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Baxter Planning Systems Raises $25 Million After Bootstrapping for 25 Years

Baxter Planning Systems, an Austin-based provider of supply chain software, has landed its first institutional funding since its launch in 1993. The new $25 million in investment from Boston-based Polaris Partners will be used to fuel the company’s next stage of growth.

As a pioneer in the development of Web-based solutions for inventory planning, Baxter helps customers across the high tech, service parts and healthcare industries manage their complex, global supply chains. Its Prophet software is a suite of integrated forecasting and planning applications which enables clients to improve customer service levels while controlling inventory and boosting profitability.

Baxter, founded out of a garage in Texas, is now one of the top providers of supply chain software, enabling companies to improve same day inventory availability. Customers include Global 2000 and Fortune 500 enterprises such as Johnson & Johnson, Sony, Avaya, Ciena, Extreme Networks, NetApp, Stanley Black & Decker, Carestream Health, Illumina and Triumph Motorcycles. Baxter competes against the likes of major tech titans SAP and Oracle.

With its new private equity backing, Polaris will double down on sales, marketing and development. After successfully bootstrapping for nearly two decades and a half, founder and CEO Greg Baxter hopes the new funding will help Baxter more aggressively expand into international markets, reports 512 tech.

“We really spent a lot of time working on the efficiencies and getting all the bits and pieces in place,” the CEO said regarding Baxter’s pre-institutional investment. “The good news is that has made us very efficient and we’re ready to scale on the operational side.”

The 55-person company says it turned down a number of private equity advances over the years, indicating that it never felt quite right. With a greater need to build out sales and marketing, Baxter finally decided the firm could use help.

“Greg and his team have built a wonderful business that is an ideal fit for our later stage practice: a founder-led, emerging category leader with a strong track record of profitable growth,” said Polaris Managing partner Bryce Youngren.