Jamie Caffrey
A permanent home for vertical market software companies – and the team behind Harris Computer’s growth outside North America.
“We acquire businesses and run them well.”
Jeff Bender, Executive Chairman
That simple idea has guided Harris for decades.
Harris International Group is the part of Harris Computer responsible for its acquisitions and business operations outside North America. We acquire successful vertical market software companies, support them for the long term and, importantly, keep what made them successful in the first place.
We do not acquire businesses with a plan to sell them again. There is no roll-up thesis and no predetermined exit. When a company joins Harris, the intention is that it has found a permanent home.
From one business to 23
Our international story began in February 2016 with the acquisition of SIV.AG, a German utilities software company. Later that year, iMDsoft, an Israel-based clinical information systems business, joined the group. We have continued to grow ever since.
Ten years later, Harris International Group consists of 23 business units across the United Kingdom, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Israel and India, employing more than 3,000 people and generating over $400 million in annual revenue.
Our strongest areas of experience are Healthcare, Local Government, Public Safety, Schools and Education, and Utilities, alongside a growing number of specialist B2B software businesses. These are often businesses whose technology performs an essential job: supporting a utility provider, helping a police force manage cases or providing clinical information in an intensive care unit.
That kind of mission-critical software is at the heart of what Harris has always done.
A group of companies, not one company
One of the most important things to understand about Harris is how decentralised we are. Businesses that join us keep their identity, their customer relationships and a high degree of operational independence. We are not trying to turn 23 companies into one.
We believe the people closest to a market are usually the people best placed to make decisions about it.
Harris International itself is part of Harris Computer and, ultimately, Constellation Software Inc. (TSX: CSU), a global group of more than 1,000 software companies. That ownership structure allows us to think differently about acquisitions. There is no fund with an expiry date and no requirement to sell a business again after five or seven years. Our model is built around permanent ownership.
What permanent ownership means
For founders, employees and customers, “buy and hold” is more than an investment philosophy. It means continuity.
We are not acquiring a company because we want to rebrand it, integrate it into a single operating model or prepare it for another sale. The brand can stay. The team can stay. The relationships with customers can stay.
Founders who want to continue leading their business can do so. Those who are beginning to think about succession can step back over time with a proper transition. Our role is to provide a stable long-term home, share the experience that comes from operating hundreds of software businesses, and help strong companies continue to develop.
Still growing
We continue to look for great vertical market software businesses across our core sectors and in specialist B2B markets beyond them.
Many of the founders we speak with are not actively running a sale process. Often, they are simply starting to think about what the next chapter could look like — for themselves, their employees and their customers. Those conversations do not need to start with a data room or a formal process. Sometimes they simply start with a conversation.
If you are beginning to think about what comes next for the business you have built, we would be happy to talk.