Ideagen’s first set of results following its AIM listing earlier this month (see Ideagen joins AIM) are a pleasing sight with revenue up 78% to £4m, including 38% organic growth, and adjusted profit before tax up 120% to £1.08m for the full year (to April 30 2012). Growth from a low base often results in eye-watering percentage increases but Ideagen, who provides compliance-based information management solutions to businesses in highly regulated industries, has found itself a sweet spot.
Overall growth was aided by its UK and US Proquis acquisitions, which extended compliance capabilities. Other headline activities included a big contact worth $10.6m over 5 years but it also closed deals with the likes of South East Water, Prudential, Raytheon, Fuji, MOD and VA Amarillo.
Ideagen has an odd target market – UK regulated sectors in general plus the US healthcare market - which is not a natural combination and could be costly for business of its size to support. However compliance-based enterprise information management (the capture, storage, retrieval and distribution of unstructured information) is a natural pairing but not one that is widely addressed. Ideagen will be competing with enterprise content management providers however, which will be hard.