Although the media has been full of ‘records broken on stock exchanges..’, these have all related to the US where NASDAQ, S&P and other indices have all broken into record territory. See New highs. Over here in the UK, things are much more subdued. Indeed, the FTSE 100 is up just 1% YTD and all of that gain came in Aug. The TechMark100 is up 4.5% YTD compared with a 9.7% rise in NASDAQ. NASDAQ might indeed be back to those record dot com days of Apr 2000, but the TechMark100 at 3233 is still way off its 2000 peak of c4300.

This month it was the FTSE Hardware Index which soared – up 14.5%. This was on the back of a massive 49% gain at CSR which received – but rejected – a bid approach from US Microchip Technologies. See FT. Also ARM put on 14.6% on the back of high expectations for the Apple iPhone 6 launch on 9^th Sept. Indeed Apple itself was up 7.5% in Aug/28% YTD as its fortunes rebounded and hopes of a long awaited ‘new product genre’ soared. Indeed at $102.5 (or $717.5 before the 7:1 split) that was way ahead of its Sept 2012 peak of $703.

The FTSE SCS Index (which most closely tracks the UK SITS shares we follow) put on3.6% in Aug but is still down 0.2% YTD.

Unfortunately Digital Barriers had another torrid month – falling 16% (down 49% YTD) on yet another warning. This time as its business in Africa was affected by the Ebola epidemic. See – Break even continues to elude Digital Barriers. Despite Confident Quindell raises profit guidanceQuindell  shares were down another 14% making 40% YTD. Serco can do without more bad news. Although they refuted reports of the over-charging at the NHS, Serco shares fell 14% in Aug or 40% YTD. Despite claiming success with their fundraising, Outsourcery was down another 13% in Aug (making a massive 83% YTD). We took it all with a pinch of salt as you can read for yourself!

TeleCity lost 6.8% as CEO Mike Tobin announced his departure. They are still showing a 2.1% gain YTD though.

At the other end of the scale, Enables IT put on 65%. But it was more of a recovery as they are still down 52% YTD. Bit like Blur which managed a 25% rise in August but are still down 86% YTD. See Blur and the small print. EG Solutions put on 31% on an upbeat trading announcement – see EG Solutions regains its confidence -and are back to where they started the year.

Globally there was very little of magnitude to note. Salesforce managed a 8.9% rise in Aug but, at a 7.1% gain YTD has not kept pace with NASDDAQ. See Salesforce – so many expectations to meet. I’m just waiting for the profits… Both Sopra (down 10.6% and Steria  (down 4.2% but up 27% YTD) lost a little as their marriage was finally consummated. See Sopra Steria entente cordiale passes muster?.

Must admit to increased nervousness about the outlook. Too many ‘geopolitical’ threats at the moment. Even in the UK, there is the Scottish referendum (far from a done deal for the ‘NOs), interest rate rises sooner than many expect and an increased UKIP threat to a Conservative win at next May’s General Election. The old adage ‘Sell in May , don’t come back ‘til St Leger’s day’ has not been a wise maxim this year. But we are very unsure what will happen after those horses are back in their winter stables.

Castleton Technology plc (was Redstone plc) is to sell the trade and certain assets of its subsidiary Maxima Information Group to PDMS UK Ltd for a total cash consideration of £752k. PDMS is a software development company based on the Isle of Man

Maxima’s sole trading division (following the sale of QAD in March 2014) is ABS, a software business focused on supporting a range of its own developed and proprietary ERP, reservation, ticketing and payroll software products. In FY14, Maxima (excluding QAD) generated £1.5m in revenue and a profit before tax of £305k.

Castleton has already collected c£200k in annual maintenance revenues in the current year so the enterprise value of its exit will actually be pushing £1m. The disposal marks the completion of Castleton’s restructuring, and we now expect to see the acquisitions start to happen as it looks to build its presence as a managed services provider to the public and not for profit sectors.

Castleton is the latest ‘buy and build’ vehicle of technology entrepreneur, Ian Smith (see Smith begins next ‘buy and build’ at Castleton). It was created from the shell of Redstone after the demerger of Redcentric in 2013. See the latest on Redcentric’s progress here: Redcentric starts the year with confidence.

Accenture, BT, CSC, General Dynamics Information Technology and Vodafone have been selected to provide managed email services for public sector organisations. The two year framework will be used by Health and Social Care Information Commission (HSCIC) straightaway as a replacement for NHSmail and shortly by Ministry of Justice (MoJ) for its Criminal Justice Secure Mail (CJSM) service. Crown Commercial Service (CCS) envisages the framework will provide public sector bodies with ‘a single compliant route to market’ in a ‘multi-tenant / shared service environment’.

The framework is divided into lots depending upon the volume of mailboxes being procured (Lot 1: up to 9,999 mailboxes, Lot 2: between 10,000 and 99,999 mailboxes and Lot 3: large volume email 100,000+ mailboxes) with all suppliers selected on to each lot.

In terms of scope customers must buy one or core components (Secure eMail, Secure eMail Gateway, Mobile Device Management, White Pages and Directory Service, Business Partner Secure eMail and eMail Router) with common components (Access, Administration, On boarding and Off boarding, Information Security; Service Management (including Service Desk), Customer Service, Data Retention, Compliance and Reporting) setting out how the core components are delivered.

In addition to core components, there are supplementary components (such as Instant Messaging and Collaboration, Remote Storage and Insecure eMail) which CCS expects to vary by supplier but are not available to be purchased in isolation.

We highlighted in  UK Public Sector SITS Suppliers: Cyber Security Offerings the mixed supplier landscape in Cyber; including SME providers of secure data exchange such as 4Secure, Accellion, Cryptshare3, Deep Secure, Egress Software, Fox IT, IPSWITCH and Nexor. The Managed eMail framework should provide opportunities for these SMEs to be involved. Tony Pepper, CEO, Egress Software Technologies commenting “In order to meet the framework’s stringent requirements, the chosen suppliers have had to work closely with the wider industry in order to integrate innovative technologies and solutions in to their existing platforms”. 

Observant UKHotViews readers may have already noticed that we’ve made it even easier for you to share articles on social media. You can now share UKHotViews articles via Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn simply by clicking the relevant icons, which appear below the article in both the email and web versions of UKHotViews. You can also email individual articles to friends or colleagues from the web version of UKHotViews at the click of an envelope-shaped button.

And don’t forget that you can Comment on articles from the webpage too – the analyst team is keen to hear your views so don’t be shy! 

Interim results from AIM-listed Escher, reported here, showed the company’s dependence on its major customers for its outsourced, point of service software supporting the postal industry.

However, Escher is expanding its revenue base by offering a wide range of in-store services to the general retail market, in the shape of mobile wallets, loyalty and coupon systems, payments and iBeacon technologies. Its mobile wallet solutions have been accepted by 60, generally small, retailers throughout Ireland and the UK, the latest being Insomnia Coffee, an Irish chain of coffee shops.

All well and good, as Escher can leverage the technology and skills developed in serving postal clients as they diversify into general retail.

However, a word of caution is necessary for all those engaged in mobile wallets and the like.

The market for m-commerce is reaching an inflexion point. The acceptance of HCE will drive greater use of smartphones as payment devices (as seen in BBVA’s recent Spanish experience) and (probably) accelerated by the inclusion of payments capability in Apple’s iPhone6. The market is getting serious and the big guys are taking it more seriously; Apple will join Amazon, Google and Paypal as significant competitors, IBM (through its link with Monitise, see here) is more engaged. Banks are also more active in the m-commerce land grab. Retailers will be increasingly convinced to buy from one of the big guys rather than take a risk on one of the host of smaller mPOS providers. Competition for these smaller guys is about to get a lot tougher.

To succeed, smaller suppliers must secure their position in the value chain, with differentiated offerings in either technology or customer niche. Esher’s success in the postal systems market, while not necessarily sexy, will probably be its major asset.

Despite rejecting any concerns with its ‘connected car’ joint venture with the RAC last month (see Quindell rebuffs concerns over RAC deal), Quindell is now backtracking, buying out the RAC just five months in to the contract (see Quindell forms connected car JV with RAC).

Quindell said it is no longer seen as ‘the best use of capital for either party to finance a free telematics roll out to consumers as initially planned’. Consequently, it will now buy out the RAC’s 49% stake in Connected Car Solutions (CCS) increasing its stake to 100%. This won’t however affect the existing five-year telematics outsourcing contract between the RAC and Quindell (see here).

It will mean a net cost to Quindell of £3.5m over the next 18 months (gross cost £18.5m), even after the RAC pays Quindell £15m to exit the JV. It also means CCS will have lower turnover than expected, but improved cash flow of c£10m and c£20m in 2014 and 2015, due to capex costs being eliminated for the RAC box roll-out.

Out of this the RAC gets back its brand licence RAC Connected Car Solutions, as well as customers and telematics sales pipeline of c.7,500 connections plus a pipeline primarily in the fleet sector.

We believe there would have been significant reputational risks to the RAC on this JV with Quindell around unproven telematics technology services. Withdrawing now creates a clear line of accountability on the original contract between RAC as the customer and Quindell bearing the risk as the outsourcing supplier. It also frees up the RAC to ‘go-it-alone’ should it wish to brand its own telematics offerings into the market.

It also proves that Quindell’s ambitious land grab in the emerging telematics BPS market is not going to be all plain sailing. Other competitors are also soon to be knocking at the door.

I am sure he does it with the best of intentions and maybe it plays better with his employee audience than with ‘outsiders’. But I do find the musings of new Infosys CEO Dr Vishal Sikka a little bit cerebral for a down-to-earth lad like me.

Sikka’s lastest post on the Infosys website (known in the company vernacular as ‘murmurations’) was originally published on his own blog under the banner ‘Timelessness – Musings on constants and other variants’, perhaps giving a clue as to where your head needs to be at if you want to tune in to his thought channel.

In it, Sikka waxes lyrical over Infosys’ training campus in Mysore: “Its beauty, its attention to detail, its magnitude, and its sheer awesomeness, is something to behold” and the “13,000 … fired up, screaming, trainees” who were his audience.

Towards the end of the post Sikka alludes to Infosys’ ‘second third’ – as in the second 33 years of the company’s first century (Infosys was founded 33 years ago) and strikes a parallel between Infosys’ journey and that of India, which is 67 years since independence (i.e. now entering its ‘third third’ I guess).

There were lots more ‘musings’ in between.

Infosys reports its Q2 results on October 10th, and the investor call has been extended to allow Sikka and his new leadership team to discuss  and answer questions on ‘any changes in the strategy of the company going forward, future path, direction etc’ (see Sikka sets two year target to restart Infosys’ growth). I am sure that Sikka will find he is playing to quite a different ‘gallery’ than his troops in India.

A UK alliance between UNIT4 and online recruitment specialist Hireserve, under which UNIT4 will resell Hireserve’s iCams software branded as UNIT4 Recruitment, brings further cloud capability to the business software provider whose SaaS business is consistently outstripping on premise sales (see UNIT4: pumping up R&D, building on cloud momentum). It is also another move to raise the overall profile of the company who has emerged as a worthy challenger to the tier 1 providers.

During a recent briefing with CEO Jose Durate when he discussed major new R&D investment, he stressed that the company would continue to grow by development, acquisition and partnership and this alliance certainly fits the bill. It also fills a high profile hole in the UNIT4 portfolio. SaaS is working into the ERP environment from the edges and erecruitment is a prime area that can bring high volume subscriptions in its own right and act as a proof point for broader cloud ERP (which is why SAP and Oracle previously acquired in this space). Cloud ERP adoption across the market needs every encouragement. UNIT4 and Hireserve already have 23 joint customers, something that bodes well for the alliance. 

As for UNIT4, its broadened cloud capability - which will be integrated into the Agresso line including the HR product – will give prospects another reason to consider it as an alternative to SAP and Oracle. If it added to its analytics capabilities across the portfolio it would increase the threat level even further – we would be very surprised if predictive analytics investments were not high on the UNIT4 agenda. 

Last night Compuware agreed to be taken private by PE firm Thoma Bravo in a $2.5b deal.

Compuware is one of the oldest software firms still around. It was founded in 1973, apparently on the back of a $9000 tax rebate. Just love their original mission statement – “We will help people do things with computers”.  After an IPO in 1992, they really came to the fore in the run up to Y2K where their debugging software – in particular for IBM mainframes - was in great demand; hitting revenues of c$2.2b. Built from multiple acquisitions, Compuware is the epitome of the enterprise software company – virtually unknown by consumers. Perhaps that was its downfall as revenues last year at just over $1b were under half its peak.

Talking of slogans, in 2008 Compuware updated that original mission statement to ‘We make IT rock around the world’. Sounds about as dated now as Y2K bugs. They should have stuck with the 'Status Quo'...

Investment in financial technology (‘fintech’) startups led VC funding growth in the UK and Ireland, according to latest data from corporate finance firm, Ascendant.

Fintech was by far the largest component of internet/mobile VC investment, accounting for 22 deals totalling just under £300m of investment since the beginning of the year. Internet/mobile services companies across all sectors attracted £520m in VC funding in H1, twice the level of investment in the whole of 2013.

In Q2 alone, £320m was invested in deals across all sectors, bringing the year to date total to £856m. This represents 93% of all funds invested throughout 2013.

Eligible TechMarketView subscription service clients will be able to see where the money went by reading our regular quarterly analysis of the UK VC software & IT services scene in the next edition of IndustryViews Venture Capital.

Kofax is in the midst of a turbulent transitional period. After warning on FY14 revenue and profits in July (see here), it is now dispensing with CFO Jamie Arnold, making another bolt-on acquisition of German electronic signature software company Softpro, and proposing to de-list from the London Stock Exchange.

These three announcements are important turning points for a number of reasons. Kofax needs to convince that the Q4 slippage in software licences was a ‘one-off’ and not symptomatic of an underlying problem in the business. Indeed CE Reynolds Bish said this ‘was an anomaly as opposed to the beginning of unpredictable and volatile quarterly results’. Time will tell.

The continuation of its recent M&A spree (see here and here) shows Kofax needs to keep innovating to remain competitive in the rapidly evolving business process automation (BPA) market. As an incumbent capture provider, Kofax is in a good position to become a key player in BPA, but it needs to offer value-added products that can enhance the overall customer experience, while reducing costs. Acquisitions are the quickest way to achieve this.

Kofax is paying $34.7m in cash for Softpro, or 2.6x its FY13 revenue of $13.3m (adjusted EBITDA profits $1m). Kofax gets its hands on a business in a hot area of the market, providing click-to-sign and physical signature verification for mobile devices, either on premise or via the cloud. It apparently processes 200m+ electronic signatures annually for big name customers like Citibank, JP Morgan Chase and Wells Fargo.

Lastly, Kofax’s LSE de-listing has been on the cards for some time. From March 31, 2015, it intends to become solely traded on Nasdaq, subject to shareholder approval. This should be a formality though since 78% of Kofax’s shares are held by US shareholders. This decision may prove short-sighted however, since it is in the UK where were are seeing a lot of the innovation around BPA technology and services (see Business process automation – a brave new world for BPS providers).

Good interim figures from AIM-listed SQS, the Cologne-headquartered supplier of software testing and quality management services, were boosted by the inclusion of Thinksoft, a majority stake in which was acquired in November 2013.

Overall revenues increased by 20% to €129m (£108m) with Thinksoft (now SQS India BFSI) contributing €12m. Non-Thinksoft revenues advanced by 9%, ahead of the market average (source Nelson Hall). Gross profit rose by 29% with gross margins lifting to 33.1% from 30.8% in H1 2013. The company experienced a small operating cash outflow of £2.6m.

The transformation of SQS should continue to be evident in the group’s financial results. Management strategy is shifting the business to larger managed services contracts and the momentum is illustrated by the €70m of orders in H1, up 43%, see here. Thinksoft has provided additional resources and credibility in Financial Services, where demand is growing as companies upgrade complex legacy systems, as well as in the US.

Managed Services contracts should provide more predictable revenue, deeper customer relationships and better opportunity to exploit SQS’s IP and experience. This shift now means that offshore/nearshore staff total 62% of billable headcount (up from 44% in 2013). SQS is also emphasising its ability to add value, exploring innovative (and riskier?) business models which are more dependent on outcomes. Management targets 50% of revenues from managed services by end 2015. Elsewhere, SQS management is being more selective in the choice of contracts to boost margin.

To fulfil its ambitious strategy, the top team will have to maintain quality and consistency as it builds in a competitive market. It will also take time to adjust to the new financial and operational requirements of the enlarged business and the demands of managed services customers.

Nevertheless, we share management’s confidence about progress.

Business process services (BPS) provider Equiniti is becoming increasingly acquisitive under CEO Guy Wakeley, who joined from property group Morrison in January.

Following the April purchase of Pancredit Systems (see here), Equiniti is now making two quite different acquisitions - customer complaints and feedback specialist Invigia Ltd, and the Corporate Dealing Services business of investment bank JP Morgan (JPM CDS). Terms weren't disclosed.

The deals show a new direction of travel for Equiniti under Wakeley, both in terms of expanding its interests in existing markets like share fund administration (JPM CDS), and perhaps more significantly, embracing newer digital technologies that can deliver value-added services for customers in areas around customer complaints and social media (Invigia).

Invigia made revenue of £7.7m in FY13 (up 13% yoy) and an operating margin of 25% (vs 20%). So it appears a business in good health. The company operates across three distinct divisions: Charter UK, which provides an enterprise complaints management system called Charter Continuum, in use by customer-facing brands like Lloyds Banking Group; Charter Systems, which provides ‘source and covert authorities management software’ to the Police and other law enforcement agencies.

The third division, mycustomerfeedback.com is the most interesting to us. It provides a cloud-based service for SMEs to help manage customer complaints and responses made via social media and message boards. It also provides additional services around customer insight, customer retention and reputation protection. Equiniti’s aim is to provide ‘robust end-to-end remediation and customer service propositions’ for clients. We think this is sensible since it should help deliver a better overall customer experience for clients - an increasingly important strategy for BPS providers as they target the ‘digital’ space.

The other purchase was much more in the ‘traditional’ Equiniti space. It acquired JPM CDS for its Investment Services division, taking on share dealing responsibility for JPM CDS’ corporate broking clients. This is Equiniti’s bread-and-butter. As one of the UK’s largest share dealing services providers, alongside Capita and Computershare, Equiniti manages around half of the FTSE 100.

US-based FIS, already one of the largest providers of banking and payments solutions, has announced a deal to acquire Clear2Pay. FIS is to pay €375m for this the Brussels-based provider of Payments Hubs and Solutions, with its 1200 employees and operations in 15 countries. Clear2Pay was owned by Aquiline Capital Partners and the management.

FIS was already one of the Top-20 suppliers to the UK Financial Services industry and this deal will push the company further up the rankings. The acquisition of Clear2Pay will give the US company additional capability in NFC (contactless) payments and in payments cards, where the US, despite being the largest market, has tended to lag behind. Clear2Pay also has considerable expertise in testing, implementation and managing European standards which will be useful for FIS as it builds its operations in the UK and Europe. FIS will also be looking to leverage these capabilities into its US customer base.

This deal is further clear evidence of the current excitement in the payments world. As the use of mobile technology takes off, suppliers of payments and banking solutions will have to have a much more comprehensive arsenal in order to meet customer requirements. (See our report on Finding the Winners in UK payments here). The larger customers who are themselves getting more obsessed with mobile will increasingly want suppliers to offer end-to-end solutions. As we wrote in mPOS providers – wake up and smell the coffee, the competition facing smaller providers of point solutions is getting tougher and the big players are taking the payments market very seriously.

This deal looks like a very good move to further strengthen FIS’s competitive position and we would look for additional consolidation in the wider payments sector over the coming months.

The front page of the FT shouts FTSE100 hits 14-year high. At least The Times is a bit more accurate with Footsie flirts with 14 year high. The actualite is that the FTSE100 closed at 6874 yesterday which is indeed the highest this millennium but is still a few points off its all-time closing high of 6930 achieved on 31^st Dec 1999.

I’ve written recently of the highs achieved in the leading indices in the US – and indeed in the Apple share price. See New highs. But it is worth looking at how the UK SITS stocks have done in the same period.

The FTSE SCS Index closed 1999 at 4303. Indeed it went on to further highs in March 2000 but fell like a stone as the dot.com (and Y2K) bubbles burst. It wasn’t just a sudden burst. This was a deflation which went on for over three years. By mid 2003, the FTSE SCS Index had lost over 90% of its 31^st Dec 99 value.

In 2003 it started a slow recovery which by 2007 had seen a 70%+ rise from its nadir. But then the financial crisis of 2007 saw it – like all other sectors – collapse again.

Since 2009, however, the FTSE SCS Index is up some 250%. This was helped along the way with some pretty impressive gains when many of its largest constituents – Autonomy, Misys, Logica etc – were acquired. The largest constituent of the FTSE SCS index at the moment is Sage.

So here we are in Sept 2014 and, although the FTSE100 might be back close to where it was as we all sang Auld Lang Syne at our Millennium New Years Eve Party, you would still be showing a 70% loss on your FTSE SCS Index Tracker Fund. Indeed, Sage closed out 1999 at 756p – yesterday they closed at 401p; down nearly 50%. Worth repeating that Sage has increased their EPS every year since. So whoever said that investing in tech for the long term might really want to examine their investment policies!

And the best bet? Looking through the list of shares I covered in Dec 1999, most – from Admiral at one end to XKO at the other – are no longer around. The one ‘standout’ is Capita. Capita closed 1999 on 376p and is some 225% higher (at 1223p) today. The only ‘problem’ is that Capita is not in the FTSE SCS Index preferring, as ever, not to be classified as an IT company (even though it is one of the the largest suppliers of IT services to the UK market)

On September 18^th, Scotland, in the Scottish Referendum, will make a decision which will have a profound effect on the future of the whole United Kingdom. Recent polls have revealed that the potential for Alex Salmond, First Minister of Scotland, to win the right to Scottish Independence is greater than we had perhaps assumed. A YouGov poll this week reveals that the ‘No’ camp is now just six points ahead of the ‘Yes’ campaign; excluding ‘don’t knows’, 53% of those questions planned to vote no and 47% planned to vote ‘Yes’.

Although a win for the “Yes” campaign could result in a flood of opportunities for some UK SITS suppliers, recent analysis by TechMarketView Research Directors, Peter Roe and Georgina O’Toole, predicts that it could also result in several years of turmoil, uncertainty and politicking that would be harmful to all.

In ‘Scottish & UK Public Sector: Impact of independence’, Georgina O’Toole, Research Director for TechMarketView’s PublicSectorViews’ Research considers the potential impact on both the Scottish Public Sector market as well as the broader UK public sector market. What opportunities (and indeed threats) would Scottish Independence offer to UK SITS suppliers in the short, medium and long-term both north and south of the border?

Meanwhile, in ‘The independence debate: Thoughts on the financial services sector’, Peter Roe, TechMarketViews’ FinancialServicesViews’ Research Director, contemplates the impact on the economy, and the financial services sector in particular, should Scotland decide to try and go its own way.

TechMarketView subscribers can download the analysis now. If you are not yet a subscriber please contact Deb Seth to find out more.

Mobility and the “always on” mentality have become the new normal, both in our workplaces, and in our day-to-day lives. For many organisations it’s still a daunting prospect, one that will involve a significant amount of investment and have a major effect on the way they operate. It isn’t just another enterprise technology trend, it’s a radical transformation of where, when, and how we work.

Mobilising the Enterprise can have significant benefits:

• Reduce costs
• Increase agility
• Enhance collaboration
• Improve productivity

To date, the adoption of mobility in most organisations has been an incremental process, with each part of the business deploying point solutions to meet their particular needs. But many organisations are now starting to realise that a structured, enterprise-wide aligned approach is needed to get maximum value from their investment, to engage stakeholders and manage change.

In this guide from Fujitsu, we aim to help you

• understand the challenges and the benefits
• how it can impact different departments and job functions
• how to build the business case
• how to implement change and
• selecting the right solution

Sponsored Post provided by Fujitsu. All text, links and images are their own. For information on placing a Sponsored Post with TechMarketView contact hmcteer@techmarketview.com

UK business process services market leader Capita is acquiring Bradford-based legal software provider Eclipse Legal Systems - marking its second acquisition in the sector after Optima Legal Services last year (see Capita moves into legal sector with Optima buy).

Capita is paying an undisclosed amount for Eclipse, which employs 150 people. In FY13, the company made revenue of £9.3m (up 12% yoy) and an operating margin of 25% (vs 18% the previous year). So it appears to be a healthy business. Customers include some c20,000 legal professionals in organisations such as Eversheds Solicitors, Co-operative Legal Services, Carillion, and QualitySolicitors.

Eclipse’s core product is a case management system called Proclaim, which integrates file management, document management, workflow, reporting, accounting, time recording, task and diary functions into one desktop tool. It can be web-enabled to allow clients and referrers to securely view their live case files online. It also has a new mobile self-service version called TouchPoint that provides ‘a device-independent, interactive experience’ that uses real time data from the core Proclaim suite, to assist users in managing contacts, targeted cross-selling, through to visual KPI presentation and dynamic report commissioning.

BPS providers are increasingly keen to invest in digital mobile platforms, in addition to the core administration systems, in order to enhance the end user experience – in this case the solicitors themselves and their own customers. In theory, a better user experience should drive increased demand for services. If Capita gets it right, there should be new cross-selling opportunities for its legal services business, as well as its legal process outsourcing operations, which help drive out the cost of administering legal services for law firms like Pinsent Masons.

EMIS Group, the provider connected healthcare software and services, published impressive results for the six months ended 30 June 2014.

Contributing to the 41% growth in Group Revenues (£66.4m compared with 2013 H1: £47.1m) were the acquisitions of Ascribe and Digital Healthcare (see here) and 10% organic growth. Demonstrating the stickiness of their platforms is the £50m in recurring revenues up from £36m in 2013 H1. Indeed 78% of EMIS’s English GP practices have used an EMIS system for over 10 years. ‘Adjusted’ operating profit held steady at £12.9m (2013 H1: £12.1m).

The company continues to roll-out of EMIS Web for GPs in England in accordance with the agreed GP Systems of Choice (GPSoC) timetable. At the period end, there were 3,751 live EMIS Web GP practices in England and Wales up from 3,327 at 31 December 2013.

The Group’s community pharmacy software, ProScript, grew its user base and market share. Today, EMIS provides healthcare IT, software, and services to 36% of UK high street pharmacies.

Patient.co.uk, the Group’s online environment acts as a gateway for transactional healthcare services. Mobile versions of the site are now available along with patient-focussed Apps.

We have just spoken to EMIS CEO Chris Spencer who told us that the next chapter in delivering connected healthcare will be for the company to integrate its platforms around the treatment of particular conditions such as diabetes and asthma. He sees growth opportunities in primary, CCMH and secondary markets and in preparing for post National Programme re-letting opportunity in primary care in 2015, specifically contracts that were previously subcontracted by the system integrators.

We think the key challenge for EMIS will be prioritising the opportunities for their platforms across the NHS.

European TMT deal flow saw the usual seasonal decline in August in terms of both the number and combined value of transactions, according to latest data from corporate finance firm Regent Partners. The drop was more dramatic than usual, following the record level of deals in July. Valuation multiples declined with the aggregate Price/Sales multiple at 1.1x and the Price/EBITDA multiple down for the second successive month at 7.1x.

There was a smattering of M&A activity in the UK software and IT services sector last month, including a foray by Civica in the Land of Oz (see Civica UK ‘Inspired’ by Australian software acquisition), some Derby/Reading managed services action between two unknowns (to us anyway – see Node4 acquires LETN), more ‘buy-and-build’ activity at Daily Internet (see here), a table-turning UK-buys-US deal (see UK Amris ‘recruits’ US Zao), and Scotland’s brave Craneware proving again that there’s more to be found north of the border than just oil and haggis (see here).

As ever, eligible TechMarketView subscription service clients can catch up with the UK software and IT services corporate activity scene every quarter in IndustryViews Corporate Activity.