Cloud-based financial planning and reporting technology provider Adaptive Planning has purchased SaaS data visualization tool maker myDials, effectively enhancing the company’s business intelligence capabilities.
According to Gartner, business intelligence, analytics and performance management software is the second-fastest growing sector in the overall enterprise software market, with analytics and BI ranked as the top technology priority for CIOs in 2012. Moreover, Gartner found that data visualization is growing at three times the rate of the overall BI market.
“What myDials does is help bring our primary product to life with visualization,” said Adaptive Planning chief executive John Herr. “We had been partnering with them for over a year and we’ve had lots of customer interest since then. This [purchase] was a case where we thought this was really core functionality we wanted to have. The acquisition allows us to have full ownership. If we built it on our own, it would take some time. We have a lot of confidence this will be a good fit.”
The acquisition of myDials comes on the heels of Adaptive Planning’s recently announced product, Adaptive Discovery, a visual discovery application within the Adaptive Planning suite of corporate performance management solutions that integrates myDial’s technology.
As part of the deal, myDials employees in the U.S. and Australia will join Adaptive Planning. Adaptive Planning will continue to support existing myDials customers and partners, and will invest in combining the two companies’ technologies to deliver cloud-based corporate performance management, data visualization, and business intelligence systems going forward.
In addition to attracting new customers, Herr also noted that the myDials purchase is expected to be of interest to partners, particularly accounting firms looking to enhance their client service offerings.
“Having a tool like this elevates the role of the accountant to be a strategic business advisor and technology enables it,” said Herr. “All of a sudden you can dig deeper and if you are a firm that does [business intelligence work], you will have a competitive advantage. We are all about cloud financial analytics and myDials helps us bring that to life. Half of our new sales have an influence of a partner and we want that to increase. We are continuing to evolve our program for accountants, and the myDials acquisition will certainly richen and broaden capabilities that they could manage for their clients.”
