Kevin Kemmerer, Dude Solutions CEO. (Courtesy Dude Solutions)

Dude Solutions has acquired Toronto-based Energy Profiles Limited (EPL) in a transaction which will allow the firm to provide enhanced energy and sustainability management as part of its operations management services.

Dude is a software as a service (SaaS) provider to over 12,000 companies and organizations across a variety of sectors including education, government, health care, seniors living and manufacturing. Its platform assists clients in managing assets, energy and maintenance among other functions.

Based in Cary, N.C., Dude is itself backed by Clearlake Capital Group LP.

EPL, with offices in Vancouver and Calgary as well, is a full-service energy engineering and software services firm focused on driving down energy and water use intensity in large building portfolios across North America. It provides sustainability data management, ESG reporting and predictive analytics to owners and managers of more than 6,000 buildings via its cloud-based software platforms, Stream Utility Tracker and Building Intelligence.

EPL will become a part of Dude after a transition period.

Financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

Benefits of acquisition

According to Neal Bach, EPL’s president, the acquisition had been in the works for about six months. For him, the decision to be acquired by Dude Solutions boiled down to two key factors.

The first is that Dude has done more work in “institutional” sectors such as education and health care, two areas with great promise for these types of applications. The second involves the capabilities of the platform Dude has developed.

“Almost all of our clients’ future involves defining a path to net-zero and attracting partners on that path,” Bach said. “So it’s an asset management (issue) and we have been looking at developing an asset management application, but Dude Solutions is way ahead of us.”

Bach started his career in Copenhagen, Denmark with two years at a firm that developed gas analyzers. In 2000, he created EPL alongside co-founder Mike McGee.

Dude already possessed an energy management practice which can utilize client data to help them determine “how to manage that energy in a more productive way.”

EPL’s software and data services will enhance that by assisting clients in meeting their sustainability targets, Dude CEO Kevin Kemmerer explained. Dude Solutions will now be able to offer enterprise asset management, strategic asset management and energy management systems from a single source.

It’s not the first Canadian acquisition for Dude.

Among others, in 2015 the firm acquired Toronto-based Windmill Software Inc., which included its senior living operations software TheWorxHub. Kemmerer says the EPL acquisition will give “another foundation” to continue Dude’s growth in the Canadian market.

Looking ahead for Dude, EPL

While neither CEO could be specific about the firms’ 2022 plans, Kemmerer did say Dude is looking forward to incorporating clients’ sustainability goals into the budgeting processes of their assets.

“So I’m optimizing not just the service level at a certain cost, but also my net-zero score and my carbon footprint score, sustainability score in that capital planning and forecasting model,” said Kemmerer. “And I might change where I make investments, or when I make investments, based on if I have a net-zero-by-2030 commitment versus maybe a 2040 (commitment).”

In the simplest terms, that includes leveraging clients’ ESG frameworks to help them meet sustainability goals. On a recent visit to the U.K., Kemmerer said he was surprised to find how many clients had net-zero initiatives at the top of their minds.

“So we’re starting to use more the ESG frameworks that are being put out there by different regulatory bodies, and then helping bring that into our platform and helping our clients have a dashboard to see where they are today,” Kemmerer said. “Step one is how you benchmark where you are. And then obviously, step two is how you race to some goal that you’re shooting for in the future.”

Clearlake appointed Kemmerer CEO in November 2020 after he joined Dude as executive chairman. Prior to Dude, he served as the executive vice president of product management at iPipeline, a provider of cloud-based software solutions for the life insurance and financial services industry.

Clearlake Capital Group, L.P. is an investment firm founded in 2006 operating integrated businesses across private equity, credit and other related strategies. With offices in Santa Monica and Dallas, it currently has over $55 billion in assets under management across over 300 investments.

District Capital Partners acted as the advisor to Dude Solutions, while Software Equity Group served as the advisor to EPL.