Precisely acquires Winshuttle for process automation and data management

Data Integrity specialists Precisely have added on Process Automation and Master Data Management with the acquisition of Winshuttle.

Precisely’s data integrity software is used by 12,000 customers in more than 100 countries, including 90 percent of the Fortune 100. It is headquartered in Burlington, MA, and has bases in eight countries. They offer data integration, data quality, data governance, location intelligence, and data enrichment products.

The definitive agreement to acquire Winshuttle follows the completion of Precisely’s acquisition of data governance software provider Infogix earlier this month. Terms for both deals have not been disclosed.

Winshuttle adds deep expertise in high compliance environments

Winshuttle solves common ERP process bottlenecks, predating RPA as a finance automation tool of choice, known for expediting many finance departments’ bulk uploads. Its process automation and master data management software manages, moves, and validates large data volumes spanning systems of record, including SAP ERP. Its strength is in environments requiring high compliance and standards management. Though finance use cases make up around 30% of its business, Supply Chain, Plant Maintenance, HR, and Master Data are also significant contributors.

Winshuttle itself acquired an MDM products company, Enterworks, in 2019 to extend its master data management capabilities, in particular, product information management. This included a platform solution that helps enterprises organize and orchestrate product data, which complimented Winshuttle’s focus on customer data management from SAP. Winshuttle’s deep expertise in SAP environments is another bonus for Precisely – giving the company a foothold from which to extend its portfolio of data management solutions.

Process automation has become essential in delivering decision-grade data

HFS’s OneOffice vision for Data and Decisions sets out the ambition that companies should be able to identify new opportunities from data and interactions which provide anticipatory insights and forecasts (Exhibit 1). Echoing that, Precisely CEO Josh Rogers says process automation has become essential for delivering the quality of data required for businesses to be confident of the decisions they make.

Exhibit 1: Data & Decisions are a critical change agent in the HFS Emerging Tech Platform

Source: HFS Research 2021. Examples are illustrative.

HFS believes data should be your strategy – yet only 5% of C-level executives in our recent Pulse Survey could say their data was ‘good enough’. We found Bad Data is killing your data transformation efforts.

Mature digital businesses demand quality, enriched, and trusted data

For Winshuttle, its master data management capabilities have been complementary to the more downstream process automation focus. Now, with Precisely at the helm, you also bring data integrity, governance, and quality to the table. Ultimately, digital businesses that want to get more mature in working with customers and suppliers will need a combination of all these capabilities – high quality, enriched, and trusted data integrated from your systems of record, being able to feed rules-based and judgment-based process automation, all wrapped around robust security and governance layers.

Operations leaders in functions such as finance are increasingly making these connections between their data management capabilities, and their business performance. As the Head of GBS at a European food manufacturer recently shared in our research, “MDM is all about the creation of a strong data foundation for performance reporting and analytics. We are geared towards organizing, standardizing, and governance. Ensure quality data and moving MD to shared services is important. It is an enabler to our move to the next level of performance.”

The Bottom Line: Two product roadmap boxes ticked for Precisely – keeping pace with unending enterprise demand for data-driven digital operations

Precisely had prioritized both process automation and MDM on its product roadmap, so from that point of view, the deal makes good sense. In particular, the step into process automation couldn’t come soon enough to keep pace with the rapidly scaling and changing data needs of today’s primarily digital customers. Both businesses also share a focus on empowering business and IT to collaborate – reiterating they make a good match – and very much in line with the HFS OneOffice vision of breaking down internal silos.