It’s been a promising week for the Salesforce ecosystem, as two prominent Salesforce consultancies on either side of the pond have been acquired.
London-based consultancy Cloud Orca, with 55 employees, has been acquired by accountancy firm Cooper Parry, and Atlanta-based Sercante with 90 employees has been acquired by a new firm, Trilliad.
Two New Acquisitions
This week I published a post surrounding the Salesforce M&A market, as larger deals such as these have been infrequent over the past 18 months or so.
But these types of deals are always good news for the Salesforce ecosystem. Companies such as Cooper Parry will only spend millions of dollars on buying a Salesforce consultancy if they continue to see Salesforce and the digital space as a lucrative investment. Primarily an accountancy firm, Cooper Parry is looking to start offering tech services to their clients.
“This Cloud Orca deal is a massive leap forward in our tech offering. It ticks tons of the right boxes: market reputation, powerful culture, huge growth, and a passion for sustainability. The fit is spot on. As we create the UK’s next-gen accountancy firm, the landing of such an impressive anchor firm in the digital and tech space is brilliant news. What a way to start the new financial year! And the great thing is, there’s plenty more on the horizon.”
Cooper Parry CEO, Ade Cheatham
This comes after Salesforce was under fire for six months whilst six activist investors took control of the narrative, and tried to push various changes at Salesforce (including the potential sale of Tableau and Slack). But with profit margins up, and growth continuing even in the face of a slowing economy, Salesforce continues to be one of the fastest-growing Cloud enterprise technology companies in the world.
Sercante and Cloud Orca, only founded in 2017 and 2018 respectively, have grown to a respectable size in a relatively short amount of time, which truly shows the demand for Salesforce services over the past few years.
Cloud Orca has become the go-to partner for Financial Services in the UK mid-market, boasting clients such as Revolut, Starling Bank, and Monzo Bank.
Whilst Sercante has become one of the most recognisable mid-market consultancies in the US, especially for their work within the Salesforce Marketing Cloud suite. Sercante’s acquisition is slightly unusual, in the sense that they have been acquired by a newly set up company called Trilliad, backed by an all-star team of former executives.
Trilliad is a growth services provider, and will primarily work in the customer experience department and processes such as sales, marketing, and customer success.
Trilliad is backed by David Williams and Craig Dempster, former CEOs of the powerhouse consultancy, Merkle. They have also recently brought on Erin Hutchinson, former CMO of Merkle. Andrea Tarrell, CEO and Founder of Sercante announced the acquisition on LinkedIn yesterday, saying:
“This is a new era for our team. We’re leaning in hard on Data + AI, and we’re looking forward to driving radical impact for even more customers and team members in this next chapter!”
Summary
The Salesforce ecosystem has been a hotspot for larger consultancies and investment firms, as they’ve snapped up nearly every mid-sized Salesforce services company around. Whilst there has been a dip in recent years from the frenzy of the late 2010s, it’s encouraging to see money flowing back into Salesforce in preparation for the next phase of Data + AI + CRM.
Acquisitions like these also provide a lot of opportunities for the smaller service providers. As consultancies such as Cooper Parry and Trilliad will look to move upstream to the bigger deals, a gap opens up for smaller consultancies and new entrants into the market.
If you are a founder who is interested in selling your business or you just want to chat about the current state of M&A or the ecosystem at large, feel free to reach out to me directly at ben@salesforceben.com.