Nebraska-based public works software provider Beehive Industries — not to be confused with the Colorado-based Beehive Industries, which makes jet engines and products for the military — now will help CivicPlus strengthen its Civic Impact Platform, according to the statement announcing the deal.
CivicPlus intends to use Beehive’s technology and workforce expertise — the company’s employees have joined CivicPlus — to build what the statement called “a comprehensive one-stop technology stack for customers to better manage community infrastructure assets, make informed data-driven decisions, and exceed residents’ service expectations.”
Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.
CivicPlus customers have expressed the need for more automation and efficient workflows when it comes to infrastructure and utilities, according to Aaron Pierce, the company’s vice president and general manager of public works. The acquisition addresses those market demands.
Beehive is hardly a stranger to CivicPlus, another potential benefit. More than half of Beehive’s customers already were working with CivicPlus, Pierce told Government Technology via email. That creates opportunities for further integrations along with what he called “operational efficiency across departments.”
“Local governments are struggling to get more work done with fewer resources and often are challenged with collaboration across multiple departments,” he said. “This results in duplicate work or time-consuming processes when it comes to the responsibilities of utility billing and asset managers.”
Beehive’s asset management product includes more than 20 modules, according to the statement, from which customers “can build a solution that helps office staff and team members out in the field with asset management, maintenance scheduling, reporting and data modeling.”
One example of what the technology can do is enabling collaboration between 311 and asset maintenance tasks, Pierce said.
The acquired company’s utility billing tool, meanwhile, offers such features as “address validation, real-time account management and user-friendly payment options,” according to the statement, all of them designed to reduce administrative burdens.
This deal follows another move from late last year that highlighted the appeal of the utility billing space in gov tech. In October, three companies said they were combining to form Govineer Solutions and win more utility billing business from public agencies.
As for CivicPlus, one of its most recent acquisitions was in recreation management via a deal last autumn with ePRepSolutions.
