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Unit4 has agreed to acquire Napta, adding the Paris-based resource management platform to its professional services software portfolio.
Napta will continue to operate under its existing leadership, brand and open ecosystem model. Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer Arnaud Caldichoury will remain in charge, and all three co-founders will stay with the business.
Both companies sell software used by professional and business services firms, and they already share a number of customers that use the two platforms together. The deal combines Napta's resource management and skills intelligence tools with Unit4's products in enterprise resource planning, financial planning and analysis, and human capital management.
The companies said the combination is intended to give customers a connected view of skills, capacity, projects and financial data. Unit4 also plans to link Napta's resource and skills data with its own project, finance and people information, so clients can align staffing decisions with project planning and budget visibility.
The acquisition is part of Unit4's broader push into the sectors it has identified as core markets: professional and business services, public services, non-profit and education. Within that group, professional services is its largest and fastest-growing vertical.
According to Unit4, Napta has expanded from France to serve customers in 70 countries. Its customer base includes consulting, audit, IT and engineering firms, reflecting a market where staff allocation, utilisation and skills matching are closely tied to margin and delivery.
Growth focus
For Unit4, the move adds a more specialised product in an area that has become increasingly important for services firms under pressure to deploy staff efficiently and make better use of available skills. Together, the businesses are expected to cover more of the professional services lifecycle, from project selection to staffing and execution.
Napta will also continue to support integrations with major ERP, professional services automation and human capital management platforms. That means it is expected to remain available to customers using software beyond Unit4's own products.
Simon Paris, Chief Executive Officer of Unit4, described the acquisition as a strategic step in the company's expansion plans.
"The future of professional services organisations is people-first and skills-based, and Napta is the best in the market at putting the right people on the right work," said Paris.
"We have ambitious goals to grow Unit4, and the professional services industry is the largest and fastest-growing market among our key verticals, making it the logical choice for a strategic acquisition. Today's announcement is a clear signal of intent to provide our customers with best-in-class products that will help them deliver more value to their clients. It is why we are acquiring Napta, as a fast-growing business, loved by its customers, built for exactly the firms we serve, and expanding in the markets where we are focused," he said.
Napta's position
Napta has built its offering around staffing, capacity planning and skills intelligence, including AI-assisted matching between people and assignments. In professional services, where firms sell time and expertise, software that improves utilisation and aligns skills with demand has become a significant area of competition.
Retaining Napta's brand and management suggests Unit4 sees value in preserving its position as a standalone product, even as the two businesses deepen their technical links. It also indicates Unit4 wants to maintain Napta's appeal for customers that may use rival core systems.
Caldichoury said the deal would allow Napta to expand more quickly while keeping its current operating approach.
"We built Napta to become the European reference in resource management and skills intelligence, and joining Unit4 is how we get there faster," said Caldichoury.
"We chose Unit4 because they share our conviction that professional services is a people business, and because they are committed to investing in what makes Napta successful. For our customers, nothing changes except what gets better: more investment in the product, the same team, and the same flexible and customer-oriented approach. Together, we'll keep raising the bar on resource management and skills intelligence and supporting our clients wherever they operate," he said.
Unit4 has been pursuing growth through a mix of product development, customer migration to its cloud-native ERPx platform, and acquisitions. The latest deal supports that strategy by adding software that addresses a specific operational problem for services firms: how to assign the right people to the right work while understanding the effect on delivery and financial performance.
No financial terms were disclosed.