Acquisitive Sabio becomes Spain's 'largest contact centre specialist' with latest deal

VP of commercial strategy says further inorganic growth is 'absolutely' on the cards

Sabio has become the largest independent contact centre specialist in Spain as a result of its latest acquisition, according to VP Mike Andrews.

The firm has snapped up Callware, which specialises in workforce optimisation (WFO), and also provides unified comms and cloud contact centre solutions in Spain and Mexico.

WFO solutions provide key data on the performance of the workforce.

Sabio has made a spate of acquisitions since receiving £30m backing from private equity firm Horizon Capital (formerly Lyceum Capital) in 2016. In 2017, it added Rapport and DataPointEurope to its roster, and last year snapped up Bright UK and Singapore-based flexAnswers.

The newest addition to its stable brings Sabio's global headcount to 440. The firm ranked 76th in CRN's Top VARS 2018, with revenues of £49.5m.

"This acquisition not only grows our customer footprint in Spain, but also the strength and depth of our skill set," Andrews told CRN

"We are now able to deliver very sophisticated contact centre solutions and WFO around speech analytics, which is a compelling portfolio of capabilities.

"We have a significant customer base in the market now and the ability to provide more value to our customers in that portfolio. It is a logical consolidation of WFO skills, which are very specialist in Europe."

Sabio's latest addition supports its DataPointEurope acquisition by bringing a capability that had previously been absent in its market presence in Spain, Andrews added.

He said that the company's core solutions business has traditionally been around the provision of contact centre solutions and services, conversational sales service and WFO.

"In Spain, we had two of those three elements in terms of capability, but we lacked WFO," he explained.

"WFO is a very specialist topic and there are a relatively small number of organisations globally that specialise in it, particularly in the context of speech analytics.

"More than half of Callware's customers use this speech analytics technology. That is attractive to us because when combined with our WFO skills, it makes us a compelling organisation in that market throughout Europe."

Andrews was coy on whether or not the company is looking for further acquisitive opportunities, stating only that inorganic growth is "absolutely" a part of Sabio's strategy and that it is "performing positively" for the company.