Indianapolis-based productivity software startup TinderBox launched in 2010 before becoming Octiv in 2016. Now, Octiv has been acquired by Conga, a Colorado company specializing in document automation. The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
David Kerr, Octiv’s CEO, says Conga has been around for about 10 years. It started out making software that integrated data from Salesforce (NYSE: [[ticker:CRM]]) into documents. A little over two years ago, Conga was sold to a venture capital firm and began moving more toward intelligent document automation, or software that assists in the creation of electronic documents, often contracts, letters, or other legal correspondence with boilerplate language. Octiv had been working in the same realm after an early focus on sales software.
“We were aware of each other in the market, and we had initial conversations about partnering,” Kerr says.
A few weeks ago, Octiv began outreach for a new round of funding and got back in touch with Conga. From there, Kerr says, the acquisition was set in motion.
Intelligent document automation software helps companies reduce the amount of time it takes to assemble sales, marketing, or legal assets, Kerr says, and allows for internal or external collaboration. In the future, Kerr believes document automation will be powered by artificial intelligence, but today, it’s “more logic- and template-based.”
The intelligence part comes in, for example, when drawing up a contract for entities in two different countries—the software can automatically adjust prices according to the country in which the parties reside. It’s a market with lots of players, but Kerr says that by acquiring Octiv, Conga will enhance its document automation capabilities by adding the ability to create and manage Web-based documents while measuring engagement throughout the documents’ lifecycles.
Conga’s intent, Kerr says, is to retain all of Octiv’s 55 employees and grow the team in Indianapolis. “Octiv’s 300 customers will be supported with accelerated innovation and additional resources” as a result of the acquisition, he adds. Conga, he says, has about 9,000 customers.
As for 2018, Kerr says the plan is to maintain a focus on customer satisfaction, invest in the Indianapolis operation, and an increase in “innovation and product roadmap acceleration.”
