Acquisitions are often exciting, dynamic affairs that can foster innovation and opportunity — but they can also be pragmatic.
At a time of deep market volatility, the right acquisition at the right time can assuage uncertainty and provide firm foundations for the long term. Such a deal can — as Geoff Bloss, CEO of BCM One, told UC Today during a catchup about the company’s recent Pure IP acquisition — be effective “future-proofing”.
“Our eight prior acquisitions were important. They provided a scale; they rounded out some of the gaps in our product offering. With Pure IP, this is the first acquisition that is an investment into the future of where the business is going and where the market is going.
“Whereas I would indicate our prior acquisitions as all being necessities to make sure that we have had a competitive offering in more markets today, this investment with Pure IP is making sure that we’ve got a competitive offering in the future and future-proofing our business.”
With such rampant global uncertainty, dedication to future-proofing is entirely sensible, and Bloss’s policy focus is even more logical given the context in which he started out in his current role.
“I took over as CEO of BCM in 2019, and within the first 18 months, we had a worldwide pandemic, we had a worldwide recession,” Bloss explained. “As a result, we’ve had inflation levels and interest rate levels that most of us have not seen in our business careers. So, the joke I always offer is, ‘I’m out of offering predictions for the future’ because when I started in 2019, there’s no way that I would have put that list of items together.”
The lesson that’s taught us is we’ve got to make sure that we’ve got a foundation that is built so whatever that future evolves into, we will be a strong player in that space.”
“That was the cornerstone behind our investment in Pure IP,” Bloss continued, “because we felt it gave us another key part of our foundation. As the communications market continues to evolve, it’s clear that those collaborative tools, regardless of the environment, are going to play a very strong story there.”
Over a month since the acquisition was completed, just how is the transitional process going? Bloss felt “extraordinarily positive” about its progress.
“Everything that we’ve learned during the course of diligence or believed initially when we had the first conversations with Gary (Forest, Pure IP Founder) back in September of 2022 has been affirmed post-transaction,” Bloss expanded.
“Business is strong. We won our first joint deal between the BCM team and the Pure IP team very shortly after closing. We’ve been able to start to fill a pipeline with domestic deals out of the US from BCM One’s existing channel partners and our existing sellers.”
Such an arrival under BCM One’s umbrella naturally excited the company’s partners and sellers Bloss mentioned.
Pure IP enhances BCM One’s portfolio, with the voice business’s international footprint and robust PSTN replacement solutions and support offering businesses worldwide access to a holistic portfolio of advanced voice solutions tailored to their specific requirements.
“We have had very strong interest from our partner community,” Bloss detailed. “We had a recent sales summit that included a number of folks who joined us from the UK from the Pure IP team, with many of our key partners. I think each one of those partners saw the strategic value that having Pure IP in the portfolio.”
“From our broader customer base, I think it has opened their eyes and realize that we can continue to be a partner with them as they evaluate their own transition from a more traditional telephony environment of cloud-based UCAS or straight SIP trunking services,” Bloss added. “How they can leverage their collaboration tools. They’re realizing that we can still be a partner for them into the next generation in how they support and deliver voice services within their businesses.”
Naturally, while acquisitions can indeed cultivate the kind of fresh opportunities that Bloss enthused about, there persists uncertainty about what might happen to the Pure people, structure and branding. At the time that the deal was completed, Bloss maintained to UC Today that BCM One would seek to change as little as possible — a position he reaffirmed a month on.
“Yes, that’s still very much the plan,” Bloss said. “Pure IP is our 9th acquisition. I think we’ve been reasonably successful across each of them, and a foundation of that success has been to make as little disturbance as possible in acquiring and bringing on healthy businesses.”
If anything, trying to figure out what we can do to enable or scale up the positive story that was already in existence prior to being a part of BCM. Returns are early, but I think that story is continuing with Pure IP.”
“Our integration is really focused on a couple of different dynamics out of the start. The back-office finance and administration function that we consolidate, I think, is moving forward very smoothly, as expected. Then typically, and it’s true as well with Pure IP, the next evolution is the integration of the go-to-market forces. So, the customer-facing sales strategy — how do we pursue new opportunities? How do we work jointly together as a team? I’ve been pleasantly surprised.”
Bloss suggested that the opportunities arising for originating business through BCM One’s existing channel partners and sellers and bringing that back to Pure IP are indicative of early returns on success.
However, Bloss highlighted that the deal flow that’s hit BCM One and Pure IP’s shared pipeline is illustrative of the work still to be done, as well as the challenge of navigating new waters with Pure IP representing BCM One’s first international acquisition.
“That adds a dynamic of complexity and time,” Bloss admitted. “I think we will proceed forward judiciously, slower probably than what we did in prior acquisitions because of those complexities. That’s out of a desire to make sure that no changes are instituted that are detrimental to the business, and it’s well thought-through and well-evaluated.”
Bloss is grateful for Forest’s decision to stay attached to the business in a transitory support role, too, so that “when and if we need his capability to step in and help provide us with some direction or guidance, you know he’s there and has not disappeared from the fold. I think that has helped us preserve some continuity in relationships and dialogue and in the imaging of the team and managing the business.”
When acquisitions begin generating business in the pipeline, and the process of integration is well underway, occasionally, the post-deal reality produces new opportunities or challenges that weren’t previously anticipated. However, Bloss maintains that Pure IP’s adaptability and responsiveness were key incentives for the acquisition in the first place, and that hasn’t changed post-completion. The original Pure IP strategy persists.
“I think the reason they were successful is they were and are a very nimble competitor in the space,” Bloss said. “One of the things that distinguished Pure IP in the market was their responsiveness and their capability to provide very nimble and unique solutions for their client base.”
That “nimble” approach resonated with Bloss and BCM One.
“For our 30-year history, that’s been BCM’s bread and butter,” he clarified. “That’s how we have competed in the market against many of those same service providers, providing a degree of flexibility, customization, and nimble response that they’re not going to get from the larger incumbent service providers that are out in space. So, I think that strategy with Pure is our strategy and what will remain in place because I think it’s one of the foundations of our mutual success.”
Having a service provider that is nimble and responsive but also has the scale and capability to support enterprise-level deployments is a potential game changer for BCM One and its channel partners.
“It gives our channel partners the confidence to go into those large-scale enterprises domestically within the United States and say, ‘Listen, if you’ve got a worldwide footprint of employees, you’ve got a worldwide deployment of voice services that you’re looking to manage your transition, we can bring to you one of the top partners in the Microsoft ecosystem for being able to deliver and support that digital transformation,'” Bloss enthused.
“I think that makes our channel partners that much more valuable to their end clients because they’re capable of bringing forward somebody that, 40, 50, 60 days ago, they would not have had the opportunity to do so.”
Bloss, understandably, is focused on the short-to-medium-term strategy of what BCM One and Pure IP can create together. But there will always be one eye on the horizon beyond, and Bloss observed that BCM One’s eye might start to turn to what ancillary offerings the companies can bring to market that could make them even more valuable to their channel partners and clients.
He noted that businesses are “starting to try and figure out how to enable that small to midsize contact centre solution in that space — whether it’s with Webex, whether it is with Teams — and how to build on the capabilities that are there from a voice standpoint, from a collaboration standpoint, and provide some of the basic knitting of contact centre capability”.
AI, too, has piqued BCM One’s interest.
“It’s tough to predict where AI’s gonna go,” Bloss said. “AI is the word of the day, I guess. I certainly think it’s going to have a role in the communications space, so we’re trying to figure out how we can enable and support and deliver capabilities through AI, as it is a down-the-road investment.”
What about the future? Are there any other acquisition plans to help shore up those foundations even further?
“I think that our team would always like to say that our sole focus is going to be on Pure IP but to be honest with you, I think just given the opportunities that are out there in the market today, we have a responsibility to our investors to make sure that we continue to evaluate,” Bloss said.
Nothing I think is immediately actionable at the present time. But I can tell you our acquisition and our evaluation pipeline are full. I think it would be safe to assume that Pure IP will likely not be our only transaction over the course of 2023 if not early 2024.”
For Bloss, it comes back to that term again — “Foundations”.
“We’re always looking for what are the key foundations, what are the picks and axes that, regardless of wherever the next evolution takes us, we’re going to need to have in the fold in order to make ourselves successful, enable our customers’ businesses and enable our partners to be successful supporting those customers.”
