HR and accounting software provider, Access has acquired the fundraising and CRM provider thankQ, in a deal that is valued at £2.7m.
This means Access will be able to provide an integrated finance and fundraising CRM (customer relationship management) system. Access has more than 530 non-profit customers using its finance or HR systems and thankQ has 230 customers.
All of thankQ’s staff will be joining Access and its managing director John Bird (pictured) will become head of the thankQ division.
Bird said: “By fully integrating the Access and thankQ solutions, we’ll make a positive impact on the NFP sector by helping our customers improve the way they operate and gain greater efficiencies across their organisation.”
Chris Bayne, chief executive of Access said: “Having worked closely with the not-for-profit sector for many years, we know that there is strong demand for tightly integrated finance and fundraising systems.”
New cloud-based service
Last week Access launched aCloud, an SaaS-based (software as a service) platform that allows its customers to access systems remotely from any device. It is fully integrated with Access’ finance, ERP, HR and payroll solutions and can be integrated with third party solutions. A second tranche of products available on the aCloud platform will be announced in January 2013
The portal part of the platform, which enables users to view invoices and send messages online, is free to customers, although there are charges for other features such as expenses filing and document management. Within 48 hours of its launch 90 per cent of its customers had signed up.
One of the charities using the platform is Hft, a national charity that supports people with learning disabilities. David Winks project manager said the charity was “utilising aCloud collaboration during our implementation of SelectHR to manage collaboration and communication between members of the project team”, and that “the ability to allocate tasks to individuals prevents any actions from falling “through the cracks”.
