Tharstern has agreed a take over by eProductivity Software, the major US supplier of MIS software. The deal will provide Tharstern the wherewithal to expand its coverage beyond its current footprint and to accelerate development of the cloud version of the Tharstern MIS.
There will be no change to Tharstern’s development and service teams and customers will continue to interact with the same account handlers and developers as before says Tharstern managing director Keith McMurtrie.
What has changed is EPS. Until a year ago the company was part of EFI which had previously acquired Printcafe, following a strategy of acquiring smaller MIS providers partly for software expertise and mainly to lock in a customer base for its own suite of MIS applications. During that period, Tharstern along with other UK MIS companies turned down takeover approaches. However, Shuttleworth, Technique and Prism succumbed and found their identity subsumed into EPS.
That is not going to happen to Tharstern. The company has embraced the change with an EPS logo appearing alongside Tharstern in its name and on the website, but the Tharstern name remains prominent. The culture at EPS has changed. It has become much more open and willing to embrace JDF which Tharstern has supported since its outset more than 20 years ago.
CEO Gaby Matsliach says: “We will continue to support Tharstern’s existing customers with the same enthusiasm they have come to expect, and we look forward to providing them with additional value by leveraging EPS’ global presence, industry know how, and rich product portfolio.”
This was a key part of the appeal for Tharstern, says McMurtrie. It has more than 600 customers around the world, the majority in the UK, but also in Australasia, South Africa and the US. However it has been unable to make significant inroads in the US for its technology despite offering strong integration experience, JDF/XJDF connectivity, and numerous integrations with Heidelberg Prinect and others. More recently it has introduced a cloud hosted version of the MIS for label and flexible packaging printers with American Labels among the first customers for this.
The first elements of its Cloud MIS were introduced in 2021, Tharstern having invested in £1.8 million with a further tranche set aside to accelerate development. “Then 12 months ago we decided we needed a decision to find a partner. We had had an MBO in 2014 funded by private equity, but it was not about an exit to realise their investment, it wasn’t a driving force. But for us it was the right thing to do. We are a company from the north of England becoming a market leader. We can see further growth in the US market where we can leverage the market presence of EPS. We needed a partner that is absolutely global with a global platform, someone to share our vision, our passion and our love of MIS.
“Today MIS is pivotal to a print business where customer needs to extend into complementary technology, such as scheduling, fulfilment, shipping and more.”
There are already Tharstern customers that have some elements of the EPS portfolio, using Printflow for example. Other customers are shared through mergers. “I think we will have more joint customers than we realise,” says McMurtrie. “Customers are going to have a bigger toolbox to select from, some of which we would have had to build in.
President of corporate development and strategy at EPS Guy Amos says: “The plan for the new ePS organisation after becoming independent included a worldwide M&A and Tharstern was very high on that list.
“We are a customer facing organisation through and through and we feel this is the best thing for the market.”
McMurtrie would agree. The Tharstern road map will not change he says. Indeed at the company’s recent user event, which McMurtrie was unable to attend because of the need to finalise the deal, customers were given a glimpse of Tharstern’s V8 which is nearing release. It takes the MIS onto 64 bit processors which are being adopted by the likes of Sage and other third-party applications, including the likes of Hubspot, Business Central, Phoenix Labs Tilia and Insoft imposition tools as well as developments on the Tharstern API to improve connectivity to Enfocus Switch to Zaikio’s procurement application and to Carbon Quota.
