Keegan Crage (TechBrain)
Perth managed services provider (MSP) TechBrain has acquired IT and communications specialist Datamerge to expand its own operations.
Acquired for an unknown sum back in February and integrated into the business over the next several months, the MSP purchased Datamerge to expand its customer base and its skillset, which focused on IT networks, IP telephone systems and design, installation and support.
In addition, TechBrain owner Keegan Crage claimed there was untapped revenue potential in the acquired business’ clients.
“Simply because of our size of team and depth of skills, it affords us the ability to be able to service clients differently. Datamerge was somewhat smaller than us, so their service methodology was slightly different,” he said to ARN.
Crage also said the acquisition gave the MSP’s team “new and interesting work that enabled them to grow and learn”, which in turn enabled the business to retain key staff by having that work introduced.
“Datamerge and TechBrain had been on friendly terms for an extended period of time and we caught up from time to time to discuss what was going on in the market and to discuss how our respective businesses were going and so it wasn't the first time that we had that discussion,” Crage said.
Following the acquisition, TechBrain merged Datamerge into its own business, as Crage said he wasn’t interested in continuing with the Datamerge brand. With that being said, all of Datamerge’s employees made the transition over to the new ownership, including owner Mark Dutton, who was looking to “slow down and semi retire,” Crage recounted.
“He saw this as an opportunity to partner with somebody who had similar values and similar ethos in terms of how they operated whilst also providing him with the opportunity to continue doing some work without stepping away completely,” he said.
This aligns with TechBrain’s long-term goal which is to expand from Perth and set up shop across other capital cities, with Crage stating that future MSP acquisitions are one way, in his view, to achieve this.
“If there are MSPs in Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne or Adelaide that are approaching retirement and have an interest in a partial or a whole sell down, then we'd be very much interested in having a conversation with them,” Crage said.
“We're not looking to make acquisitions outside of the MSP space, but certainly, within that sector, we'd very much like to work with those that are that are at that stage of their career.”
This is opposed to scaling organically, which he added is “very difficult to do”.
While Crage was familiar with Datamerge, which provided similar services to that of TechBrain, one thing he wasn’t expecting was the amount of work involved with integration.
“The reason is that every client has a different engagement, their way of setting up agreements or projects, time or material engagements was different to ours, their rates were different to ours, the way in which they use their ticketing system was different to ours; Even simple things like migrating data across from one instance of clinic wise to another instance of ConnectWise presented challenges,” he said.
“If we were to do an acquisition again, and we would very much want to, then I think what we would do is we would set up a specific project integration team.
“When you acquire something that's very similar that , like a piece of a puzzle, should just fit in. In actual fact, there's a very large number of small pieces that were the parts that sometimes you just don't even think about and they're only obvious in hindsight,” he added.
