The content services business is booming for Hyland Software. The company added 1,800 customers last year — 750 gained organically, the rest by acquisition, according to senior management — and the acquisition spree is expected to continue.
Hyland’s two biggest acquisitions were Nuxeo in April and Alfresco in October 2020. While they were competitors, “they weren’t competing as much as you might think,” said Hyland’s chief commercial officer, Ed. McQuiston, during a briefing ahead of next week’s Hyland CommunityLive. Virtual User Conference 2021.
Indeed, with their open source roots, Nuxeo and Alfresco users were more do-it-yourselfers than Hyland’s enterprise clients in verticals such as healthcare, which sought more turnkey software, McQuiston said. Hyland plans to support established Nuxeo and Alfresco customers “as far as we can see into the future,” he said.
Hyland President and CEO Bill Priemer added that the company increased the percentage of revenue invested in R&D from 15% to 19% in 2021 by developing the Hyland Experience platform. So far, the platform includes a web-based scanning, classification and data extraction application.
“We don’t rest,” Priemer said. “We work with a sense of urgency. [There are] a lot of areas where we are accelerating and improving.”
Bill Priemer, President and CEO of Hyland Software, addresses last year’s CommunityLive virtual user conference.
It also means more acquisitions are likely because Hyland has made it clear that this is its growth plan, said Alan Pelz-Sharpe, founder of Deep Analysis. Hyland will likely make two types of acquisitions to achieve its growth goals: lower-cost deals to quickly add AI, machine learning, and automation capabilities to its platform — such as the acquisition of robotic process automation Another Monday in 2020 – and higher cost deals to acquire customers.
“These higher-priced deals will likely be focused on verticals where they already have a strong footprint – like healthcare and education – and to take them into new verticals like supply chain and life sciences. life,” Pelz-Sharpe said.
In discussing potential acquisitions, Hyland chief product officer John Phelan did not identify specific target companies. But he said Hyland could go further in medical imagingadd more natural language processing capabilities and possibly tackle new verticals such as real estate, life sciences and transportation logistics.
We do not intend to force migrations. But when they’re ready, we’ll have this next-gen platform for them, and along the way, start leveraging microservices.
Ed McQuistonSales Manager, Hyland Software
Phelan added that Europe is Hyland’s fastest growing segment, which could lead to the acquisition of a French, German or Nordic company to serve users in those geographies – which he called of “very parochial” markets.
“We’ve been a little less aggressive in finding the next one, but as you can imagine there’s a whole variety of companies we’re talking to,” Phelan said. “We don’t acquire big software companies because they have a great [profit and loss statement]. While our portfolio is certainly bigger and broader today than it has ever been, it still has this incredible focus on solving content and process issues for our clients.”
Content services for vertical industries will continue to be a priority, McQuiston said. Specifically, Hyland plans to provide customers with tools they can deploy quickly, tailored to their industries, as well as establish a customer-focused product roadmap for cloud-native content services, at to come up. While this may be standard fare for many technology vendors, Hyland’s customer base includes many government and educational customers who use its software on-premises.
“We don’t plan to force migrations. But when they’re ready, we’ll have this next-gen platform for them, and along the way, start leveraging microservices,” McQuiston said. .
Don Fluckinger covers enterprise content management, CRM, marketing automation, e-commerce, customer service and enabling technologies for TechTarget.
