Sopheon climbs after partnering with major Pakistani foods company

Sopheon's shares climbed on Thursday after it entered a partnership with National Foods Limited, a food company headquartered in Karachi, Pakistan, that has subsidiaries in the United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom and Canada.

The enterprise innovation management solutions provider said its new partner wants to ensure significant turnover growth by 2020 by introducing a formalized product development decision-making process to support the fast pace of change in the consumer markets.

The food company is aiming for better strategic alignment across the different groups of stakeholders and better visibility at all stages of the product development process to mitigate the risk inherent in investments in bold, new-to-the-world products.

Abrar Hasan, chief executive of National Foods Limited, said: "After an in-depth evaluation of a number of software vendors, we chose the Accolade Express solution. Sopheon has the expertise and a solid number of customer references in the fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) space, the solution is Stage-Gate certified, and we had really good interactions with the Sopheon team as well as CEO Andy Michuda."

Sopheon's shares were up 5.95% at 980.00p at 1222 GMT.