The financial terms of the acquisition have not been disclosed, but Cartesis is buying 100% of the shares and voting rights of INEA. The deal is expected to close by the end of June.
Toronto-based INEA has 50 employees and posted revenue of $6m last fiscal year. The company’s out-of-the-box applications that streamline financial planning and forecasting processes have been jointly developed with financial institutions.
INEA boasts over 7,700 users in 44 countries. The majority of customers are large financial institutions and include Mellon Financial, Scotiabank and RBC Financial.
INEA’s products will be rebranded as ES Planning and will be fully integrated into the Cartesis ES Magnitude suite, which also delivers core financial consolidation capabilities. ES Planning will be sold as part of the Magnitude suite and as a standalone application. Cartesis expects to launch the product in the fourth quarter.
In July, INEA’s existing software will be rebranded as Cartesis Planning 4.0 and will be sold to customers that cannot wait for the ES Planning offering. Planning 4.0 will also be integrated into the Magnitude suite.
Cartesis CEO Didier Benchimol will head up the merged organization. At this stage Cartesis has no plans to relocate INEA’s Canadian staff, and INEA’s Toronto headquarters will serve as a new center of excellence for planning and forecasting.
The acquisition is part of a two-year product strategy and roadmap that Cartesis recently unveiled for 2005 to broaden out its performance management stack on top of a common infrastructure. Part of this strategy includes acquiring best-of-breed technologies to flesh out its suite. Financial planning and forecasting, along with budgeting, are thought to be key components of any business performance management stack.
As part of its due diligence, Cartesis said it evaluated over 30 planning, budgeting, and forecasting companies before it opted for INEA. Cartesis officials said INEA’s architecture is a good fit for Cartesis’ Integrated Data Model, which is the foundation for its ES Magnitude performance management suite. Cartesis will also benefit from INEA’s presence in North America and the financial sector, and has hinted that it will broaden the vertical market focus of INEA’s software.
