Planet Group, Inc. Acquires Workpoint

Acquisition Paves Way for Aggressive Product Development and Marketing

(OMAHA, Neb.) —Planet Group, Inc. ("Planet"), a leading provider of information technology consulting, payment enabling technologies and transaction processing services, today announced the acquisition of Workpoint™ assets from ACI Worldwide ("ACI"). Workpoint is a comprehensive business process management (BPM) solution that coordinates all aspects of a process—people, rules, tasks and systems—into a cohesive whole. Under the acquisition, Workpoint will now operate as its own entity (Workpoint) and will become a subsidiary of Planet. Key development, technical, sales and marketing staff from ACI will transition to Workpoint LLC.

"We are extremely happy to partner with ACI," said Mike Benson, president and chief operating officer, Workpoint LLC. "This partnership allows us to build upon ACI's success in the payments industry while leveraging Planet's customer base—a base that includes Fortune 500 clients looking for industrial-strength business process management."

Under the agreement, ACI will continue to provide its customers with Workpoint's workflow capabilities. "Workpoint is one of the most powerful BPM solutions on the market today," said Mark Vipond, chief operating officer, ACI. "ACI will continue to embed Workpoint into its own payment solutions as well as distribute the product to end users."

"We are pleased to partner with ACI to acquire the rights of Workpoint," said Mike Wofford, president and chief executive officer, Planet Group. "Planet has committed a substantial investment for this product. Workpoint will have the dedicated resources, research and development it needs to clearly stand out in a competitive BPM market. Current and future customers will greatly benefit from this newfound focus."

Workpoint maintains a diverse customer base that spans the globe and covers numerous industries, such as healthcare, manufacturing, mortgage and banking. Under the acquisition, all customers will continue to receive full technical service and support. "We're confident that our customers will be as excited about this announcement as we are," said Benson.

With the latest release of Workpoint, the native Microsoft® version was migrated from the existing COM+ architecture to a completely .NET-managed version. The existing Java™ engine and the .NET release run natively, leveraging the strength of their respective architectures. To date, Workpoint is the only BPM solution to offer two native engines.

For more information, please contact Carie Maguire via or call 402.964.1920.

Oct 12, 2006 - 02:47 PM