Business Intelligence Company: Oco, Inc. Secures $10 Million In Series C Funding From Highfields Capital Management
Investment positions Oco to consolidate first-to-market position in on-demand business intelligence
Oco, Inc., a leading provider of on-demand business intelligence (BI) software, announced it has received $10 million in a Series C financing from investment funds managed by Highfields Capital Management LP, a $10 billion investment management firm based in Boston, MA. This investment is part of a total Series C issuance of $14.5 million.
Oco's on-demand data integration and analysis solution allows companies to achieve results in a fraction of the time, and at much lower cost than traditional BI solutions, which require the purchase and integration of multiple software products and can have implementation times stretching over many months.
"We chose to invest in Oco because we believe the company has a preemptive technology which dramatically reduces the time, cost and risk of business intelligence deployments," said Richard Grubman, Senior Managing Director at Highfields Capital Management. "Oco has met the core BI challenge of bringing desktop visibility to enterprise data from disparate systems, and doing it in six weeks, not months. Whether for the managers of a business, or a financing source looking to evaluate company performance, the speed and quality of the information allows decisions that are both faster and better."
"My goal in founding Oco was to give businesses a quicker, simpler way to access, integrate and organize their important enterprise data, without regard to where the data resides; legacy systems, decentralized networks, web accessible applications, it shouldn't matter", said George O'Conor, founder of Oco. "We have reinvented how business intelligence can be delivered to companies, as we provide almost instant access to critical information, without the long and costly systems implementation projects."
Bill Copacino, President and CEO of Oco, commented, "This financing gives Oco the resources we need to expand our customer base and build our market presence. We are excited to have the backing of Highfields Capital, one of the savviest investment firms around. Their guidance, management expertise, and resources will be a huge asset for Oco."
Oco's software is used in a broad range of industries and the company has established a growing presence in the retail sector, where information systems may differ at store locations, corporate headquarters, and online merchandising operations. Dennis Hernreich, Casual Male, COO and CFO, said: "We chose Oco after considering other more traditional business intelligence solutions with significantly higher project costs and longer integration and deployment periods. We are excited that our management team now has flexible, easy access to information for our direct-to-consumer business." Casual Male Retail Group (CMRG), which has more than 500 stores in the United States, Canada and England, credits Oco with helping to increase profit margins by 3.5 percent.
About Oco, Inc.
Oco has redefined the business intelligence category with an integrated solution that dramatically reduces the timeframe, cost and risk of traditional BI implementations. In just six weeks, Oco takes any amount of data from any source, and integrates, organizes and delivers it to the desktop in actionable reports and dashboards. And Oco guarantees the results on a fixed cost, fixed time basis. For more information about Oco, please visit www.oco-inc.com.
About Highfields Capital Management
Highfields Capital Management LP is a Boston-based investment management firm focused on identifying long-term value investments on behalf of public and private charitable foundations, school endowments and other institutional and private investors. Founded in 1998 by Jonathon S. Jacobson, formerly of Harvard Management Company, and Richard L. Grubman, formerly of Corporate Value Partners L.P., it invests in both private and public companies in the U.S., Canada and in foreign markets. Highfields Capital currently manages approximately $10 billion in investment funds. For more information, please visit www.highfieldscapital.com.