High Touch acquires majority stake in Canada’s Decision Software

Wichita's High Touch Technologies has purchased a 51 percent stake in enterprise software firm Decision Software.

Decision Software, based in Toronto, Canada, is the developer of Decision Building, a suite of enterprise resource planning software products.

President Kevin Anderson says the software is flexible, allowing various companies to pick and choose the features they need, but it's particularly well suited for small and medium-sized businesses in manufacturing, distribution and services. Features include a customer relationship management system (CRM) and programs for financial tracking and reporting, work order control, inventory tracking, production scheduling and other business processes. The software has clients in both Canada and the United States.

Anderson says his firm started working with High Touch about a year ago because it was looking for developers with expertise in the programming language of COBOL. High Touch has a COBOL team that took over programming work on Decision Software. Decision, down from a peak of about 20 employees, now has two employees and a few contract workers.

On Nov. 1, the two companies decided to ramp up their partnership when High Touch became an investor. The amount of the investment was not disclosed.

Anderson says that from Wichita, High Touch will eventually take on administrative and accounting functions for Decision Software, freeing him to work on growing the business.

Doug Sullivan, who is managing the partnership on High Touch's side, says the company will manage Decision Software's needs with existing staff for now.

However, both Anderson and Sullivan say they expect growth in the future. Existing High Touch clients could become new customers of Decision Building, Sullivan says. And via High Touch, Decision Software has access to a larger pool of programmer talent, which means it could more easily go after big businesses that have software customization needs.

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