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August Equity backs fourth MSP
Firm continues its strategy to invest in managed service players it believes can become significant in the market
August Equity has continued its strategy of investing in managed service providers (MSPs), making its fourth acquisition in the market.
The firm has already picked up SecureData, Air IT and unified comms player Charterhouse Voice & Data.
Charterhouse was in the headlines last week as a result of its double acquisition of Symity and Digital Exchange Products (DXP). The firm is on a buy-and-build strategy, backed by August Equity since late 2018, and has also picked up NETConnection Systems in December 2019 and Lloyds IP in early 2020.
Joining the list of majority investments made by August is Business Systems UK, which is a cloud and contact centre specialist that has 85 staff and 170 customers. The firm has developed its own voice compliance software tool, WordWatch, that it is selling on a worldwide basis.
The former chief commercial officer at Business Systems, Adam Kantor, will become CEO, and Geoff Love, former CEO of business messaging specialist Commify, is joining as executive chairman.
“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, 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,” said Kantor.
“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,” he said.
Opportunities ahead
Business Systems executive chairman Geoff Love said that with private equity behind the business there were opportunities ahead: “Business Systems offers a tremendous platform for growth. It has unrivalled heritage in compliance and monitoring voice recording, partnerships with the world’s leading cloud contact centre and workforce engagement management solution vendors, and a blue-chip customer base with exceptionally high customer satisfaction scores.”
Mehul Patel, partner at August Equity, said that it would give Business Systems the backing it needed to become a leading player in its market segment.
“This platform has an opportunity to expand its customer base globally while investing more on higher growth segments such as CCaaS and its internally developed voice compliance management tool, Wordwatch,” he said. “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 its ownership.”
