Sage to Buy Retail Management Platform Brightpearl for $300M

The Sage Group, an accounting, financial, human resources (HR) and payroll technology platform for smaller businesses, has purchased cloud-native retail management system Brightpearl, per a Monday (Dec. 20) press release.

Sage already has a 17% minority stake in Brightpearl. With the acquisition, Sage wants to boost growth, make more value proposition for mid-size businesses and expand its digital network.

Brightpearl brings along a software-as-a-service (SaaS)-based retail operating system, which will allow for real-time business insights while also allowing customers to automate their workflows, saving time and money.

According to the release, combining Sage Intaact and Brightpearl with offer a new solution to retailers and wholesalers, putting things together like financial management, inventory planning, sales order management, warehousing, logistics management, purchasing and more.

“Sage’s purpose is to knock down barriers so everyone can thrive,” Sage CEO Steve Hare said in the announcement. “Together, Sage and Brightpearl will remove the barriers that hold back retailers and wholesalers, streamlining their systems and enabling them to focus on growth.”

Brightpearl is expected to bring in $27 million in revenue for the year ending in December 2021. That represents around a 50% growth from the previous year.

The 83% of Brightpearl that Sage doesn’t already own comes out to $299 million, and that will be funded from Sage’s existing cash and available liquidity.

In April, Sage got an update from its preferred payments partner Paya, which came with digital invoicing functions and Cloud EMV acceptance.

Related: Paya Debuts eInvoicing Enhancements for Sage

Dewey Forrester, vice president of Business Development with Sage, said there was a wealth of benefits to the partnership.

“By offering upgraded customer portal and eInvoicing capabilities, as well as advanced support for both card-present and card-not-present transactions, the updates will offer significantly increased productivity for users and build on Paya’s deep integration into our platform,” Forrester said at the time.

Paya has previously given EMV functionality and device support for Sage Intacct, which worked to cut down on compliance complexity and hardware setup. Automation can be used to cut down on days-sales-outstanding.

Paya’s work provides integrated payments through Sage enterprise resource planning (ERP) offerings, according to the companies.