THURSDAY PRO // A specialist in business ERP, the French group DL Software has multiplied acquisitions over the past few years. Jacques Ollivier, CEO of DL Software, explains the company’s approach to expanding its offer.
After almost twenty years of existence, the DL Software group is now well positioned on the business ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) market. The latter are software for managing and monitoring all of a company’s operational information and services on a daily basis (human resources, accounting, decision support, distribution, supply, etc.). And with the Covid-19 pandemic, they have had the wind in their sails to accelerate the digital transformation of companies.
In this context, DL Software has moved up a gear to strengthen its position in the four verticals in which the group operates: real estate, health, distribution and construction. The French company has made seven acquisitions in 2021 (Sephira, Jestimo, Gercop, Serca Informatique, etc.) and seems just as ambitious for this year. A high pace that represents a real challenge for DL Software. To face it, “we have an extremely decentralized governance”says Jacques Ollivier, CEO of DL Software. “We have solutions that are quite complementary”, he adds. In other words, there are no duplicates within the group which could complicate the integration of certain companies.
“Addressing niche markets”
Taking care not to make the brands disappear, a fairly widespread practice in the context of acquisitions, DL Software has on the contrary made the bet of granting independence to the brands in its portfolio. “DL Software’s strategy is really to address niche markets with a vocabulary and a specificity that means that the customer, the user of our solutions, immediately finds himself in his business universe”, explains Jacques Ollivier. Before adding: “Between distribution, health, construction or real estate, the issues we have to face as a publisher are strictly the same. Simply, we will add business knowledge to each of the ecosystems to address more quickly and target markets more effectively.”
To date, the French group has acquired 19 publishers since 2017, the moment chosen by DL Software to embark on an external growth strategy. To give itself additional means in this phase of acceleration, the company fell last year into the bosom of the American fund TA Associates. With the latter’s support, the group has set itself the goal of tripling its revenues by 2025. At the end of the current year, it should reach 200 million euros in turnover, against 75 million 18 months ago and 50 million three years earlier. DL Software also intends to accelerate its transition to the cloud and expand in Europe. This expansion should give rise to new acquisitions, the hallmark of this rapidly changing group.