ECI e-automate: Business Management ERP for Office Technology Dealers
| Vendor | ECI Software Solutions |
|---|---|
| Headquarters | Westlake, Texas, USA (vendor) |
| Ownership | Private equity: Leonard Green & Partners and funds advised by Apax Partners (co-control since early 2025), with additional investment from GIC |
| Deployment | Cloud (SaaS); legacy on-premises installed base |
| Target market | Office technology dealers and managed print service providers (SMB to mid-market, North America) |
| Industries | Office equipment, imaging, managed print services, workplace technology |
| Pricing | Not published; quote-based |
| Website | ecisolutions.com/products/e-automate |
The short version
e-automate runs the back office of an office technology dealership: the companies that sell, lease, and service copiers, printers, and workplace technology under contract. ECI calls it a dealer management solution. The functional footprint says otherwise, because service dispatch, contract and meter-based billing, inventory, purchasing, and full accounting in one system is what most buyers mean by ERP. In the North American imaging channel it is a widely deployed back-office system and a regular shortlist fixture when dealers replace aging software.
Where e-automate comes from
The product was built by Digital Gateway, Inc., a Utah software company in business since the mid-1990s. Its purpose from the start was narrow and practical: pull dealer accounting, service, inventory, meter reading, and equipment tracking into one place. ECI Software Solutions bought Digital Gateway in September 2011 and rebranded the flagship as ECi e-automate in 2014, making it the anchor of the vendor's office technology division.
ECI itself started in 1999 as e-commerce Industries and grew into a multi-vertical software group through dozens of acquisitions, with headquarters in Westlake, Texas. It stays private. Leonard Green & Partners took majority ownership in 2020, and in early 2025 funds advised by Apax Partners raised their stake to co-control, alongside an additional investment from GIC.
Modules and capabilities
The core covers contract management with meter-based billing, service management and dispatch, inventory and purchasing, general ledger with payables and receivables, equipment history tracking, and reporting and analytics. Around that core sits a set of tightly coupled ECI companion products: MobileTech for field technicians, Printanista for device fleet monitoring and automated meter collection, PO Processor for purchase order handling, and EvolutionX for a B2B e-commerce storefront. Taken together they run a service-contract dealership end to end.
Who buys it
Independent office equipment dealers and managed print service providers, from single-location businesses to multi-branch mid-market dealerships, almost entirely in the United States and Canada. Their revenue is a mix of imaging hardware, consumables, service contracts, and increasingly managed IT. The system is built around exactly that contract-and-service mix.
How it is sold
ECI markets e-automate as a cloud-based solution today, while a substantial installed base still runs earlier on-premises versions and gets steered toward hosted deployment. Nothing is published on price. Quotes turn on user counts, modules, and which companion products come along, so the multi-year picture is worth modeling before signing; our ERP TCO calculator gives that a structure.
Our take
Buy it if you are a North American office technology dealer. Contract profitability, meter billing, and service economics are handled natively here, where horizontal ERP products would need expensive customization to imitate them, and that single argument carries most of the decision. The trade-off is dependence on the ECI ecosystem, since e-commerce, fleet data collection, and mobile service all arrive as separate companion products rather than as parts of one platform. Dealers pushing hard into managed IT services tend to outgrow the vertical scope and end up pairing e-automate with a PSA platform, which is a warning worth taking seriously if managed services are the growth plan. Anyone outside the office technology channel should not shortlist it at all.
What the ECI e-automate website looks like
Current view of the vendor homepage, captured by our editorial team.
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