Sage's acquisition of Fairsail adds cloud people &

ATLANTA, GA--(Marketwired - Mar 3, 2017) - The Sage Group plc ("Sage"), the UK's largest tech company, today announces an agreement to acquire Fairsail, the UK's fastest growing tech scale-up and the global cloud HCM and people management system for mid-sized businesses. Currently a minority shareholder, the acquisition will see Sage take full ownership of Fairsail, building on the success of a shared product, Sage People, launched last year.

Fairsail is an end-to-end HCM and people solution that addresses workforce management challenges of mid-sized organizations and meets the needs of increasingly mobile and global companies. Fairsail has been successfully deployed within Sage, and is used by leading businesses including Aveva, Armstrong, Paddy Power Betfair, Klarna, Skyscanner, Trainline, Trustpilot and Quest Software. Sage People extends Fairsail's functionality to include payroll, and form part of Sage's golden triangle vision, offering customers a single cloud solution to manage people & payroll, payments and accounting.

Stephen Kelly, CEO, Sage says: "We have been unequivocal about giving growing and ambitious businesses a real-time, frictionless way to manage their entire businesses in the cloud, to create an environment of 'invisible admin'. Building on our successful partnership with Fairsail, this acquisition will accelerate our people offering, ensuring our customers can manage people, their most precious asset, with visibility of the rest of their business. This integrates everything from talent acquisition to people analytics in one online system -- helping businesses in recruiting, engaging and retaining top talent."

The acquisition will build on Sage's existing partnership with Salesforce. Fairsail is the leading HCM and people solution on the Salesforce App Cloud and is one of the top global ISVs in their partner ecosystem.

The combined portfolio provides attractive growth opportunities, particularly through new customer acquisition internationally, and cross-sell to the combined customer base. Fairsail has grown from being a £1m to a £10m ($12.5M) revenue business over the past three years, gaining over 140,000 users in businesses headquartered in over 20 countries during that time.

Adam Hale, CEO, Fairsail says: "Our ambition is to be the global leader for HCM and people solutions in the mid-market. The combination of Fairsail with Sage turbocharges that goal. Sage People provides customers with full visibility of their people, increases HCM productivity and delivers great workforce experiences, improving engagement and enabling people to do their best work."

About Sage Sage is the market and technology leader for integrated accounting, payroll and payment systems, supporting the ambition of entrepreneurs and business builders. Today, business builders measure success in strong relationships, partnerships, and communities. It's why Sage helps drive today's business builders with the most intelligent and flexible cloud-enabled software, support and advice to manage everything from money to people. Daily, more than 13,000 Sage colleagues in 23 countries work with a thriving global community of over 3 million entrepreneurs, business owners, tradespeople, accountants, partners and developers to champion the success of business builders everywhere. And as a FTSE 100 business, we are passionate about doing business the right way, supporting our local communities through the Sage Foundation.

Sage -- the market and technology leader for integrated accounting, payroll and payment systems, powered by the cloud and supporting the ambition of the world's entrepreneurs and business builders. Because when business builders do well, we all do.

For more information, visit www.sage.com