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Beeline’s Acquisition by New Mountain Capital: Transaction Analysis and Competitive Impacts

08/09/2018 By

Beeline, well known in the contingent workforce and services sector as one of the top two global VMS solution providers, recently announced it is being acquired by New Mountain Capital (NMC), a private equity firm. NMC, which is focused on developing and growing companies in defensive growth industries, is now completing the last formal steps in its acquisition of Beeline from private equity firm GTCR. Spend Matters covered the acquisition announcement and followed up on the news with a subsequent interview of Beeline CEO Doug Leeby, who expressed enthusiasm about the deal and confidence in the new owner.

The acquisition comes at an interesting point in the evolution of the contingent workforce and services (CW/S) software market.  On the one hand, solution buying by enterprises continues to follow a customary pattern — we need a VMS or an MSP/VMS and a supplier-funded model — resulting in a commodified, competitive market. In such an environment, some VMS providers have focused on achieving economies of scale, exploiting solution adjacencies (e.g., SOW) and investing in new technologies (e.g., data analytics, artificial intelligence) to enhance solution value and differentiate their offerings.

At the same time, changing conditions on both demand and supply sides of the labor market (e.g., skill shortages, cost of talent, independent workforce, online platforms) have started to stimulate responses among CW/S intermediaries and software providers. Moreover, the application of state-of-the-art and leading-edge technologies is enabling incumbent and new providers to offer new types of solutions that may (or may not) address emerging business needs in the short term or the long term. In such an environment, having the capacity to invest — and a balanced but agile investment strategy — would appear to be critical to future success.

In this Spend Matters PRO brief, we add context to and take a closer look at the Beeline-NMC deal, which seems promising. We also offer our perspective on what the deal may mean for Beeline and the competitive markets it serves, in both short and long terms.

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