Today is a very exciting day at GovDelivery. After nearly two decades of working with the public sector to transform the citizen experience, we are announcing a merger that brings GovDelivery as the leader in transformation of the citizen experience together with Granicus, a company that has had a similar impact on the legislative process and citizen engagement in policy-making.
Bringing together the two largest, public-sector focused, cloud-based technology companies in the world is an exciting milestone that creates an opportunity to invest in innovative, secure, and scalable solutions as well as continue to build the world class team that clients expect from both organizations.
The truth is, I’ve been hoping this would happen for a long time. We have watched and admired as Granicus grew to its current position helping 1,200 organisations streamline and improve the legislative process while engaging more citizens. We have known that together, we could help government engage more people, make better decisions, and achieve better outcomes.
Our companies were founded based on similar principles, and have been heading in the same direction for years.
When GovDelivery started in a basement apartment in 2000, we set out to reframe the relationship that citizens had with government, and vice versa. We wanted to change the way that government connected with people, which in turn would drive greater participation in the civic experience and mobilise new generations to engage with government at new levels.
At around the same time as we got started at GovDelivery, another committed team was founding Granicus. Those founders set out on a similar path – they wanted to change how government connected with citizens. Unlike GovDelivery, they were focused on policy making and transparency instead of communications and citizens service.
Both GovDelivery and Granicus recently announced that a group led by the world’s leading technology investor, Vista Equity Partners, had acquired each company. In initial conversations with Vista, their intention to merge Granicus and GovDelivery was clear.
My response was that joining these two companies would be like the marriage of two high school sweethearts who finally decided to get together later in life – it’s a perfect fit, and we’ve known it for some time. Vista has the expertise and resources to make it work and that makes the opportunity even more compelling.
As with any major announcement, there are a lot of questions. First, I’d like to address what this merger will mean for our customers. In the short term, nothing will change. For the remainder of the calendar year, business will operate as usual and government organisations can continue to use GovDelivery and Granicus for cloud-based solutions. These organisations are both healthy and growing. The combined organisation is growing and is profitable, providing a stable platform from which to invest in even better solutions and more great team members. In early 2017, we will announce our plans for the combined leadership team, and, while many in local government use Granicus and GovDelivery solutions together every day, we will share our plans to make that even better and more impactful.
In the long term, this will mean incredible things for the public sector. In a rapidly changing world, governments are facing increasing expectations from citizens coupled with a decrease in the amount of accessible resources. At a time when it’s never been more important to connect with citizens, governments now have the opportunity to use a single provider to transform the way they communicate with the public.
Ultimately, we will help drive better decision-making within government, and will deepen our ability and commitment to help government achieve better outcomes in critical areas.
I have never been more optimistic about the future, and am honoured to lead GovDelivery through the transition so that our teams can begin working together as soon as possible.
You can contact me or our client success team with any questions you have or if you’d like to share your ideas for how we should prioritise our work as a combined company, but know that in the coming months we’ll be providing regular updates and details on the newly-merged company, so stay tuned.
To read more about the merger, here is the link to the press release.
