Infor is acquiring Hansen Information Technologies, a provider of government operations applications, in a not-so-unexpected move.

The two companies are already in the same family; both are owned by private equity firm Golden Gate Capital. Infor’s strategy is to acquire its way into additional vertical industries. Privately-held Hansen was founded in 1983, and remained family-run until the buyout by Golden Gate last year. The company has about 350 employees and estimated annual revenue of $45M. The products, aimed at city, state, and county governments, are currently sold in the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. The Hansen product line is particularly strong in revenue management, such as assessments, grants, property taxes, fines, and utility billing.

Given Infor’s current size and desire to grow, it was only a matter of time until it looked to nonmanufacturing industries. For its first several years, Infor targeted the manufacturing and distribution industries, buying software companies with a strong presence in the industry: Geac, Lilly, and Mapics. It then turned to distribution industries with the daly.commerce, NxTrend, and Aperum acquisitions. The company supplemented all these purchases with additional supply chain functionality, such as demand planning from Mercia. Then came the acquisition of SSA, which doubled Infor’s size. 

The most recent acquisitions have been for products and customer bases that are strong within the service industry segments: enterprise asset management (EAM) vendor Datastream, financials and performance management provider Extensity, and workforce management application vendor Workbrain. With Hansen, Infor gets an extensive set of public entity operations capabilities for managing building permits, business licenses, parks and recreation, water distribution, and sewerage.

If anything, it appears Infor has again set itself up to execute an acquisition that returns a tremendous cross-selling opportunity. Not only can Infor sell its workforce management, performance management, and EAM applications into the Hansen base of more than 450 customers, but it can also sell the Hansen assets into the numerous municipalities and local governments that were inherited in the Datastream acquisition. First order of business, though, is for Infor to court the Hansen installed base, which should be standard practice for it now, with its extensive M&A activity. 

Hansen customers need not worry, either. Infor won’t likely sunset the Hansen product line, and the Hansen management team will likely stay on. Similar to how it spawned its distribution practice, Infor is looking to Hansen to help form a public sector business. The management team will most likely be the base for internal expertise on that market as Infor starts to assemble a broader product line for this segment.

The government application market has been growing at an estimated 9%, with a number of large enterprise vendors already in the market. Oracle and SAP both have a presence. Lawson has a number of local government customers for its S3 product, as does Microsoft with its Dynamics applications.

Hansen has done well, but is small by enterprise applications standards. It should certainly benefit from the increased brand awareness, geographic coverage, and extended product portfolio that Infor can provide.

AMR Research® is a registered trademark of AMR Research, Inc.