Tax services firm Ryan has acquired two suites of software products from Thomson Reuters to grow its technology business.

The two software suites are sold under the brands OneSource Property Tax and OneSource Transfer Pricing. It’s the former offering, OneSource Property Tax, that carries the most strategic significance for Ryan.

Dallas-based Ryan has the largest property tax team in the industry. With the acquisition of Thomson Reuters’ OneSource Property Tax suite of software products, the firm will also become the largest property tax software provider in North America.

The benefits of scale

The benefits of ranking as the leading player in a given market are significant, and not only for consultancies. But consulting firms have especially much to gain from winning the coveted top spot in industry rankings.

From a marketing standpoint, it’s often difficult to set a professional service offering apart. The reason is that there are usually several other service offerings out there that promise to deliver the exact same set of benefits.

For a consultancy, the ability to state that it’s the largest market player in its industry makes it easier to explain why clients should choose its offerings over the many similar alternatives out there.

Transfer pricing

OneSource Property Tax is only one of the two software assets that Ryan is buying from Thomson Reuters. The tax specialist is also acquiring OneSource Transfer Pricing, a software product that assists organizations with transfer pricing tasks.

Transfer pricing is the term for the task of managing transactions between subsidiaries of a company. Such transactions often carry more regulatory requirements than other types of deals.

 “The advent of these two product lines puts Ryan in an even stronger position to provide our clients with an integrated suite of global tax services that combines best-in-class software and services capabilities,” said Ryan CEO G. Brint Ryan.

Along with OneSource Property Tax and OneSource Transfer Pricing, Ryan will gain the 600 client accounts associated with the two software offerings. Some of those clients are new to Ryan, which means that they don’t already rely on its tax consulting services but could potentially become open to doing so in the future.

Higher margins

There is another notable dimension to Ryan’s purchase of the two OneSource-branded software suites from Thomson Reuters. Software products generally have much higher profit margins than professional services, which means the deal may in the long run improve Ryan profitability.

The deal marks the second time in recent months than Ryan has expanded its software portfolio through an acquisition. This past July, the firm snapped up Fundingportal, a company with a software platform that eases the process of securing government funding for organizations.

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