine, OpenText bought xMedius, and Alfresco closed their first significant deal by catching TSG (Technology Services Group. Each is interesting and significant deals that may well herald more similar deals in the future.
But tech became detached from reality and showed little compassion or, indeed, common sense at times. Frankly, tech is a sector that has been ambivalent at best regarding moral and ethical concerns. That has to change; maybe this is the time to make the change.
