What is your first thought when you learn that a valued partner is in the middle of a merger or acquisition?
Is it: “How will it impact on my current contract?”
Is it: “What will it mean for my day-to-day ops and service levels?”
Or is it: “Will my own cultural values be at odds with those of my new partner’s?”
Well, chances are it’s all of the above and many more besides.
But one thing is for sure: the channel’s unique, fast-moving nature means merging and acquiring is simply a part of the evolutionary journey.
Maybe it’s a reflection of the speed at which technology moves on.
Maybe it’s because the sector’s fast moving pace, in its nature, attracts venture capitalism – something that intense M&A activity often depends upon.
Or maybe it’s just the channel’s uncanny ability to provide its growth-driven players with valuation ‘multipliers’ to stimulate that activity.
Whatever the answer, the resulting impact on all involved is more often positive than negative.
After all, what’s not to like about a commercial partner reinvigorating itself as a result of ownership change, strategic redirection or a cultural identity reboot.
If the outcome of a merger or an acquisition is driving positive change for all impacted parties (whether that’s workforce, partners OR customers’ customers) then everyone’s a winner.
That’s exactly how it is with leading Sweden-based mid-market UCaaS provider, Soluno.
By recently acquiring Soluno – along with Swedish cloud software provider Telepo – the rapidly-expanding Belgian-based cloud communications giant Destiny has become Europe’s largest UCaaS platform provider and one of the biggest in the world.
For Soluno’s reseller partners and their customers it is surely a positive development.
“It means increased choice, increased scale and access to unrivalled levels of ongoing product development and innovation,” says Soluno CEO Mattias Ohde.
“Our merger also creates a new market force in European UCaaS provision that has unparalleled competitive advantage. Something that in the long-term will drive down cost. That has to be great news for all of our reseller partners and their end customers.”
Perhaps the key to success is that Soluno’s day-to-day operations will continue unchanged across its multiple European territories: its autonomy an important feature of Destiny’s strategy.
Additionally, Soluno customers are already hosted on Telepo’s platform, so continuity is maintained in that regard too.
“Autonomy makes perfect sense because different countries have different operational protocols,” says Ohde.
“Soluno retains its ability to be flexible and agile and to respond to the localised challenges of its partners and customers. At the same time Soluno is benefitting from its new position as part of a pan-European centralised group with all of the economies of scale and operations which come with that.
“Our new, more powerful R&D function, in particular, will help drive our focus on constantly-improving the user experience of our popular UCaaS platform and all of our other solutions.
“We are expanding choice by adding new and alternative product offerings to our portfolio, with mobile-first, ease of use and look-and-feel front and centre of our approach.
“All of this new innovation is made possible by our merger with Destiny and it signals a very bright future not only for Soluno, but for all of our partners too.”
Group CEO Patrik Sörqvist agrees.
“Soluno has constantly generated strong organic growth by providing our channels and end customers with innovation that enables easy to use and future proof business communications,” he says.
“By joining the Destiny family, our European vision is already a reality and we will together transform the European UCaaS market.”
Soluno and its partners are also likely to benefit further still from future M&A activity.
“We will continue to grow both organically and by acquisition,” says Ohde.
“But, importantly, we will be quite picky. We don’t want to buy old legacy businesses. We are looking for born-in-the-cloud, mobile-first businesses who, like us, have one foot in the future, not in the past.
“Successful mergers and acquisitions are as much a cultural thing as a financial or operational one.
“Soluno was founded originally by visionary, self-driven entrepreneurs. Those are the kind of partners we love working with.”
- To learn how Soluno’s innovative and scalable UCaaS solutions can help power your customers’ mobile-first cloud-based communications strategy visit www.soluno.com
