Workday has completed its $1.55 billion acquisition of Adaptive Insights, positioning the cloud-based platform to offer a broader array of solutions for finance and business planning.
The deal came together in June as Adaptive, a provider of cloud-based business planning and financial modeling tools, was putting the finishing touches to a planned initial public offering.
“We didn’t set out to be acquired,” Adaptive CEO Tom Bogan said Wednesday in a blog post. “In fact, we were days away from an IPO when the Workday opportunity arose, and it was so compelling that we considered a different path forward.”
As TechCrunch has reported, the deal will give Workday “another string to its bow in its attempt to become the go-to place for all for back-office services for its business customers.”
“With Adaptive Insights as part of Workday, organizations will have a more comprehensive planning system that further fuels finance and business transformation to drive competitive advantage,” said Mickey North Rizza, program vice president for IDC’s Enterprise Applications and Digital Commerce research practice.
“The office of finance is undergoing significant digital transformation as the back office is finally reaching parity with the front office, creating a new digital core across the enterprise,” Rizza noted. “As part of this shift, finance teams require a robust central planning system that provides the insights to help them grow and compete in real time.”
Workday, which went public in 2012, offers cloud-based human resources and financial applications for businesses. It had been working with Adaptive as a partner since 2015.
Bogan said the two companies “share a vision to accelerate finance and business transformation in the cloud,” and Adaptive “chose this path because we believe it offers the best opportunity to accelerate our vision that in business, everybody plans — so they should have access to powerful, flexible business planning software that everybody can use.”
In its public listing filing, Adaptive Insights said sales rose 30% to $106.5 million in its previous fiscal year but it also posted a loss of $42.7 million in the same period.
