A conversation with Anne Steiner and Gérald Attia
On December 30, 2022, papers were signed, hands were shaken, and a page turned in the history of Cprime, Inc. The culmination of nearly a year of conversation and negotiation, Cprime was sold by Alten Group to a joint investment venture between Goldman Sachs Asset Management and Everstone Capital Partners.
Read the official press release
A wealth of opportunities
As an organization, we’re thrilled to welcome this new opportunity. CEO Anne Steiner explained, “We’re really grateful for our time with Alten and they have played a crucial role in our success over the past seven years. Nevertheless, we are excited to move forward. By partnering with Goldman Sachs and Everstone Capital, we will be able to accelerate the growth of our business and realize our full potential for both employees and clients.”
Gérald Attia, co-founder of the Alten Group, has joined Cprime full time. He expanded on Anne’s comments. “In the short term, Cprime is pursuing several avenues for growth through acquisition. Our new investors, Goldman Sachs and Everstone Capital, will help accelerate our acquisition strategy. This allows us to remain competitive in the market and strengthen our financial capabilities so we can expand our leadership role in the Agile and tech transformation landscape over the next two years. Mid-to-long term, these investments will act as a catalyst for continued success.”
A stable foundation for positive change
Sometimes, news of an acquisition breeds doubt—concerns among employees and customers. But there is no cause for concern in this case. Rather than creating upheaval, the acquisition simply lays a stronger foundation than ever for strategic growth externally and cultural fortification within.
For the company’s future
For one thing, Anne Steiner will remain in her position as CEO. “Cprime’s existing leadership will continue doing the outstanding job they’ve been doing all along. A larger group of stakeholders will be beneficial for us in terms of capital investment and making critical moves in our Atlassian and technology businesses. This new board will enable us to more quickly and strategically expand our operations globally, which is key to our short- and long-term goals.”
For employees
There are no personnel changes connected to the sale, so the Cprime team can continue focusing on doing great things for our clients without concerns about upheaval.
“All our employees contribute to the incredible culture we’ve created here at Cprime,” Anne said. “That’s what makes us who we are, and it’s something that we will all prioritize in order for us to remain successful. We must maintain our ‘secret sauce’!”
Gérald verified, “It’s up to each and every one of us—from the CEO on down—to ensure the Cprime culture only strengthens. Our new investors will help us to become a more global, and we will all share in the future success of the business and our company culture.”
For customers
Likewise, for our valued customers: this sale will not cause any appreciable changes to our customer relationships, interruption of services, or any change in the tremendous value we always strive to bring to every engagement.
“Focusing on both the customer and partner community, Cprime will continue to expand our reach globally. This means we’ll continue to provide excellent service to customers in the US and Canada, but also expand our reach in the UK and Europe, and beyond. With further growth, we will resolve issues with an integrated approach while enabling clients to become digital product innovators with products that delight customers.”
For partners
With this accelerated growth and geographic expansion comes further opportunity to expand our relationships with over fifty current technology partners, and to add many more to the list. As we grow, we only add to the value our partnerships offer to Cprime, partner organizations, and especially our customers.
Anne explained, “Ultimately, our goal is to be a reliable partner that can support each step of the journey. We have been applying this philosophy since before the acquisition and it is an essential part of our plan for the future.”
The future is brighter than ever
We’re at the cusp of great things. Cprime has doubled its revenue twice in the past five years. With enhanced investment and aggressive strategic growth on the horizon, we can expect that trend to continue and speed up. This will result from both internal and external growth growth.
The industry is ripe for growth, and Cprime is perfectly positioned to lead
This is a subject Anne is passionate about. She explains, “We’ve come a long way in terms of Agile over the last ten to fifteen years; it is no longer just a concept at the team level. The challenge now is to scale this agility up and outside of the team—to programs and portfolios—in order to create an organization that can quickly adapt and evolve. We’ve done really well, but a lot of the constraints exist outside of the team, so we’re seeing much more emphasis as an industry on bringing agility higher in the organization. But that means it’s now less about software development and more about just being a flexible organization that’s willing to work and change. We see organizations adopting different ways of working and accepting change more readily.
“Another piece of the puzzle is the integration of tooling used to create software. This integration is not limited to engineering teams, but programmers, portfolios, product management, marketing teams, testing and operations, all the way up to the CEO. In the past, tooling was focused on the team level. Now we are applying it across different roles, other business teams and levels of executives to allow the entire organization to operate with agility.
“Right now, we are in an unprecedented situation: there is a global tech talent shortage. While this is worrying, it also offers some assurance. Unlike any other recession, there is no unemployment; instead, companies are struggling to find enough workers to meet their needs. Cprime can help by providing the qualified personnel they require to build and launch products faster than ever before. We can also offer models of working that they can implement throughout the organization.”
Gerald added, “We are on the cutting edge of supporting companies in their digital transformation journeys. Cprime continues to innovate new ways of working that accelerate client product success while also bringing to bear the systems and tooling necessary for product development.”
External growth
Breaking down Cprime’s plans for geographic expansion, Gérald said, “As a company, we are branching out eastward, starting with the UK, Europe, and Australia. Cprime has existing development capabilities in the UK and Ukraine; so, it makes sense to expand in this region. Soon enough though, we may venture into Asia too! Considering Asia, Singapore is one place that could be very beneficial to our endeavors. By starting from Australia, we can stay there or head off to Singapore in search of more opportunity. Extensive research into the European market has identified a plethora of good options across Eastern Europe.”
Internal growth
But, we won’t be ignoring organic internal growth, which has formed the core of Cprime’s success so far.
Gérald continued, “The values we are driving are of the utmost importance to me; respecting our people and customer satisfaction is key. Organic growth is a vital part of the equation alongside our inorganic strategy of acquisition and going east. We also want to give our current employees opportunities to express themselves and take responsibility for the future of Cprime in the coming years. As long as we keep our culture, it’s very important to have organic growth to make sure that we keep our people.”
Anne concurred. “I completely agree with Gérald. If you look at the company’s history, you can see that it has doubled its revenue twice in the past five years. So, if we’re able to double our revenue twice again in the next five years more or less organically, it’s a major accomplishment.”
Read the official press release and contact Cprime with any questions.
We’re thrilled to announce that Cprime has acquired Elabor8, a leading provider of digital transformation, agility, and technology solutions based in Australia. Read the official press release here.