Accela Makes Acquisitions

Last week Accela, which provides Community Development software solutions for municipalities, acquired Springbrook (a national provider of financial software for municipalities) and SoftRight (a regional provider of financial software for municipalities). It appears that Accela is looking to expand the solution from Community Development, and offer a broader functional footprint to municipalities and special districts. This acquisition comes on the heels of Accela’s February announcement that they had acquired $143M in funding to expand functionality, move to the Cloud, and increase their sales reach.

So, what does this acquisition mean for customers? In the short run, little will change.  Accela will continue to support their customers while enhancing their Community Development functionality.  In the long run, Accela plans to integrate Accela Automation, Springbrook and SoftRight.  This approach will allow them to provide more of a complete Cloud solution including financials, community development, utility billing and other modules for the mid-size municipal market.

Now the work for Accela/Springbrook/SoftRight truly begins.  We will be interested to see how they plan to integrate the systems which all have a different architecture and code base.  Although the systems will eventually allow a “one-stop-shop” for interested potential clients, understanding the integration will be a critical component from an implementation, navigation, reporting and upgrading standpoint.

Accela’s acquisitions are something to keep an eye on, both in terms of a now being a potential contender for new software offerings, and also as predictor of what is yet to come in the software market.  Either way, we look forward to getting to know the “new”, broader footprint, Accela solution.