Aptitude Software Group (LSE:APTD) has signed a two-year strategic agreement under which a leading "Big Four" professional services firm will license Fynapse and act as a reseller of the platform, the AI-native Finance ERP provider said.
The initial contract is worth $150,000 a year, with further revenue expected as the Big Four firm sells Fynapse on to its own client base.
Fynapse will underpin the firm's Digital Finance managed service, which lets organisations outsource their back-office finance and accounting operations rather than run them in-house.
Aptitude's AI Autonomous Finance annual recurring revenue (ARR) rose 12% year-on-year to £20.1 million in the six months to 30 June, with Fynapse itself contributing £4.9 million of that ARR, up 85% from £2.6 million a year earlier, and carrying £14.2 million of contracted future revenue from 1 July.
The deal extends a partner-first sales model already visible in June's three-year, $5.54 million Fynapse contract with a major Canadian financial services group, sourced through a Big Four advisory firm acting as Aptitude's implementation partner.
Aptitude said Fynapse was chosen for its ease of configuration and speed of onboarding, letting the Big Four firm bring new clients onto its managed service quickly and cost-effectively while supporting margins as the offering scales, and that its AI-native architecture lets the firm layer its own AI capability on governed, transaction-level data in a way traditional batch-processing ERP systems cannot support.
"This agreement is further evidence of our strategic transition to a partner-led model, extending Fynapse's reach through partners that can take Fynapse to a broader range of organisations at scale," said chief executive Alex Curran.
The announcement comes as Aptitude continues discussions with trade and private equity bidders over a potential cash offer for the whole company, with talks described as "more advanced" with one party; the company has said investor updates will follow "in due course".