Have you heard the news? Sage Group, a leading British software company, completed the purchase in the third quarter of 2017 of Intacct Corporation, a California-based, nineteen-year-old accounting software company.

About Intacct & Sage

Intacct Corporation is a leading accounting software company that developed a suite of cloud-delivered enterprise financial management [ERP] software easily tailored to each customer’s workflows and reporting requirements. Sage Group offers financial management solutions and is the market and technology leader for integrated accounting, payroll, and payment systems, supporting the ambition of entrepreneurs and business builders.

Why Did Sage Move Forward With This Acquisition?

Scaled and equipped to go public, Intacct elected to accept the purchase offer by Sage Group for the $850 million. Cloud-based accounting systems are leading the way for the future. With real-time access to reports, owners, bankers, managers, and investors have access to the numbers on the cloud from any place at any time. Both companies agree that together, like Sage Intacct, they have a broader reach, increased diversity, and more significant impact to serve businesses globally.  

The Vision Going Forward

Unified as Sage Intacct, the two groups aim to build out Sage’s cloud financial management offerings. In a recent article, Sage CEO Stephen Kelly was quoted, “The acquisition of Intacct supports our ambitions for accelerating growth by winning new customers at scale and builds on our other cloud-first acquisitions, strengthening the Sage Business Cloud.”  In the same article, CEO Rob Reid remarked, “We are excited to become part of Sage because we are relentlessly focused on the same goal – to deliver the most innovative cloud solutions for our customers,” Intacct CEO Rob Reid added. “Intacct is growing rapidly in our market, and we are proud to be a recognized customer satisfaction leader across midsize, large, and global enterprise businesses. By combining our strengths with those of Sage, we can jointly accelerate success for our customers.”

What Does Trusted CFO Solutions Think About The Change?

We were asked to convey our thoughts about the recent acquisition of Intacct by Sage Group. “I see this more as pros and cons. In any acquisition where the mammoth company acquires the smaller one, there are more rules, the possibility of less flexibility, and the pitfalls that come with those changes. But, on the other side, to mitigate their structure as a wholly-owned subsidiary, the way they have rolled out and over-communicated, I feel is by far the best of many acquisitions I’ve ever seen.”

Our co-founder added, “I do believe their message that this is only going to help us advance our cause across the world, and that’s what SAGE is excellent at doing. If the two can come together and make it work and not lose the uniqueness from Intacct, I can see it working very nicely.  Having it structured this way and staying committed to what they’re saying while remaining consistent over time will be compelling for deploying new improvements and inventory, improvements in other areas where Intacct was lacking, and getting a shared porch service center. With Intacct, Sage now has access to the top developers and programmers in the world.”

Our co-founder thinks that Sage will continue using its current software for the smaller-end client and put the resources to develop Intacct for the small to medium-sized business space. Sage doesn’t have a product to work there. So, over a few years, they’ll create those programs.

“It seems like the intention all along was to take Intacct and make it better. And that Sage behemoth, who was so far behind, actually sees and respects the beauty of what Intacct built over the last 15 years. I think they only want to enhance Intacct and give them the tools to do it.”