SAGE TO BUY DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT FIRM: The Sage Group will acquire Tampa, Fla.-based Emdeon Practice Services Inc., which sells practice management software and patient data systems to doctors' offices. Sage will pay about $567 million in cash to EPS's parent company, Emdeon Corp., and plans to close the deal this month. For the 2005 fiscal year, EPS had revenues of approximately $300 million and about 20,000 mostly small and midsized customers.EPS software is used in administrative and financial processes - such as the scheduling of appointments and the handling of prescriptions and billing - and has capabilities for the creation and management of electronic health records.
Sage said that it expects the medical software arena to be a growth industry, as more doctors look to automate their practices and there is a higher adoption of electronic health records. The company also expects to be able to take advantage of cross-selling software between existing Sage and EPS customers.
Sage has bought more than a dozen companies since 2003 to tap customers for its accounting, payroll and human resources software. Recently, the company announced that it will buy a controlling interest in Elit Group, a French provider of business management software for the transport and food distribution industries. In February, Sage bought Nashville, Tenn.-based Verus Financial Management Inc., a credit card and check payment-processing firm.
GT'S ROBERTS RE-ELECTED AS CHAIR OF XBRL COMMITTEE: Dan Roberts, national director of assurance innovation at Grant Thornton, has been re-elected chairman of the XBRL-US Steering Committee, which governs XBRL-US, a consortium of 70 organizations working to adopt the Extensible Business Reporting Language as a standard method of business and financial reporting.
Roberts also represents XBRL-US on the XBRL-International Steering Committee, a governing body of the international consortium. XBRL-International includes roughly 450 organizations and 19 national jurisdictions.
Meanwhile, Liv Watson of Edgar-Online was elected vice chair of the XBRL-US Steering Committee
In related news, Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Christopher Cox and American Institute of CPAs president and chief executive Barry Melancon will serve as keynote speakers at the 14th International XBRL Conference & Exhibition, which will take place Dec. 4-6 in Philadelphia.
The AICPA will co-host the event with XBRL-US. The conference producer is XBRL International Inc.
Titled "Interactive Data: The Revolution in Business Reporting," the confab is expected to draw financial analysts, accounting professionals, software developers, financial executives, systems integrators and other stakeholders.
Other featured speakers include: Ian Ball, chief executive of the International Federation of Accountants; Jeffrey J. Diermeier, president and CEO of the CFA Institute; Robert H. Herz, chairman of the Financial Accounting Standards Board; Samuel Mok, chief financial officer of the U.S. Department of Labor; and Sir David Tweedie, chairman of the International Accounting Standards Board.
MICROSOFT RECOGNIZES ALTARA WITH AWARD: Altara, a Basking Ridge, N.J.-based high-volume Microsoft reseller, received a Microsoft Business Solutions Knowledge Excellence Award at the recently held Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference, in Boston.
Award selection criteria were based on outstanding sales performance, exemplary technological expertise in Microsoft products and services, consistently high customer satisfaction ratings, and positive feedback from peers and Microsoft team members.
Tami Reller, corporate vice president of the Microsoft Business Solutions Marketing Group, said that Altara "excels in acquiring knowledge across a variety of solutions and technologies. They regularly invest in training. And they carry an array of certifications across their organization that demonstrates a commitment to measuring and mastering the skills necessary to deploy solutions."
