Comms VAR Business Systems takes on private equity backing from Charterhouse investor August Equity

August Equity also counts SecureData, Air IT and Charterhouse in its channel portfolio

Business Systems UK (BSL) has taken on a new investment from private equity house August Equity.

Established in 1987, BSL bills itself as an enterprise communications specialist and counts Capita, Red Box and Verint among its vendor partners.

August takes a controlling interest in the firm, adding the business to its growing portfolio of managed service providers, which includes Charterhouse, Air IT and SecureData.

The investment is expected to enable BSL to develop further opportunities to enter new geographies, both in the UK and further afield.

BSL reported a turnover of £11.9m for its year ending 31 December 2019.

Adam Kantor, BSL's chief commercial officer, will take the reins as CEO, while Geoff Love, former chief exec of business messaging specialist Commify, joins the company as executive chairman.

"This is an exciting opportunity for BSL, our employees and our customers," stated Kantor.

"Our legacy of providing compliance and monitoring solutions to the world's largest financial institutions has been the foundation from which we have built our workforce engagement management and cloud contact centre offerings, and this investment opportunity allows us to serve our customers even better with innovative and disruptive technologies, as well as providing access to additional expert resources.

"By working with August Equity, we can help our customers transform the way they work from the inside out, both through market leading vendor solutions as well as our own innovative IP, Wordwatch, a unique platform that solves a multitude of voice recording and compliance challenges."

Mickey Patel, partner at August Equity, added: "We are delighted to back the team in growing BSL to become a leading player in its market space.

"This platform has an opportunity to expand its customer base globally whilst investing more on higher growth segments such as Contact Centre-as-a-Service and its internally developed voice compliance software management tool called Wordwatch.

"August has developed a successful playbook to develop managed services businesses through acquisition and organic strategies and create an outstanding business over the period of our ownership."

Richard Muckle, director at the PE firm, stated: "We have been mapping and tracking the enterprise communications and contact centre market for over two years now.

"BSL as a platform for growth offers best-in-class solutions to highly discerning customers. We look forward to working with Adam and Geoff and to partnering with many more businesses who want to join us on this exciting journey."