Batesville moves to expand services to funeral homes, acquires Halcyon

September 10, 2024/Business, Finance/

Roughly 18-months into their journey as an individual operating company, Batesville has made their first acquisition. And, it should come as no surprise that the acquisition expanded the company’s technology offerings. It was announced last week, in this press release, that Batesville has acquired Halcyon, a deathcare management system.

Batesville CEO Chris Trainer made these comments in the press release, “Over the last two decades, Halcyon has become one of the most respected providers of funeral home and crematory management software by delivering high levels of product innovation, technology leadership and outstanding customer service – all while maintaining the same integrity the company was founded on. We are excited to continue to invest in new capabilities, new partnerships and integrations to support the changing needs of today’s professionals and provide a foundation for success for the next generation.”

According to the press release, Halcyon’s technology applications can help funeral homes and cemeteries in the following areas:

Funeral home management software with a family-facing arrangement tool
Crematory management software with body tracking capabilities
Trade services management software
Pet cremation management software

For more information on the company that will now operate with Batesville as their parent, you can access the Halcyon website here.

Tom Anderson
Funeral Director Daily

Funeral Director Daily take: It is pretty evident in the funeral home business that there is a trend to be more technology savvy and also to have some type of technology interface with the consumer public. It appears that Halcyon does that with added benefits that can interface with accounting packages, credit cards, and online document signing software.

At Funeral Director Daily we’ve also preached about the ability of funeral directors to have all the necessary information on accounts and services at their fingertips and, according to the Batesville press release, Halcyon and its systems can be accessed from any device with a “user-friendly” navigation system. In my opinion, that is almost a necessity in today’s Death Care world where current families being served may call or text directors at any time while directors could be in any location. . . .most of the time out of the office.

From my point of view, the next 24-36 months will show an increasingly competitive environment for these management software navigation systems in the Death Care sphere to become your funeral home or cemetery’s management system partner. Company’s like Funeral365, Passare, PlotBox, Osiris, Halcyon, and many more will have a short-term race to become your management system of choice because funeral home’s without a “family-friendly” management system may risk loss of clientele because of out-dated technology that many families will be looking for.

I also think that with the number of players in this ever-crowding field that we will see some consolidation of the providers in the not so distant future.

Related Information — “Why is Batesville making acquisitions”?

When I started in funeral service employment in 1980, Batesville was predominently a wholesale casket company. Here is a couple of statistics that I found on why that business has changed so drastically:

1970 Number of United States Deaths: 1.921 million
2022 Number of United States Deaths: 3.279 million

1970 U.S. Cremation Rate: 5%
2022 U.S. Cremation Rate 60%

1970 Estimated Number of Casketed Burials: 1.824 million
2022 Estimated Number of Casketed Burials: 1.179 million

Analysis of those statistics will tell you that America has became a “Cremation Nation”. Over a span of 52 years the country has approximately 1.4 million more annual deaths than in 1970. However, because of the higher cremation rate, the country is purchasing about 645,000 less caskets annually. . . . . .and that continues to decrease as cremation continues to increase.

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