Business Systems Limited’s (BSL) recent ownership change has resulted in it making the first acquisition in its 33-year history, according to its Executive Chairman, Geoff Love (pictured, above).
The enterprise comms provider has acquired London-based acrinax, which specialises in Contact Centre-as-a-Service (CCaaS) and Workforce Engagement Management (WEM).
Love told UC Today that the growth acrinax has seen with its dozen customers – which includes Weetabix, AO and Metro Bank – played a part in its purchase.
“What they’ve done is quite phenomenal really; they’ve built a business which is approaching £4m of turnover on just a dozen customers,” he said.
“If they can do that with just 12 customers, what could they do with our 200 customers? What could we do if we approach these organisations with that same strategic consulting sell and really work at a higher level of these organisations and trying to help them solve all of their problems.”
“We’re not just going for scale here, this isn’t about doing bolt-ons and getting scale for the sake of it. It’s about how we can expand the organisation through a small number of very clever deals. The next acquisition we’ll probably do will be in that WEM space. Then we’ll be looking where can we go internationally, such as the States or APAC.”
acrinax was founded by former NTT Data employees Damian Bowen, David Baughan and Andrew Jacobs, who will join the BSL senior leadership team. The acquisition brings BSL’s headcount to 100.
BSL intends to make five or six further acquisitions in the next three years, with two more likely this year, Love said. Any acquisitions would either be about geographic expansion or balancing the company’s revenue streams, he added, explaining that its voice recording, monitoring and compliance unit is currently bringing in the bulk of the revenue and that acrinax’s addition will bolster its CCaaS sales.
“The voice recording, monitoring and compliance piece makes up the bulk of our revenues and this acquisition has effectively put more balance between those revenue streams,” he explained.
“We still are a little bit underweight on WEM and so our focus is on growing those revenue streams to the same size and then take things international”
BSL is also undergoing its own transformation from a reseller to a software developer and Love emphasised that this is a key part of its strategic growth.
“This is an organisation that historically has sold other people’s products, but over the last few years we’ve developed our own software which has become quite a major part of the revenue,” he stated.
“So rather than [continuing our model] of selling other people’s products, we want to start selling our own and get other people selling our offerings.”
BSL came under the new ownership of August Equity, which also owns Air IT and Charterhouse Voice and Data, earlier this year. Having private equity backing “turbocharges” the business, Love said, adding that his goal is for BSL to reach a £100m valuation.
“The last 33 years has had steady growth and been done in a way which has been very gradual and then suddenly August comes along and we’re now hiring new staff, investing in training, customers and products, as well as doing an acquisition in nine weeks,” he stated.
“It is transforming our business and helping the staff reach their full potential, as well as helping our customers reach their full potential”
