Ad Hoc makes acquisition for user experience footing

Digital services company Ad Hoc has acquired Cascades Technologies, a provider of data analytics and user experience solutions to government agencies.

Terms of the transaction announced Tuesday were not disclosed. Washington, D.C.-headquartered Ad Hoc said it gains a greater footing with financial and regulatory agencies including the General Services Administration and Labor Department.

Greg Gershman, Ad Hoc's co-founder and CEO, wrote in a blog post that his company is moving on this acquisition amid a push by agencies to embrace techniques and tools more commonly seen in consumer technology. Those initiatives are intended to fall in line with the Customer Experience Executive Order signed in December.

As agencies do that, Gershman wrote "they will need partners with deep government experience and teams staffed with technologists with industry-leading skills."

Cascades was founded in 1998 and touts its core experience areas as including data analytics, compliance processes and help desk support. The company also works on projects involving mobile development and bilingual user experience, mobile applications and cloud migration.

Herndon, Virginia-headquartered Cascades has received $2.8 million in unclassified prime contract obligations over the past 12 months with 79% of that spend from GSA and 20% out of Labor, according to USASpending.gov data.

Ad Hoc was founded in 2014 by Gershman and Paul Smith after both worked on the team responsible for rescuing the Healthcare.gov website.

Their company has been obligated $38.4 million over the trailing 12-month period with substantially all of that from the Department of Health and Human Services.