Billtrust inks license deal with multibillion-dollar SunGard

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Over the past several years, Billtrust President and CEO Flint Lane continually found his billing solutions customers were overlapping with collections clients of SunGard, a large, private IT company that specializes in financial services.

Over the past several years, Billtrust President and CEO Flint Lane continually found his billing solutions customers were overlapping with collections clients of SunGard, a large, private IT company that specializes in financial services.

“SunGard, a multibillion-dollar business, wound up having a product that they sell to the same type of person we do,” Lane said. “Where they focus on delinquent accounts, we focus on the upfront part, which is billing and cash settlement. But there ends up being a pretty sizable intersect with what we do.”

Capitalizing on the overlap in their clients, Jamesburg-based Billtrust and SunGard announced Tuesday a partnership in which the two companies’ billing and receivables platforms will be connected. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

“It’s a multiphase level of integration,” Lane said, adding that SunGard’s AvantGard Receivables platform, also known as GetPaid, will have Billtrust’s CompleteBilling tools enabled within the collection system.

“We like to be able to integrate with the leading third-party solutions out there — the more things we’re integrated within, the better it is for our customers,” Lane said. “It gets us some nice exposure to a much larger customer base. SunGard’s been around for quite some time, so being integrated into their platform is a big win for us.

“It’s also a win for our customers — our customers are looking to simplify their lives, and they are always faced with dwindling budgets and reduced head counts,” he said. “How can we make our clients more productive? This is right up the alley of productivity gain.”

According to its website, SunGard’s financial systems segment processes more than 10 million transactions a day. The Wayne, Pa., company reports serving 25,000 customers in 70 countries through its four business segments: availability services, financial systems, higher education and public sector.

Lane said the deal between the two companies has been “several years in the making,” and he hopes the partnership will help Billtrust continue its recent history of year-over-year growth of between 40 percent and 50 percent. From 2007 to 2010, Billtrust increased its annual revenue from $6.7 million to $25.1 million.

“We’re growing in New Jersey, we are increasing our work force by 20 percent this year, and we’ll probably add 20 percent next year. This will help with that growth,” Lane said.

Lane hinted in September that his company would be growing through acquisitions and licensing, and added “this is not our first and it will not be our last announcement of integration with another solution, but we’re pretty excited about this one.”