Maintel mulling next buy after 'taking peers by surprise' with speedy Azzurri integration

Former Azurri staff standing a few inches taller, despite "nostalgia" about the name going, claims boss

Maintel is on the lookout for another acquisition in 2017, according to its CEO Eddie Buxton, who claims the integration of Azzurri has been so speedy, it's taken the firm's peers by surprise.

Back in May, Maintel snapped up Azzurri - which was double its size - to create a £150m-revenue giant. The deal followed on from other Maintel buys such as Proximity and Datapoint.

Speaking to CRN, Buxton (pictured) said that the Azzurri integration has been extremely fast and efficient, and in a short space of time, the firm has achieved a lot, such as integrating engineering and sales, and creating a single brand and marketing effort.

From 3 October, the unified organisation structure was complete and the Azzurri brand was retired, signifying that the process is now "largely complete".

"We've taken some of our peers by surprise how quickly we have done that", said Buxton, adding that a lot of due diligence and detailed plans were put in place before the deal even closed, meaning the exec team could "hit the ground running" when the ink dried.

A full-time internal integration director was appointed to the main board, as well as an external expert and a dedicated integration team.

Buxton said that although the initial plan had been to retain the Maintel brand, and ditch Azzurri, he did allow "some kind of debate" about it.

"In the end we went down the Maintel route," he said. "The reason for that was that for a number of years Azzurri had had some financial woes and whatever. It just signals a fresh start and really moving forward as one organisation."

Rufus Grig, group strategy officer at Maintel, added that a brand is "more than a logo, typeface and colour scheme", insisting that key elements of Azzurri have been retained.

"Although we kept the Maintel name and the visual attributes, we had a long, hard look at and review of what is the business in the marketplace," he said. "The products and services Azzurri brought to the party, along with what Maintel already had, does create a different and stronger proposition. Our proposition to the market has evolved - we have a lot stronger managed services play and a much stronger cloud and hosting offer. We needed to pull all of that together.

"Within the people who came from Azzurri, there is obviously a degree of nostalgia towards what was really a terrific business people were very proud of, but there is also a lot of optimism about the future. We're a really well-funded business which is doing well and winning business and has a proposition which is ahead of the market. People are standing a couple of inches taller than they were."

Consolidation coming

Consolidation has been a buzzword of the year, with vendors, distributors and resellers all getting in on the M&A act.

Buxton said once the finishing touches have been added to the Azzurri integration, the firm will be ready to go again.

"There is no doubt about it, consolidation is going to be a key word in our sector," he said. "What we did is just part of what's going on in the marketplace. We see ourselves in that consolidation play going forward. We want to bed this one in properly and make sure we're ready for the next one, but we're certainly keeping our eye out for the next one, probably sometime in 2017 or beyond, depending on when we are ready.

"For us it is about finding the right acquisition. It's not acquisition for scale anymore, it's acquisition to build on the big moves in the market - from on-prem to cloud. We've got to look to future-proof the business and move it forward."

Grig added that many resellers look to M&A because they can't navigate the new cloudy world alone.

"They are difficult changes to navigate if you don't have the scale to do it - scale really helps navigate those periods of change," he said. "Some of the businesses are not of the size and strength to do it and are seeing a wave of change. They realise they need to partner with or join forces with other people to emerge stronger on the other side."