Open acquires CRM Centric: strengthening customer and citizen relationship consulting

Open, a partner in public- and private-sector digital transformation

Open is a French IT services company positioned as a trusted partner to large private and public organisations on their IT and digital transformation, with long-standing roots in public administration and the modernisation of central government services. The group has 3,800 employees and generated revenue of EUR 336 million in 2021; it operates mainly in France, as well as in Luxembourg and Romania, and is organised into three business lines: Digital Consulting, Digital & IT Services and Digital Solutions. Its strategy, set out in 2021 with a 2024 horizon, is to deepen its consulting offer one area of expertise at a time: after digital communications with La Netscouade and data with Kynapse, customer and citizen relationship management was the next building block, to be added through external growth.

CRM Centric, a French pure-play Salesforce consultancy

Founded in 2006 in La Rochelle, in the Charente-Maritime département, CRM Centric is a pure-play Salesforce consulting and integration firm, Salesforce being the world's leading vendor of SaaS customer relationship management software. Its differentiator is coverage of the full lifecycle of CRM and citizen relationship management (GRU in French) projects: consulting, change management and functional audits upstream, then integration and run-and-maintenance downstream, with recognised expertise in data marketing. Placed in judicial reorganisation (redressement judiciaire) in 2020 and then granted a continuation plan, the company found a lasting solution in joining the Open group: its expertise and teams joined the Digital Consulting business line, where they gain access to the acquirer's large private- and public-sector clients.

What the press said about the Open–CRM Centric deal

The deal was announced in early July 2022 and widely covered by the French digital and communications trade press. The main articles (in French):

Why Open acquired a Salesforce consultancy, and why this target

For Open, the issue was completeness of offer: an IT services company that advises large organisations on their transformation cannot leave customer and citizen relationship management (the point of contact between an organisation and the people it serves) outside its scope. Rather than building a Salesforce practice one consultant at a time, in a notoriously tight skills market, the group acquired an established firm in one move: its expertise, its client references and full coverage of the project lifecycle. “CRM Centric brings high-level consulting know-how in data marketing,” noted Fakhri Ouhaichi, Director of Digital Consulting at Open, at the time of the announcement, also highlighting the firm's in-depth command of the Salesforce platform.

On the target side, CRM Centric had a profile the market rarely produces: sixteen years of exclusive specialisation in the ecosystem of the world's leading CRM vendor, and end-to-end coverage, from strategic consulting to run-and-maintenance, where many players only do integration. Far from ruling the deal out, its insolvency proceedings made it an acquisition with strong industrial logic: for the firm's clients, particularly public-sector ones, backing from a 3,800-strong group secures continuity of ongoing projects; for the teams, it opens access to large accounts and markets the firm could no longer reach on its own; for the acquirer, it means taking on rare expertise within a legally structured framework.

Digital consulting consolidates, one area of expertise at a time

This deal illustrates the reshaping of the French IT services market: value is shifting from staff-based delivery towards high-expertise consulting, and IT services companies are building their offers by acquiring specialist firms in communications, data, cybersecurity and customer relationship management. Customer and citizen relationship management is particularly strategic ground: the digital transformation of public services, driven by government modernisation programmes, requires citizen relationship skills that few players master, while software vendor ecosystems such as Salesforce structure a market of certified partners where critical mass becomes decisive.

The deal also shows the other side of external growth: acquiring a business in difficulty as a way of preserving know-how. An expert firm weakened by economic conditions finds, by joining a solid group, the long-term future its continuation plan was preparing; the skills stay in France, client projects continue, and La Rochelle expertise is anchored to a national network. For the consulting ecosystem, it is a useful signal: the M&A market can also play a countercyclical role.

Collaboration Capital's buy-side role in the Open–CRM Centric acquisition

On this deal, Collaboration Capital acted as buy-side adviser. Acquiring expertise in IT services plays out in four stages, and when the target is in insolvency proceedings, each one demands additional technical skill.