ReadSoft was a global provider of applications for automating business processes. ReadSoft was founded by two university students in

Linköping Linköping () is a city in southern Sweden, with around 105,000 inhabitants as of 2021. It is the seat of Linköping Municipality and the capital of Östergötland County. Linköping is also the episcopal see of the Diocese of Linköping (Church ...

Sweden Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden,The United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names states that the country's formal name is the Kingdom of SwedenUNGEGN World Geographical Names, Sweden./ref> is a Nordic countries, Nordic c ...

, in 1991. The company was headquartered in

Helsingborg Helsingborg (, , , ) is a city and the seat of Helsingborg Municipality, Scania (Skåne), Sweden. It is the second-largest city in Scania (after Malmö) and ninth-largest in Sweden, with a population of 113,816 (2020). Helsingborg is the cent ...

, Sweden and its shares were traded on the

NASDAQ OMX Nasdaq, Inc. is an American multinational financial services corporation that owns and operates three stock exchanges in the United States: the namesake Nasdaq stock exchange, the Philadelphia Stock Exchange, and the Boston Stock Exchange, a ...

– Stockholm Small Cap list. ReadSoft had operations in 17 countries and a partner network in an additional 70 nations. In July 2017, private equity and growth capital firm

Thoma Bravo Thoma Bravo, LP, is an American private equity and growth capital firm with offices in San Francisco, Chicago and Miami. It is known for being particularly active in acquiring software companies and has over $114 billion in assets under manage ...

acquired and combined ReadSoft, Kofax, and

Perceptive Software Perceptive Software is a business unit of Hyland Software, Inc. Hyland announced itacquisition of Perceptivein July 2017. History The company was founded in 1988 as Genesis Software and initially produced accounts payable software application ...

into an independent portfolio company named Kofax.

Company operations

ReadSoft’s specialties included accounts payable automation, accounts receivable automation, sales order processing, and digital mailroom solutions. According to the company, ReadSoft’s on-premises and cloud solutions for document process automation enable some of the world’s largest corporations as well as small and medium businesses to compete and thrive in today’s environment by improving customer and supplier satisfaction, increasing operating efficiency, and providing greater visibility into business processes. ReadSoft has been regarded as an "AP invoice specialist" – AP is a common abbreviation of

Accounts Payable Accounts payable (AP) is money owed by a business to its suppliers shown as a liability on a company's balance sheet. It is distinct from notes payable liabilities, which are debts created by formal legal instrument documents. An accounts payable ...

– by

Gartner Gartner, Inc is a technological research and consulting firm based in Stamford, Connecticut that conducts research on technology and shares this research both through private consulting as well as executive programs and conferences. Its clients ...

, an independent information technology research and advisory company. Specialist software is designed to integrate with the AP software from ERP systems, such as

Oracle An oracle is a person or agency considered to provide wise and insightful counsel or prophetic predictions, most notably including precognition of the future, inspired by deities. As such, it is a form of divination. Description The word '' ...

and

SAP Sap is a fluid transported in xylem cells (vessel elements or tracheids) or phloem sieve tube elements of a plant. These cells transport water and nutrients throughout the plant. Sap is distinct from latex, resin, or cell sap; it is a separa ...

. For example, ERP integration may take advantage of single-sign-on processes, eliminating the need for employees to juggle multiple logons and systems. With more than 12,000 customers, ReadSoft claimed to be the market leader of the Document Process Automation segment – a term first coined by ReadSoft itself to cover the technology that automates the processing of business documents. It involves data capture and extraction (

optical character recognition Optical character recognition or optical character reader (OCR) is the electronic or mechanical conversion of images of typed, handwritten or printed text into machine-encoded text, whether from a scanned document, a photo of a document, a scen ...

) from paper and electronic documents, integration with company's existing

ERP system Enterprise resource planning (ERP) is the integrated management of main business processes, often in real time and mediated by software and technology. ERP is usually referred to as a category of Business management tools, business management ...

and routing to company agents for approvals and problem resolution via workflow. In 2006, ReadSoft merged with Ebydos AG from

Frankfurt am Main Frankfurt, officially Frankfurt am Main (; Hessian: , "Frank ford on the Main"), is the most populous city in the German state of Hesse. Its 791,000 inhabitants as of 2022 make it the fifth-most populous city in Germany. Located on its na ...

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...

a dedicated SAP Specialist Team that developed the Process Director, formerly known as Invoice Cockpit Suite. ReadSoft maintained other than

also Oracle competency/development centers which provided integrated solutions for companies with SAP and Oracle systems. Market analyst firm Harvey Spencer Associates reports ReadSoft with a 13% market share. In May 2014, US Company

Lexmark Lexmark International, Inc. is a privately held American company that manufactures laser printers and imaging products. The company is headquartered in Lexington, Kentucky. Since 2016 it has been jointly owned by a consortium of three multination ...

International, Inc announced a bid to buy out all remaining shares in ReadSoft. The deal was completed in late 2014, and ReadSoft then operated as part of Lexmark's Enterprise Software (formerly Perceptive Software) division. In July 2017, Thoma Bravo acquired Lexmark’s Enterprise Software business which consisted of three entities: Kofax, ReadSoft, and Perceptive Software. Following this, Kofax and ReadSoft were combined into a single, newly independent Thoma Bravo portfolio company named Kofax.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Readsoft Software companies established in 1991 Software companies of Sweden Optical character recognition Swedish companies established in 1991