Kofax (Dicom) Acquires Neurascript

Information capture product developer Kofax's (www.kofax.com), parent company DICOM Group (www.dicomgroup.com), has acquired Neurascript (www.neurascript.com), for a total consideration of up to £8.3m, (approximately $15 million). A portion of the purchase price (£5.3, or approx. $9 million) is being withheld pending achievement of certain growth targets.

Headquartered in Cambridge, UK, Neurascript develops software tools that automate the recognition, extraction and indexing of information from business documents and forms. The integration of Neurascript's tools will strengthen DICOM Group's portfolio of capture technologies and offer a development platform to pursue large enterprise opportunities.

"We consider Neurascript's high-end information capture tools to be core technology," said Arnold von Buren, CEO, DICOM Group. "Especially as modules for our Ascent application platform."

"Neurascript has created scalable and robust tools that streamline the transformation of documents and forms into electronic information," said Richard Brierton, managing director of Neurascript. "Our technology complements the industry-leading products of Kofax."

"The acquisition of Neurascript is a natural and strategic extension of a long-standing relationship," said von Büren.

However, that relationship was tested over the past several years following the development of competing products for managing unstructured forms. Those differences now appear to have been put aside as the firms look to integrate.

"We're the first to admit, we were late to market with our non-structured solutions," said Brierton. "We kept it on the ramp six months too long."

For Neurascript, the acquisition offers not only the support of the larger organization, but also greater access to the U.S. market. "This gives us the reach we didn't have," said Brierton. "As an 18-person organization you can only stretch yourself so far."

Both companies have been aggressively developing new products to meet the emerging market for capturing data from unstructured form, as well as automatically classifying documents - whether paper or electronic. A combined research and development staff, which will report to Anthony Macciola VP of development and marketing at Kofax, is expected to hasten those products' roll-out. "We have great expectations for of their capabilities," Macciola said.

Conversely, Kofax will gain a stronger European presence. "We'll maintain Neuracript's existing facility," said Macciola. "In fact, we're going to expand it." The sales and marketing staff will report directly to Kofax's parent company DICOM, in Europe.

Macciola stressed that the lndicius toolkit will continue to be offered as a standalone product. "We won't reserve Neurascript (to the Ascent platform)," he said, "lndicius as a development platform will continue to be available."

It is expected that a new integrated brand may emerge. One that incorporates the broad Ascent Capture platform along with the recognition tools acquired with Neurascript, and the Mohomine auto-classification technology acquired previously.