Consona Corporation

Consona Corporation

Consona Corporation operated as a holding company for vertical-market enterprise software businesses, maintaining dual headquarters in Indianapolis and Alpharetta. The firm's model centered on acquiring and operating established ERP and CRM products with sticky customer bases in manufacturing and field service — a roll-up strategy that sought to extract value through centralized back-office functions while preserving brand equity at the product level. The firm's product portfolio at peak included known names across discrete manufacturing and customer management: Made2Manage for engineer-to-order and repetitive manufacturing, DTR for plastics manufacturing, and KNOVA for knowledge management and customer service. Revenue was driven by maintenance contracts and license fees from a predominantly North American mid-market customer base. Consona itself was acquired by Battery Ventures, which then orchestrated its holding-company structure, before the entire entity was sold to Apax Partners in 2010. Following the Apax acquisition, Consona was merged into a broader constellation of software assets; Apax rebranded and eventually sold the combined entity to TA Associates in 2013. The business operated without a dominant single-investment lead at the firm level — decision-making resided with the private equity sponsors, Battery and later Apax, rather than a long-tenured founder-CIO. Operating entities and product line general managers ran day-to-day P&L under the Consona umbrella. What distinguished Consona structurally was its identity as a sponsor-orchestrated roll-up rather than an organic operating company or a typical family office. The firm was an investment vehicle, not a software company per se — it functioned as a portfolio management construct designed for eventual liquidity. The sale to Apax marked a successful exit for Battery Ventures from a strategy that is now a common playbook in vertical application software.