Advania UK CEO talks Servium acquisition for direct resale capabilities

The Microsoft partner has completed the buyout of Servium, a tactical move that’s been a goal since 2021

Nordic MSP Advania has acquired British VAR Servium to further expand its reselling business.

With the acquisition, combined annual revenue will reach around £180m, Advania UK CEO Geoff Kneen tells CRN.

He explains that after Content+Cloud became part of the Advania group in December 2021, the company built a five-year plan looking at the service mix it offers to existing and potential new clients.

"Over the past seven years, we've built our business around a cloud-first offering, digital transformation, and cloud managed services. We've been successful in securing larger relationships with our clients. However, it was clear that as we continued to grow, there were gaps in our portfolio offering," Kneen explains.

He says one major gap was Advania's inability to offer the full resale of technology equipment to clients.

"Many clients told us that if we had these services, they would take them from us as a trusted, long-term partner helping with their technology roadmap and needs.

"When developing our new five-year plan around two and a half years ago, filling this resale capability gap was identified as a strategic priority. It also aligned with Advania's overall strategy of becoming the leading technology services partner in Northern Europe, where we already had resale capabilities across Sweden, Norway, and Iceland."

By combining resale with cloud services and digital transformation offerings, Advania planned to become a one-stop shop for clients' technology needs - a key strategic goal.

Kneen adds: "For the past two years, we've been looking across the market for an organisation with a similar philosophy of building long-term, trusted client relationships and providing an environment for employees to thrive and have successful careers. That's what we found in Servium."

Before the acquisition, Advania's resale business functioned on a relatively small scale, primarily as a pull-through from managed services and project services offerings and didn't have a standalone profit and loss centre or go-to-market approach dedicated to resale.

Servium's core business is a resale-led model that goes to market directly with an offering centred around technology equipment procurement, fulfilment, asset management, and logistics capabilities for clients.

"While there is a small overlap in that we share some common technology partners, the real capability we gain is their direct resale go-to-market model for technology equipment to clients - something we previously lacked," Kneen says.

In addition to the technical expertise in running complicated procurement exercises to ensure clients get the right technology for their needs, Kneen adds this acquisition opens up new routes to market.

"We can cross-sell and leverage our existing cloud and digital transformation capabilities through these new channels. Conversely, Servium's procurement and logistics proficiency complements what we already provide our current client base.

"So in essence, we are bolting on a dedicated, mature resale business line and go-to-market motion that we were missing, while also gaining complementary technical capabilities on both sides to create cross-selling opportunities."

Paul Barlow, CEO of Servium also commented: "We are delighted to unite with Advania, who equally share our passion and commitment to service excellence. Together, we are now able to offer an enhanced range of solutions that touch every part of the modern IT landscape, responding to our customers' needs to create business value through innovation, increase efficiencies and harness new ways to consume technology."

Serving the mid-market

SMEs make up 99.9 per cent of UK employers but are poorly served, with cost, complexity and cybersecurity major concerns, Advania found in a recent report.

92 per cent of mid-market IT buyers claim Big Tech vendors don't act in their best interest.

With this acquisition, the Microsoft partner is hoping to address these concerns across a broader portfolio, leveraging Servium's experience serving larger clients.

Advania is now aiming to deliver end-to-end solutions optimising costs, improving security, and driving innovation to meet the exact needs of mid-market businesses.