Chesterbrook’s Deacom has been acquired by a Fort Worth-based software company

Deacom, the Chesterbrook-based enterprise resource planning software company, was recently acquired by Fort Worth-based ECI Software Solutions, the companies announced Thursday.

ECI, makers of cloud-based business management solutions, serves small- to medium-sized manufacturing, wholesale and retail distribution, building and construction, and field service organizations. Deacom will be joining ECI’s manufacturing division, which counts about 14,000 customers worldwide. ECI CEO Trevor Gruenewald said in a statement that adding Deacom to its portfolio will allow the Texas company to serve batch and process manufacturers in addition to the made-to-order manufacturers that it has specialized in.

Financial details of the deal were not disclosed.

The roughly 210-person Philly-area company has grown exponentially in its past quarter century, after CEO Jay Deakins started the company in a basement in 1995. Its core product is DEACOM ERP, a platform that aims to solve manufacturing and distribution challenges for its clients.

“I founded Deacom 26 years ago with a vision to give manufacturers an ERP that was powerful, easy to use and adaptable to customers’ changing needs,” Deakins said in a statement. “This acquisition is a big milestone in that mission. We have gotten to know the ECI team well over the last few months and are confident that ECI is the right partner to grow Deacom as a global platform.”

The suburban Philadelphia campus hosts more than 100 employees. In 2019, the company also established an office in Frankfurt, Germany. Deakins said then that he’d been considering a European office for about a decade, and said the company was finally in a place where they had the resources and operations to expand. When the team was assessing where an office could be, they considered cities in Spain, England and France, but ultimately German culture and attention to detail matched well with Deacom culture.

“We don’t want to come over and say, ‘We’re Americans, this is how we do it.’ We’re going to embrace Europe and commit to Frankfurt and Germany,” the CEO said of that expansion.

Deacom has not yet responded to a request for comment about its office plans amid the ongoing pandemic, or how its employees will be affected by the acquisition.

The deal is not ECI’s first acquisition. It’s purchased Netherlands-based Trivest Beheer B.V., a provider of smart vertical software solutions to the SME manufacturing sector; Shoptech Industrial Software Corp., a provider of ERP software for job shops and made-to-order manufacturers; and BOLT Software, a construction business management offering.

“We’re excited to join forces with the Deacom team to support the entrepreneurial spirit and profitable growth of all manufacturers,” Gruenewald said.