The company was originally founded as Whitlow Computer Systems before rebranding as Syncsort Incorporated in 1981, and then to its current form in 2020.

Its original, eponymously named product, SyncSort, was the dominant sort program for IBM mainframe computers during much of the 1970s and 1980s.

[7] According to Whitlow, the company's original task was to develop an airlines reservations system for Control Data.

[9] Syncsort was drop-in replaceable for the IBM sort utility, without having to change JCL statements or application code, and thus was easy to switch to.

[12] Aso O. Tavitian was the primary salesman for the company in its early years, and was primarily responsible for its growth.

"[19] Later that month, Lonne Jaffe became CEO and Syncsort began a series of acquisitions that broadened its scope into the big data sector.

[23][24][25] In September 2013 Syncsort acquired Circle Computer Group, a mainframe data migration provider.

[26][27] In March 2015, Syncsort acquired William Data Systems, a network monitoring and security software company.

[30][36][32] In 2019 Syncsort acquired the software and data business of Pitney Bowes in a $700 million transaction backed by affiliates of Centerbridge Partners and Clearlake Capital Group.

[40] In March 2021, Clearlake Capital Group, in affiliation with TA Associates, re-acquired Precisely in a deal worth $3.5 billion.

[3] Following the deal, Precisely pursued a series of acquisitions that supported or expanded the company's existing service offerings.

[42][43][44] In 2021, Precisely acquired: Infogix, a provider of data governance and quality tools;[42][45] Winshuttle, a Seattle-based automation and data-management company;[46][40] Anchor Point, a wildfire data, modeling, and risk assessment provider;[47] and CEDAR CX, an SaaS-based customer communications management platform.