Concur Technologies today announced that it is getting further into the corporate travel business with a deal to acquire Outtask Inc., a provider of travel booking tool Cliqbook as well as expense management application Vinnet. Concur—the most profitable pure-play expense reporting company with the largest client base—expects the transaction to close as soon as today for $67 million to $88 million, based on the closing price of Concur common stock. The merged companies will boast a client base of more than 3,000.
Rajeev Singh, Concur president and COO, said the company had been "watching the travel management space for years," with the notion of potentially purchasing an online booking tool. "Travel booking and travel management and expense reporting-it's undeniable there's a link between the two in terms of business process," he said, adding that both online booking and automated expense reporting have room to grow. "Both spaces are still nascent in terms of the number of companies that have adopted a solution and have really gone far with it," Singh said.
While Concur plans eventually to integrate the booking component into its expense platform-as well as migrate Outtask Vinnet clients over to the Concur expense tool-the company pledged support to Outtask's client base. While Singh could not give a specific timetable for customer migration, he said Concur is planning a "long-term support plan," of which details will be available at a later date.
Singh said that Concur would maintain "virtually all of the Outtask employees," as former Outtask CEO, Tom DePasquale will head up the company's online booking and travel management unit as vice president and general manager of Concur for Travel Management Services.
Although an Outtask executive could not be immediately reached, the company's founder DePasquale said in a statement, "In combining market leading technologies, Concur is embracing the opportunity to enable customers to further drive costs out of their businesses. The market will benefit from the best in class travel and expense solutions delivered through on-demand services. The Outtask team is excited to join forces with Concur to deliver excellent service and accelerated innovation to our combined customer base."
The deal comes nearly four years after Concur made its last major purchase, when it took on Kirkland, Wash.-based expense competitor Captura Software for $2 million in cash, plus about 5.2 million Concur shares.
Singh said the transition process "served as a lesson along the way" for integrating a company and its software, and supporting its clients. Singh today said that "the vast majority have migrated over" from Captura software to Concur's platform with strong retention rates.
Although this is Concur's first major purchase in years, the acquisition comes amid a shakeup in the corporate expense management industry. Parsippany, N.J.-based software company CyberShift in late November acquired Toronto-based expense reporting provider Necho Systems for an undisclosed sum, only weeks following Golden Gate Capital's agreement to purchase Geac Computer Corp., the Canada-based software provider and acquirer of expense reporting company Extensity, which closed last week.