‘We want to buy one or two companies a year’: CloudClevr CEO

Steve Harris discusses the organisation’s £55m run rate ambition, acquisition pipeline and integration strategy

Warwickshire-HQ MSP CloudClevr is planning to acquire one or two businesses a year to push its revenue run rate towards £55m.

CEO Steve Harris tells CRN the company is back on the takeover trail after completing the integration of NGC Networks, 4Sight Communications, Bamboo Technology Group and Twisted Fish IT, the four businesses bought following its initial investment from Rigby Group.

Its latest move came earlier this month with the buyout of Flow AI, an AI, data and automation specialist previously sitting within fellow Rigby Group business SCC.

The deal added around 90 employees to CloudClevr, taking its headcount to approximately 250.

It was also CloudClevr’s first purchase since securing a new acquisition facility from NatWest in November.

Harris says that funding will now support the next stage of its buy-and-build strategy.

“We bought four businesses with the initial investment from Rigby Group, and then in November last year we expanded it with an acquisition fund from NatWest,” he explains.

“That now gives us the ability to go and buy additional businesses.”

CloudClevr has spent the intervening period bringing its initial acquisitions onto common systems, platforms and a single operating model.

With that work largely completed, Harris says the company is ready to combine organic expansion with further M&A.

‘One or two companies a year’

Harris expects another deal within the next 12 months but says CloudClevr has no intention of matching some of the more aggressive consolidation strategies seen elsewhere in the channel.

“We’re looking to buy one or two companies a year,” he tells CRN.

“We don’t want to be like some of our peers in the marketplace who are buying ten a year but not integrating.

“We want to buy very targeted businesses that are very complementary to us and integrate them in.”

The CEO says the organisation does not want acquired companies operating independently for sustained periods.

Instead, its strategy is to bring them under the CloudClevr brand and onto the same CRM, ERP and accounting platforms.

“[Acquired firms] can run separately as a separate P&L or a separate entity for a period of time, and sometimes we can keep the legal entities running, but the idea is that everyone is now under a common brand,” explains Harris.

Moving forward, CloudClevr would ideally focus on businesses generating between £8m and £10m in revenue, according to the CEO.

“We hope to close another acquisition in the next 12 months,” he says.

CloudClever’s logic behind the Flow AI acquisition

Flow AI represents a slightly different type of deal from CloudClevr’s earlier consolidation work.

Harris says the MSP had already been investing internally in AI and data, including building a Snowflake data warehouse to bring together information inherited from its previous acquisitions.

At the same time, customers were increasingly asking CloudClevr about AI.

Flow AI, which had been part of Rigby Group since SCC acquired the business in 2016, provided a way of bringing those strands together.

“It came across to us that there was a significant market opportunity to take what we’ve learned internally into our customers,” Harris says.

Flow AI had originally joined SCC as a document services and managed print business before developing its proposition over subsequent years.

“We felt, and the group felt, it was much more appropriate and much more valuable for it to sit within CloudClevr,” Harris says.

“You combine that with our interest to build a proper digital transformation practice for AI, data and automation.

“Those two parallel streams really meant that the acquisition made sense.”

Harris describes Flow AI as a “friendly acquisition”, given both companies’ positions within Rigby Group.

“It was a relatively easy transaction for us to do,” he says.

“It made absolute sense for us to do it. It’s very complementary to what we were looking for.”

CloudClevr targets £55m run rate

M&A is set to sit alongside an organic expansion goal of around 12 per cent annually.

Harris expects CloudClevr to be running at around £35m in revenue during its current financial year before accounting for Flow AI.

Including the purchase, he expects the MSP to exit the year ending March 2027 at an annualised revenue run rate of between £42m and £45m.

The target then moves higher.

“We aim to grow around 12 per cent per year organically,” Harris says.

“We’ve got, with the NatWest facility, the ability to accelerate that with acquisition.

“If you then think the following year, we’d want to be looking at more like £55m of run rate the following year. That’s what we’d look at.”

Leadership built for next M&A phase

CloudClevr has also reshaped its leadership team as it prepares for further expansion.

Tony Barker joined as CFO in July 2025, a move Harris says was directly linked to the decision to secure debt funding for future acquisitions.

“When we made the decision to embark on our debt facility to do further M&A, that was a very logical time for us to put a CFO [in place],” he says.

“That really drove that.”

Louise Mahrra subsequently joined as marketing director in March, while two Flow AI execs have now joined CloudClevr’s senior leadership team.

For Harris, the priority is now to use the platform CloudClevr has built rather than pursue deals simply for scale.

“We’ve built a really good platform that we want to make the most of.”