Quadrate Completes Management Buy-Out and secures investment
10th March 2006 - Quadrate, a leading data management software company and creator of innovative solutions that enable businesses to rapidly migrate data to and from SAP, facilitating efficient data management and reporting, has completed a Management Buy-Out. Funding was raised from a2e Venture Catalysts, who led the investment round, The Capital Fund, a £50 million venture capital fund that invests in fast-growth companies in Greater London, and the company’s management team. Quadrate will use the funding to expand its sales, operations, develop additional technology and make further investment in its US offices.
Founded in 2001 by Philippe Jardin, now Chief Technical Officer, Quadrate produces user-friendly software tools that enable companies to use SAP R/3 business applications software more effectively, in a range of areas from production and distribution to finance, HR management and sales and marketing. The company has developed two unique products for SAP R/3, known as ERP², a powerful tool that rapidly loads data from spreadsheets and databases, and Qubed, a data extraction and reporting tool that allows users to run complex queries and generate reports in a matter of minutes.
During the last five years, Quadrate’s extensive client list has grown substantially and includes over 100 blue chip customers in Europe and the US. Household names such as, Unipart Group, Siemens, Rolls-Royce, Airbus, Apple, Vodafone Ireland, Unilever and Centrica are all users of Quadrate’s innovative technology.
David Chisem, Chief Executive of Quadrate, said: “Our customers use our software solutions to manage and analyse data for hundreds of thousands of transactions every week. End-users range from highly-skilled IT staff to finance managers, who may want to make journal entries, generate reports or run payroll functions; or perhaps HR personnel, who need to add new employee details, update pension records or calculate vacation entitlements. Our products can be delivered by 9:00 am, installed by 9:15 am, and the users can be trained and productive by 11:00 am. We empower end-users to manage their own data, freeing-up IT staff to concentrate on system critical tasks.”
The estimated cost of creating one standard SAP report or data extraction programme can be up to £20,000 and many of Quadrate’s customers have generated substantial cost savings from their use of the company’s products.
Unipart, one of Europe’s leading logistics companies, has up to 20,000 new transactions on its systems every week along with frequently changing data entry requirements. The firm used ERP² to quickly and accurately upload data into SAP, significantly reducing the time spent on data entry and eliminating manual errors. Daewoo Electronics used ERP² to transfer data into their new SAP system reducing their project implementation period by one month and generating cost savings of ZAR 1 million.
As well as enhancing its existing products, Quadrate is currently developing several new products, including the shortly to be released Quadrate Data Integration Suite, that will enable organizations to integrate SAP systems with any other systems that they may be running.
David Chisem commented on the company’s future plans and the fundraising process: “We aim to be recognised as the leader and innovator in SAP data management software, and the funding secured from a2e Venture Catalysts and The Capital Fund will enable us to rapidly expand our operations in Europe and the US. Will Rawkins from a2e and Mike Kennedy from The Capital Fund also bring tremendous business acumen to the Quadrate team; additionally, we are delighted that the Fund has nominated Peter Osborn, a software industry veteran, to join Quadrate as a non-executive director.”
Michael Kennedy, Investment Manager at The Capital Fund, said: “Quadrate has created a unique technology and developed user-friendly products that provide end-users with the ability to perform tasks normally left to highly-skilled IT staff. The company has attracted an impressive blue chip customer base, which is using Quadrate solutions to manage their operations more effectively. We are pleased to support the management team in their plans to grow the company.”