Ex-Ariba, SAP exec takes top job at iPipeline
Venture-backed insurance software firm seeks to boost $60M sales to $1B valuation
Paul Melchiorre, ex-head of sales for SAP America and vice president at Ariba until this week, jumped ship as the business software giant bought the networking firm for $3.4 billion; he's now president at Exton-based iPipeline, the fast-growing, profitable insurance software firm, which counts Lincoln National, Mutual of Omaha and hundreds more insurers as clients.
"It's transforming the way people buy and sell insurance," one of the last big businesses to go all digital, Melchiorre tells me. "We're not talking about cutting 20 people from a call center. We're talking about how you keep your business so someone else doesn't take it away."
Melchiorre will run sales, operations and finance. iPipeline chief executive Tim Wallace remains boss for strategy and acquisitions. Ex-sales head Bill Butler has departed and has been in talks to run another local tech company, according to company sources.
iPipeline employs 350, including newly acquired European, Canadian and Asian offices. The firm raised $62 million earlier this year and spent it on dividends to previous investors; it's funding acquisitions from profits, impressively.
"They took the sales to $60 million. How do we get its value to $1 billion?" said Michael DiPiano, head of Radnor-based NewSpring Capital, one of iPipeline's investors. That will be Melchiorre's job.
» READ MORE: Read more in my column in today's Philadelphia Inquirer.