Sovos to acquire e-Transformation compliance company Digital Planet

By Edlyn Cardoza

Global tax software provider Sovos recently announced it has entered into an agreement to acquire Digital Planet, which provides cloud compliance solutions for continuous transaction controls (CTCs), including e-invoicing, e-receipts, e-delivery note and e-ledger. Upon completion of this acquisition, Sovos will expand its Istanbul-based product development center of excellence in support of a growing base of channel partners, small-and-medium-sized businesses (SMB), and large enterprise customers in Turkey and across the region.

Turkey is one of only a few countries outside of Latin America with mature e-invoicing and digital tax and regulatory mandates. Following its 2019 acquisition of Foriba, Sovos established its European center of excellence in Istanbul. Since then, the company’s local teams have developed solutions for CTC mandates in Greece, India, and Saudi Arabia. The Sovos software development team in Turkey also led the modernization of Sovos Advanced Periodic Reporting, which centralizes and streamlines indirect tax compliance processes for businesses operating across Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Latin America and Asia.

“The acquisition of Digital Planet will strengthen our partner channel and significantly increase our customer base of enterprises and SMBs. As our second acquisition in Turkey, Digital Planet reinforces the Sovos commitment to the local and regional market, as we grow our software development organization in Istanbul,” said Steve Sprague, general manager, global value-added tax, Sovos.

Digital Planet cloud solutions address e-transformation mandates, as well as customer communication management for banks, telecommunications, and insurance companies, which rely on Digital Planet solutions to provide telephone bills, bank receipts, credit card statements, insurance policies and other personalized documents. When Digital Planet joins Sovos, the combined organization will deliver secure, stable, and scalable technology products, services and support to meet the complete needs of customers.

“Our plans to acquire Digital Planet follow several recent acquisitions in Europe and the Americas designed to scale our solutions for customers of all sizes, because the digital transformation of tax and economies affects businesses of all sizes,” said Andy Hovancik, CEO, Sovos. “We set out to solve for these complex global challenges, and our acquisition strategy reflects the seriousness of our commitment to do just that.”

John Gledhill, vice president of corporate development for Sovos, said, “We expect to close the Digital Planet acquisition by the end of the calendar year, which will make it the eighth acquisition for Sovos in 2021. As the Digital Planet team joins Sovos, we will grow our Turkey employee base by 65% with more than 700 employees in Europe, part of a global team of more than 2,000 people working in 13 countries.”

The terms of the deal were not disclosed. Sovos is owned by Hg, the London-based specialist private equity investor focused on software and service businesses, and TA Associates. EY served as financial advisor to Sovos, and Akol provided legal counsel. Ozbek Legal provided legal counsel to Digital Planet. Completion of the transaction is subject to regulatory approval and other customary closing conditions.