Colorado Springs, CO — May 30, 2003 — Enterprise content management (ECM) specialist Optika has acquired Select Technologies, Inc. (STI), a developer of records management applications, in a bid to strengthen its ability to provide solutions that allow customers to be in compliance with the record retention, control and disposition requirements made by recent regulatory initiatives.
Optika's Acorde Records Manager solution, launched in March 2003, was an OEM version of STI's extempore software technology and was a result of a partnership between the two companies formed in September 2002.
Headquartered in Boise, Idaho, STI's current client base includes Bayer Pharmaceuticals, Weyerhauser, Georgia-Pacific and General Electric.
Under the terms of the agreement, Optika will pay approximately $1.425 million for privately held STI, consisting of cash and 500,000 shares of Optika Common Stock. Additionally, the selling shareholders have the ability to earn up to an additional $600,000 over the next three years, based on attainment of certain revenue targets from the Acorde Records Manager product.
The acquisition closed Thursday and was approved by the boards of directors of both companies.
All STI employees will remain in Boise, and the company will operate as a wholly owned subsidiary of Optika. STI senior management, including President and CEO Del Zane and Vice President and Chief Development Officer Shadra Arneson, will remain with Optika in executive roles, with Zane reporting to Optika CEO Mark Ruport.
"We see a growing market demand for solutions that help companies protect their most critical business documents and records and stay in compliance with new laws and regulations, such as Sarbanes Oxley, FDA and HIPAA," said Ruport. "The addition of the STI products and personnel is a strategic advancement for Optika in the enterprise content management space."
"There is no doubt that private and public sector organizations alike need solutions that combine the best of enterprise content management with technologies that allow them to gain control over their records and compliance management requirements," said Zane. "Through our experience as Optika's business partner it became clear that their ECM product line and in-depth expertise in improving business process efficiencies would enable us to better address the needs of the marketplace."
As a result of the acquisition, STI's extempore software product will be known as Acorde Records Manager. Optika says that the solution, version 3.0 of which is currently available, enables organizations to establish retention periods for business documents (regardless of medium), organize and electronically retain these documents for legally required amounts of time, and, utilizing Microsoft .NET functionality, gives users Web-based access to these documents on demand.
One of the drivers of the acquisition is that Optika and STI have mutual customers utilizing their solutions, including agribusiness corporation J.R. Simplot Company of Boise, Idaho. Commenting on the acquisition, J. Fred Pauls, certified records manager at Simplot, said: "There are a number of synergies which will make the relationship between Optika and Select Technologies work very well. Both the extempore software and Acorde products have performed admirably for us. Combining the two companies and creating a single compliance management suite is an excellent idea."
Noting the spate of acquisitions in the content management space over the past year, Karen Shegda, research director at technology consultancy Gartner, said that benefit of integrating records management with ECM is that it allows information-bearing media (either generated or received by an enterprise) to be managed through its entire lifecycle (i.e., from creation to archival and even final destruction).
Optika's Acorde Records Manager solution, launched in March 2003, was an OEM version of STI's extempore software technology and was a result of a partnership between the two companies formed in September 2002.
Headquartered in Boise, Idaho, STI's current client base includes Bayer Pharmaceuticals, Weyerhauser, Georgia-Pacific and General Electric.
Under the terms of the agreement, Optika will pay approximately $1.425 million for privately held STI, consisting of cash and 500,000 shares of Optika Common Stock. Additionally, the selling shareholders have the ability to earn up to an additional $600,000 over the next three years, based on attainment of certain revenue targets from the Acorde Records Manager product.
The acquisition closed Thursday and was approved by the boards of directors of both companies.
All STI employees will remain in Boise, and the company will operate as a wholly owned subsidiary of Optika. STI senior management, including President and CEO Del Zane and Vice President and Chief Development Officer Shadra Arneson, will remain with Optika in executive roles, with Zane reporting to Optika CEO Mark Ruport.
"We see a growing market demand for solutions that help companies protect their most critical business documents and records and stay in compliance with new laws and regulations, such as Sarbanes Oxley, FDA and HIPAA," said Ruport. "The addition of the STI products and personnel is a strategic advancement for Optika in the enterprise content management space."
"There is no doubt that private and public sector organizations alike need solutions that combine the best of enterprise content management with technologies that allow them to gain control over their records and compliance management requirements," said Zane. "Through our experience as Optika's business partner it became clear that their ECM product line and in-depth expertise in improving business process efficiencies would enable us to better address the needs of the marketplace."
As a result of the acquisition, STI's extempore software product will be known as Acorde Records Manager. Optika says that the solution, version 3.0 of which is currently available, enables organizations to establish retention periods for business documents (regardless of medium), organize and electronically retain these documents for legally required amounts of time, and, utilizing Microsoft .NET functionality, gives users Web-based access to these documents on demand.
One of the drivers of the acquisition is that Optika and STI have mutual customers utilizing their solutions, including agribusiness corporation J.R. Simplot Company of Boise, Idaho. Commenting on the acquisition, J. Fred Pauls, certified records manager at Simplot, said: "There are a number of synergies which will make the relationship between Optika and Select Technologies work very well. Both the extempore software and Acorde products have performed admirably for us. Combining the two companies and creating a single compliance management suite is an excellent idea."
Noting the spate of acquisitions in the content management space over the past year, Karen Shegda, research director at technology consultancy Gartner, said that benefit of integrating records management with ECM is that it allows information-bearing media (either generated or received by an enterprise) to be managed through its entire lifecycle (i.e., from creation to archival and even final destruction).
