OSF Digital acquires UK-based Oegen in its drive to become “biggest Salesforce integrator”

OSF Digital CEO Gerard Szatvanyi
The acquisition opens up UK financial services sector to OSF.

OSF Digital continues its acquisition spree with the announcement that it has acquired Oegen, a Salesforce consulting firm in the United Kingdom (UK). The terms of the deal, which closed in late October, were not disclosed.

The acquisition will enable OSF to quickly establish a Salesforce Experience Cloud team in the UK, which is Salesforce’s customer service platform.

Oegen is OSF’s sixth acquisition in 2022, the bulk of which appear to be businesses with Salesforce-related expertise. As a Salesforce consultantcy, OSF claims to have over 1,000 Salesforce certifications.

“We are building our company in a way that eventually anybody could have an interest in acquiring us, including Salesforce.”
– Gerard Szatvanyi, OSF Digital CEO

OFS’s latest acquisition will also strengthen the startup’s Salesforce Experience Cloud presence in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) regions. The startup first entered the EMEA regions in 2018.

OFS is a commerce and digital cloud company headquartered in Québec. The startup claims to have over 2,200 employees and 49 offices worldwide. OSF’s UK clients include Burt’s Bees, Gatwick Airport, Marks and Spencer, and many others.

Oegen describes itself as an expert in Salesforce consultancy, configuration, design and development. It focuses on the financial and business services, education, and non-profit sectors. The UK startup claims its customers include major high street banks (the British term for large retail banks) as well as global education and charitable foundations.

“This acquisition will help to deepen our customer relationships in EMEA in many verticals,” said Gerard Szatvanyi, OSF’s CEO. “We are serious about further strengthening our Salesforce multi-cloud services globally. Oegen’s agility and commitment to excellence align very well with OSF’s values and mission.”

When it comes to the UK, Szatvanyi told BetaKit that OSF already knows the market and is known in the market. “The acquisition will hugely reinforce our presence in the market,” he said, “It will increase our footprint. It will open up the area of financial services, where Oegen is fairly active in.”

Oegen has approximately 35 employees, all of whom OSF intends to keep. The UK firm will be integrated into OSF. Otherwise, Szatvanyi noted, it would create a lot of confusion as both companies are playing in the same space.

The two firms first began talking about the deal in January. Before that, OSF knew of the other startup. “We saw them in the market, Szatvanyi said. “We bumped into them a few times. We had a relationship already established.”

OSF also plans to hire another 10 to 20 consultants for the UK. The timing of the hires will depend on how easy it is to find the right candidates. Szatvanyi said that generally a scarcity of talent exists and, in particular, knowledgeable Salesforce talent is not easy to find.

OSF’s previous acquisitions in 2021 included Werise, a Salesforce marketing and sales service provider based in São Paulo, Brazil; Relation1, which has offices in Toronto and Montréal, and offers Salesforce Marketing Cloud solutions; and New Zealand-based Adept Group, which offers consulting and Salesforce services.

OSF raised a $52 million CAD ($43 million USD) Series B round of funding in May 2021 to, among other things, support future acquisitions.

As OSF continues to expand its Salesforce offerings and reach, the potential exists that the startup will become more attractive to Salesforce and, ultimately, an acquisition target itself. It wouldn’t be the first time.

Salesforce has a record of acquiring firms using its platform, or consultancies that have gone on to acquire other Salesforce-related businesses.

RELATED: Salesforce to acquire Traction on Demand

Traction on Demand pursued a similar acquisition strategy of expanding its Salesforce-related offerings and offices, and Salesforce ultimately acquired it in February for an undisclosed amount. Formerly a dedicated Salesforce consulting and application development firm, Traction on Demand acquired Salesforce consulting partner New Zealand-based Trineo in September 2021 before its own acquisition.

Salesforce also acquired Toronto-based LevelJump.io in 2021. LevelJump offered sales onboarding and enablement software entirely built on Salesforce’s platform.

Similarly, Salesforce purchased e-commerce software startup Mobify in 2020. The latter integrated much of its software solutions with Salesforce before the acquisition.

Asked whether OSF was pursuing a strategy that would make them attractive to Salesforce as an acquisition, Szatvanyi first said he couldn’t comment on that before adding that the idea was “highly speculative.”

However, Szatvanyi noted: “We are building our company in a way that eventually anybody could have an interest in acquiring us, including Salesforce. But it would be anybody’s guess at this point. We are on track of building the company to be one of the biggest Salesforce integrators out there.”

Ultimately, Szatvanyi said, the deal will help OSF globally since the startup deals with a lot of enterprise customers who want the sort of support OSF offers. “Not just in the UK, the US, or Canada,” Szatvanyi said. “We are dealing with companies on a global level.”

Charles Mandel

Charles Mandel

Charles Mandel's reporting and writing on technology has appeared in Wired.com, Canadian Business, Report on Business Magazine, Canada's National Observer, The Globe and Mail, and the National Post, among many others. He lives off-grid in Nova Scotia.

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