Norwegian software service firm Visma has announced the acquisition of Danish FinTech company Acubiz, in a move to accelerate its growth within the human resources (HR) and payroll services sector.
Integrated into Visma Enterprise’s Human resource management (HRM) in Denmark as an independent brand, Acubiz is one of Scandinavia’s leading suppliers of expense management, with a market share of 20% in Denmark and a growing foothold in emerging markets.
The expense management solution serves users across the region, helping them to optimize their administrative processes related to travel expenses and mileage reimbursement, among others.
According to a statement announcing the purchase deal, there is a strong demand for integrated solutions automating business administration processes in the Danish enterprise market, making the Acubiz a strategic acquisition for Visma as it seeks to simplify and automate complex administrative processes around expense management, approval flows, absence management and mileage for its small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) clients.
Commenting on the deal, Managing Director of Visma Enterprise, Monika Juul Henriksen, said, “Acubiz is a perfect match not only businesswise but also in their culture and DNA. Acubiz wants to be the best — and so do we. Together, we will be even better.”
Henriksen added, “We strive to create simple solutions for complex tasks, and we do see an opportunity to do even better within HR [and] payroll administration when adding Acubiz to our existing My Visma suite.”
Henrik Malling, managing director of Acubiz, said Visma “couldn’t have been a better match” and he sees great potential in the Enterprise segment and the Visma Enterprise value proposition.
“By becoming a part of Visma, we do not only get a shortcut to new customers, markets, segments and partners, we will also benefit from the knowledge and skills within legal, HR, Marketing and Sales,” Malling said, adding that the ability to able to collaborate with “these experts is immensely valuable for us as a relatively small organisation.”
Read more: Norway’s Visma Considers 2023 IPO
The acquisition comes on the heels of recent reports that the firm is targeting a potential 2023 initial public offering (IPO) on Oslo Stock Exchange “if market conditions are favorable,” PYMNTS reported, per Reuters.
See also: Visma, Youredi Partner To Help Small Suppliers Act Big
Back in 2017, the Norwegian Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) company teamed up with platform-as-a-service firm Youredi to enhance SME supply chain management capabilities, particularly managing their supply chains more cost effectively, and improving on their ability to sell to larger corporations.
Related: The Days of Manual Credit Card Reconciliation Processes Are Numbered
And earlier this month, Sam Seaton, CEO of open data platform Moneyhub, spoke to PYMNTS about the “arduous and labor-intensive affair” regarding the financial month-end close process of reconciling credit card payments.
To automate the manual, time-consuming task, the U.K.-based financial management platform recently announced a partnership with expense management software provider Expense Once, which will use Moneyhub’s open banking technology to create a real-time solution that streamlines the process for company cardholders by generating expense reports on their behalf.
Using machine learning and computer vision, additional features such as digital receipts and categorization will be automatically matched to each transaction on behalf of the claimant, “creating a quick, easy and accurate process to reconcile claims and submit the expense reports,” Seaton explained.
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