Lead Engineer Front-End

Quadient: navigating the next phase of Customer Communications. August 11, 2026 By Kaspar Roos, CEO & Founder of Aspire CCS For some time now, I've wanted to write about Quadient, not because of any single announcement, but because the customer communications market is changing rapidly (AI, cloud, digital experience, new regulations) and the strategic decisions Quadient makes over the next few years will play a significant role in determining its future position. That perspective has been shaped by several developments that, taken together, suggest the company is entering an important new chapter. I will outline the key developments here: * Leadership and personnel changes. Like many other businesses, Quadient has had its fair share of high profile departures in recent years. With Chris Hartigan's (former Chief Solution Officer for Quadient Digital) departure earlier in the year, CEO Geffrey Godet has issued a press release explaining that he'll be taking a more active role in the software division by leading Quadient Digital directly. This major development tells Aspire Customer Communications Services Ltd. Quadient's leadership believes the company's future lies on the digital side of the business. To that end, Quadient also recently hired Lilac Schoenbeck to serve as its new CTO and CPO who I believe will bring a fresh and innovative new perspective to the dual role, but needs to navigate historic requirements around high-fidelity document production with emerging needs around AI-driven, digital customer engagement. * The shift to (multi-tenant) SaaS. Over the last few years, Quadient has invested heavily in Quadient Inspire Evolve to counter SaaS-only competitors that saw high growth in the aftermath of the COVID pandemic, when on-site implementations were no longer feasible and the need for out-of-the-box SaaS exploded. Now that Evolve is mature, the question becomes where Quadient will place its next innovation bet and deploy its 550+ global software engineering force. * Quadient's "postal" influenced view on customer communications. Not always easy for industry outsiders to understand, Quadient's perspective on customer communications has been heavily shaped by its origins as Neopost, an inserter equipment manufacturer. While OpenText, Smart Communications, and other Customer Communications Management (CCM) competitors trace their origins to the enterprise software space, Quadient entered the market by differentiating away from a declining postal market. This helps explain its additional focuses on Small & Medium-sized Businesses (SMB) hybrid mail, e-invoicing (as an evolution of regulated business communications), and more pointedly, its entrance into the parcel locker business in an effort to capitalize on the growing e-commerce opportunity. Going forward, the question is if this business mix is the right setup for an enterprise software market that is being disrupted by the shift to AI-powered communications. * Quadient's focus on combining CCM with finance automation to become a major player in the "Intelligent Transaction" ecosystem. Besides CCM, Quadient Digital has been active in the finance automation and e-invoicing space, recently acquiring several businesses that have helped it secure capabilities in Accounts Payable (managing supplier payments), Accounts Receivable (collecting customer payments), and e-invoicing (including digital creation, tax validation and the exchange of e-invoices). While e-invoicing remains a distinct market from CCM with separate buyers and use-cases, there is increasingly technology/capability convergence where cloud-native CCM and IXM (smart forms) components can be used for document generation, regulated content, data capture/validation, workflow, accessibility, exception handling and increasingly AI-enabled automation. So the question becomes, to what extent are Inspire, Impress (Quadient's SMB hybrid mail offering), and Quadient's Finance Automation suite strengthening each other and what will be Quadient's strategy going forward? * Quadient's current valuation. I'm not a financial advisor, and I'm not providing investment advice, but Quadient looks undervalued to me when you compare its software assets against its like-for-like competitors. Quadient's is valued by the stock market more as a hardware business, whose core offerings are under accelerated decline. Pitney Bowes, a former competitor in the inserter manufacturing market, spun off its CCM division (now part of Precisely) and then decided to split the business and sell off the inserter arm to a private equity fund (Bluecrest) a few years ago. It actually did that at a good moment, when interest rates were negative and investors preferred modest returns from a declining mail market over paying someone the privilege of storing their money. Unfortunately, Quadient may no longer have this option, although splitting hardware from software - while easier said than done - could potentially unlock strategic value and accelerate growth. Strategy: Multiple Paths to Growth. For now, Aspire Customer Communications Services Ltd. know Quadient's strategy has become increasingly centered on its digital business. Its CEO is taking a more active role and software will be instrumental to Quadient's future. But for right now at least, there seems to be less of a single, unified direction and more of a collection of different, adjacent growth paths, rooted in the company's traditional, document-centric heritage. This leads to what may be Quadient's most important strategic decision: are its software businesses ultimately stronger as a portfolio of adjacent products serving distinct markets, or should they evolve into a more integrated platform centered on intelligent communications and transactions. Both approaches are viable, but they require fundamentally different product, investment and go-to-market strategies. If Quadient chooses the platform route (and recent analyst presentations seem to implicitly acknowledge this direction), the challenge will be determining how its enterprise CCM-CXM, Finance Automation and SMB software businesses come together within a coherent platform strategy while continuing to address the distinct needs of each market. The nature of competition is also changing. Over the past two decades, the composition engine has been the centerpiece of every CCM platform. Going forward, composition will remain essential, but it is increasingly becoming table stakes. Competitive differentiation is shifting towards AI-assisted content creation, workflow orchestration, governance, customer journeys, intelligent forms, accessibility, analytics and the ability to automate end-to-end customer and business interactions. Quadient has a strong software foundation with many of these components already in place. This is why CEO Geffrey Godet's decision to take direct responsibility for Quadient Digital, together with the appointment of Lilac Schoenbeck as CTO and CPO, is such an important development. Together, they have the opportunity to determine how far Quadient can (and should) unify its various software assets into a cohesive platform strategy as outlined above. Greater clarity around that direction represents an important opportunity for Quadient: helping customers better understand its long-term platform strategy, enabling investors to more fully assess the potential of its software assets, and ultimately allowing the market to recognize the strategic value of bringing these adjacent businesses together as something greater than the sum of their parts. With Quadient expected to articulate more of its broader vision at the upcoming Innovation Days, it will be particularly interesting to see how the company positions these different capabilities within its longer-term strategy. At Aspire CCS, Aspire Customer Communications Services Ltd. continue to track these developments closely, not just within CCM-CXM but increasingly across the wider document and communications automation landscape as the underlying technologies begin to converge. I'll be presenting at the upcoming Quadient Innovation Days, where I'll share its perspective on how the market is evolving and where Quadient customers can take their existing investments today. Aspire Customer Communications Services Ltd.'ll also explore many of these broader shifts - including AI, cloud, automation and changing enterprise requirements - during these sessions as well as Aspire's own upcoming State of the Industry 2026 virtual keynote. It's an exciting time for the industry, and I look forward to sharing more of its research and perspective as the market continues to evolve.

Quadient has initiated a strategic review of its Lockers business to maximise shareholder value. The parcel locker solution has grown from around 2,000 units in 2018 to over 28,000 worldwide, generating €114 million in revenue during FY 2025, representing 11% of Quadient's total revenue. Subscription-related revenue has grown at double digits over the past four years, comprising two-thirds of Lockers revenue in FY 2025 and 80% in Q1 2026. The business achieved positive EBITDA in FY 2024, with margins expanding to 5.0% in FY 2025 and expected to exceed 10% in FY 2026. The review will consider various options including continued ownership, strategic partnerships, geographic sales, or full disposal. No certainty exists regarding the outcome, structure, or timing of any potential transaction.