COA Acquires Business Intelligence Solutions
Provider BI Inform

April 2007 – COA (CedarOpenAccounts) has acquired BI Inform, a specialist reseller of Cognos Business Intelligence (BI) software based in Harrogate. The deal will expand COA’s presence in the BI market as one of the top three resellers of Cognos-based solutions in the UK.

One of only five UK Cognos Platinum partners, BI Inform brings to COA a significant number of blue chip customers across its strategic target markets including retail, financial services, travel and public sectors. The deal is COA’s sixth acquisition, forming part of its long-term strategy to provide the most advanced suite of finance, procurement, BI, HR & Payroll software for service sector organisations.

The deal builds on the previous acquisition of the leading BI for HR analytics software vendor, Strata Systems, last year and will further enhance COA’s BI product offering to its growing portfolio of over 1,700 customers.

Mark Thompson, managing director of COA commented, “The acquisition of BI Inform is a natural choice for COA as it extends our existing strategic relationship with Cognos whilst providing our customers with an even broader BI and performance management solutions footprint. Business Intelligence continues to be a fast growth market that has a key role to play in COA’s long term goal to grow the company’s revenues at rates that exceed industry norms. The message I hear repeatedly from customers is, organisations are under increasing pressure to make sense of information hidden within their key data sources in order to improve operational performance. COA’s aim is to provide its customers with industry-leading options and complete packages for analysis, dashboards, performance management, alerts, modeling and self-service”

Ged Simmons, Cognos sales director, UK and Middle East commented, “COA is a valued partner of Cognos and we welcome this move to acquire BI Inform.  We have seen many successful implementations of our technology with BI Inform, such as with L’Oréal. This acquisition will support our channel strategy to extend our BI footprint, with expert advice and services for our customers.”