It has taken less than a year for PROCAD, for decades an important software partner for medium-sized industry in Germany under CEO Volker Wawer, together with the new management and the just acquired keytech Solutions and ACATEC Software, to be sold to the next level of investors from the investors in Baden-Württemberg, LEA Partners, who are supposedly committed to the interests of the location.
Screenshot of the quite young Revalize Homepage
Nobody in Germany’s industry has probably heard of Revalize so far. Now they are acquiring yet another German and a Swiss company at the same time as PROCAD Group. And the press release provides a link to what employment opportunities are available in Jacksonville, Florida.
Of course, the house, which is fairly unknown in this country, is a world leader. In this case, not of engineering software, but of “revenue operations software” – often called RevOps software for short – for manufacturing companies. This type of software is said to offer dynamic pricing and better foresight of expected sales. This is exactly what a manufacturing industry that is faltering in terms of digitalization and consists primarily of small and medium-sized enterprises urgently needs right now.
The fact that no one here knows the name is not only due to the distant location of its headquarters. Revalize was only founded this June. By the way, we no longer talk about takeovers, acquisitions and buyouts of companies. What horrible words! It is now nobly said of the acquired companies that they “join the Revalize solution portfolio”. Well then. What this “joining” has brought to the managing directors and co-owners Gerhard Knoch and Johann Dornbach, who have only been in charge for about a year, we do not know. Even the popping of the champagne corks in Karlsruhe cannot be heard as far as Munich. We can’t wait to find out to whom the newly founded company Revalize will sell the companies it has just taken over.
When PROCAD joined forces with the other two German industrial software companies a few months ago, I still had the feeling that something was moving in the right direction here. Together, they had 250 employees, which made the group about as strong as the second PLM vendor that remained in Germany, CONTACT Software in Bremen. Now it turns out, it was just a small intermediate step to make the whole group more desirable for sales. Germany is now losing its last bastions, piece by piece, in the industrial software sector as well.
This is not a good omen for the digitalization of industry in Germany. We would have such good cards and prerequisites with our competencies in mechatronics, with our strength in the capital goods industry, with our still high share of industry in the overall economy. But software that supports this industry is now in short supply. Perhaps there is some German investor who will step in? Probably not.