This time last year we described IDOX as a ‘UK local government software supplier’. A year on and that no longer seems an appropriate strap line. Although the UK local government market is still important to IDOX, it is spreading its wings into new vertical and geographic markets. The acquisition of engineering document management company McClaren Software began the process last December (see UKHotViews archive) and today’s purchase of Interactive Dialogues takes it a step further.
IDOX is paying €2.2m (£1.9m) for Interactive Dialogues - an e-learning and information solutions business based jointly in Guildford and Belgium that had revenues of €2.4m last fiscal year. IDOX will integrate ID into its Information Solutions business and IDOX CEO Richard Kellett-Clarke plans to boost growth by developing online learning propositions for IDOX’s existing customer base in both the public and private sectors. For a small company, ID has some impressive global clients including Associated British Foods, Hays E.ON and PwC. This suggests that there is demand for its software, which apparently provides ‘on-line corporate communications and compliance services throughout an organisation’. But ID’s clients, global corporates, are a world away from the UK public sector organisations that IDOX is traditionally used to dealing with.
While we can see the attraction of diversifying as the going gets tougher in the UK public sector market, there’s a risk that IDOX gets distracted by these new markets and its core business, its ‘knitting’, suffers. Indeed, it’s increasingly tricky to figure out what that ‘knitting’ is – witness today’s statement which describes the company strategy as ‘delivering quality datasets through robust technology in markets where we can develop a leading proposition’.