Certify Merges With Chrome River In $1B Deal

Certify and Chrome River Technologies, two leading travel, expense and invoice management software companies, have announced a $1 billion merger.

In a press release, the two companies said the combined entity will offer a suite of products for monitoring, managing and analyzing corporate spending. Under the terms of the deal, K1 Investment Management will own a majority stake in the combined business. Existing shareholders, including both companies’ founders and Bain Capital Ventures, will have minority stakes in the new company.

After the close of the merger, the companies will operate independently with separate management teams. They will continue to support the existing products and work together to invest in machine learning, artificial intelligence, analytics and reporting to provide customers with enhanced travel, expense and invoice management capabilities.

Combined, the companies will have more than 11,000 customers across more than 100 countries, with solutions available in more than 60 languages. They will also have integration for all ERP systems, including those offered by SAP, Oracle, NetSuite, Sage Intacct, Microsoft Dynamics, PeopleSoft, JD Edwards and QuickBooks, they said in the press release.

“By bringing together Chrome River’s strengths in large enterprise and Certify’s strengths in mid-market and SMB, organizations of all sizes have the choice of technology suited to their specific requirements, rather than being forced to use a single product,” said Bob Neveu, CEO and co-founder of Certify, in the press release. “With increased financial resources, the combined organization will have an even stronger focus on innovation, ensuring our customers will continue to optimize their travel, expense and invoice automation technology investments.”

The deal won the praise of IDC Analyst Kevin Permenter, who said it will enable the companies to offer a wide range of solutions for companies of all sizes. “The cloud expense management software market is seeing strong growth of 11.4 percent per year, and we expect it to be a $2.7 billion industry by 2022,” he said in the report.