Proven Optics Acquires brightfin, Appoints New CEO to Unify IT Spend Management

COLUMBUS, OH – January 07, 2026 – In a significant move to consolidate the technology financial management landscape, Proven Optics today announced its acquisition of brightfin. The deal combines Proven Optics' robust IT Financial Management (ITFM) solutions with brightfin's leading Technology Expense Management (TEM) platform, creating a single, comprehensive powerhouse built natively on ServiceNow. Concurrent with the acquisition, the company has appointed enterprise software veteran Joel Martins as its new Chief Executive Officer to steer the unified organization.

This strategic merger aims to provide enterprises with an unprecedented, end-to-end view of their technology expenditures. By integrating long-range financial planning with granular, day-to-day expense control, the new entity promises to help organizations forecast, manage, and optimize their technology investments within the ServiceNow ecosystem, which is increasingly becoming the central nervous system for enterprise operations.

A Strategic Consolidation in a Booming Market

The acquisition arrives at a critical juncture for global enterprises. With worldwide IT spending projected to soar past $6 trillion by 2026, the complexity and scale of managing technology budgets have become a top-tier challenge for both CIOs and CFOs. This merger is not just a combination of two companies but a direct response to a market demanding more integrated and powerful tools to tame this financial beast.

Proven Optics has carved a niche with its premier ITFM solutions, providing tools for cost modeling, budgeting, forecasting, and capital planning. Its platform empowers IT leaders to run their departments like a business, offering deep visibility into the costs of services. On the other side of the equation, brightfin brings deep expertise in the often-chaotic world of TEM, specializing in telecom and mobile workflow automation, inventory management, and cost optimization. This domain is critical, as telecom and mobility expenses can represent a substantial portion of an organization's total IT budget.

"With global IT spend projected to exceed $6 trillion in 2026, organizations need solutions that can scale with their expanding technology budgets," said Danielle Waldman, Principal at Silversmith Capital Partners, a key investor in Proven Optics. The combination of these two complementary forces—strategic financial planning and tactical expense control—creates a holistic solution that was previously fragmented across multiple vendors and platforms.

The ServiceNow Ecosystem Advantage

A crucial element of this strategy is the unified platform's foundation on ServiceNow. Rather than creating another standalone application that requires complex integration, the combined offering operates natively within the ServiceNow environment. This approach provides significant advantages, leveraging the rich operational data already residing in the platform—from assets and resources to service utilization.

ServiceNow itself has shown strong confidence in this strategy, making a strategic growth investment in Proven Optics in 2023, following a 2022 majority investment from Silversmith Capital Partners. This support underscores the alignment with ServiceNow's own vision of becoming the single system of record for enterprise workflows. By building natively, the new Proven Optics platform avoids data silos, enhances security, and fosters collaboration by bringing IT and finance teams onto a common platform with a shared data language.

For customers already invested in the ServiceNow ecosystem, this means a faster time-to-value, lower total cost of ownership, and a seamless user experience. The platform can automate the entire financial lifecycle, from budget creation to chargeback execution, dramatically reducing manual effort and the risk of error while improving auditability.

New Leadership, Accelerated Vision

To lead the integrated company, the board has appointed Joel Martins as CEO. With over 25 years of experience spanning product management, engineering, and go-to-market leadership in enterprise software, Martins brings a track record of driving growth and innovation. His appointment signals a clear intent to accelerate the company’s product roadmap and expand its market footprint.

"Enterprises are dealing with unprecedented complexity in how they plan, budget, and optimize technology spend," Martins stated. "Proven Optics and brightfin have built exceptional capabilities that are highly complementary – bringing them together creates a more complete platform for organizations that need better visibility and control across the full lifecycle of technology spend. I’m excited to lead this team as we accelerate our product roadmap and expand what customers can achieve on ServiceNow."

Underscoring the focus on growth, the company has also expanded its Board of Directors with seasoned industry leaders. New members include Kristin Weston, a former enterprise software CEO, and Ed Roshitsh, a veteran SaaS executive and former CEO of brightfin. Their inclusion, alongside continued leadership from Silversmith Managing Partner Jim Quagliaroli as Chairman, provides a deep well of strategic guidance to navigate the company's next chapter.

From Siloed Data to Unified Control

For hundreds of enterprise and public-sector customers across North America and Europe, the merger promises a more powerful way to solve a persistent and costly problem: financial chaos born from siloed data. Without a unified view, companies struggle with billing errors, underutilized software licenses, and shadow IT, all of which drain budgets and hinder digital transformation.

The combined platform directly attacks these issues. The integration of brightfin’s TEM capabilities, which boast a 99% customer retention rate, will automate the procurement-to-payment lifecycle for IT assets, maintain inventory accuracy, and streamline invoice processing. This high-quality, transactional data will then feed into Proven Optics' strategic financial models, providing a clear line of sight from individual expenses to overall business value.

Furthermore, the unified data layer is designed to be a launchpad for next-generation, AI-driven insights. By improving the quality and accessibility of financial and asset data on ServiceNow, the platform will be better positioned to support emerging AI tools that can proactively identify cost-saving opportunities, predict future spending, and automate complex financial decisions. This positions the new Proven Optics not just as a tool for today's financial challenges, but as a foundational platform for the future of autonomous IT financial operations.