Helm Partners Agrees to Bluewave Technology Group Acquisition
Bluewave lands deep UCaaS and CCaaS expertise while Helm benefits from added scale, processes and platforms.
![Selling Something New Selling Something New](https://eu-images.contentstack.com/v3/assets/blt10e444bce2d36aa8/blt333ef612ec0e85c9/65240d037bdf033e625dabd7/8.-Acquisition.jpg?width=700&auto=webp&quality=80&disable=upscale)
Shutterstock
Helm Partners CEO Rich Wilson said he met Bluewave CEO Seth Penland three years ago when Penland was running a channel-focused investment firm and starting to get Bluewave off the ground. Although Wilson said they maintained correspondence over the last few years, discussions about a deal didn’t take serious shape until January of this year.
Penland and Bluewave in February publicized the growth investment from Columbia Capital, stating that they were using the money to acquire partners and organically grow a technology life cycle management platform.
This isn’t the first acquisition in which Helm has participated. The company was originally known as Apella Group and provided strategic consulting services. It acquired Expert Technology Associates in 2017 to bring in a mix of brokering and advisory services.
“The reason we bought them is because Apella Group kept going after and landing enterprise-grade clients, and we needed the technical expertise and the back-office systems and solutions that ETA offered,” Wilson told Channel Futures.
The combined company rebranded as Helm in 2018.
Helm in 2021 made the decision to sell its VoxNet CLEC practice Telesystem. VoxNet provided white-labeled unified communications and managed SD-WAN services in 38 states.
That move signaled Helm’s pivot to focus entirely on its advisory services. Moreover, the firm could look more broadly across the U.S. for customers.
“When we offloaded that practice, the need to be local went away. Because when it’s your product, you’ve got to be able to serve your client,” Wilson said. “Now with the advisory service, we were able to continue our climb into the enterprise space.”
Later in the year, Helm purchased two Pennsylvania based agencies: Cory Communications and Convergent Technologies (CTI). CTI in particular gave helm a wireless management practice.
In both cases, the purchasees were looking for a way to scale and meet their customer’s demands. Wilson described the acquisitiosn as “opportunistic” in nature.
“The industry is moving and consolidating, and there’s a lot more expected of the advisory services practices that the clients are demanding. I think Cory and CTI felt that they were going to have to invest a lot and grow very quickly,” he said.
Wilson’s earlier tenure at consulting firm Booz Allen equipped him with the skills to engage with the enterprise C-suite. He said the purchase of Expert Technology Associates accelerated Helm’s ability to serve large clients. The company’s base moved from $25 million-$200 million clients to $250 million-$1 billion clients and growing. Now Helm counts a Fortune 25 customer in its base.
“Enterprise is now our hunting ground, and certainly the midsize north of 1,000 people to probably 10,000 is just this incredible sweet spot right now that needs help. And we’re perfectly positioned to help them,” he said.
Wilson said those customers see that they need more outside help with their technology.
“Everything’s changing so quickly, and there’s just so much out there that they’re having challenges navigating the space. And it would be silly to try to navigate the space without a partner and advisor to help them through this,” Wilson said.
Wilson said Helm adds a strong UCaaS and CCaaS element to Bluewave. Helm is a five-time RingCentral technology advisor of the year. It also recently expanded its contact center consulting practice.
In addition to UCaaS and CCaaS, Helm runs four other technological towers: network/connectvitity, cloud and managed services, cybersecurity and expense management. Wilson said Bluewave will bring more process into Helm’s expense management services. Bluewave’s previously acquired companies include Telapprise, which provided wireless expense management.
In addition, Wilson said he’s excited for Bluewave to help Helm expand its data center/colocation portfolio.
“That’s one of the areas that quite honestly, we haven’t maybe driven as much with our client base, relatively speaking. We’re super excited about those possibilities,” he said.
Wilson pointed to the investments Bluewave has made in building a company.
In addition to buying partners with diverse technology and services portfolios, Bluewave has spent money on building infrastructure and platforms.
“Their acquisitions, as I look at them, have not just been trying to add base. It’s not just about getting an extra couple $100,000 or $1 million dollars of revenue in the door,” Wilson said. “It’s really about adding groups that are going to be complementary or purposeful to the growth of the business in the coming years.”
Wilson noted that partners engage in “go-to-market farming” as well as “go-to-market hunting.” And that farming, which consists of cultivating one’s base and cross-selling, will improve with Bluewave’s platform.
“We had a lot of opportunities to improve our client knowledge and to track the interactions with them and to really create a process around around that interaction. And we did it well, but we bootstrapped a lot of it,” Wilson said of Helm’s previous platform and processes.
Wilson said Penland made a point of putting Helm executives at the forefront of the combined organization. Moreover, Wilson said the acquisition serves the larger Helm employee base, which is joining Bluewave as well. Adopting the Bluewave brand will enable “tremendous opportunities” for Helm and its employees, Wilson said.
So much so that it was worth working for another CEO.
“If you need to be the guy in charge that badly, then that’s your issue,” Wilson said. “I’m out for my people. I’m out for doing what’s best for them.”
Agents have seen plenty of M&A in the last two years, but consolidation is heating up even more as 2022 nears its end.
Just Tuesday, three New England-based agencies agreed to a merger with the backing of a private equity company. Bluewave announced the acquisitions of Virtual Telecomm and iSymplify in November. Berkshire-backed Upstack has agreed to terms with more than 25 agencies. And Bridgepointe has acquired agencies and given IT strategists equity.
Agents have seen plenty of M&A in the last two years, but consolidation is heating up even more as 2022 nears its end.
Just Tuesday, three New England-based agencies agreed to a merger with the backing of a private equity company. Bluewave announced the acquisitions of Virtual Telecomm and iSymplify in November. Berkshire-backed Upstack has agreed to terms with more than 25 agencies. And Bridgepointe has acquired agencies and given IT strategists equity.
Helm Partners, one of the agent channel’s largest technology advisor firms, has joined forces with private equity-backed Bluewave Technology Group.
The companies on Wednesday announced Bluewave’s acquisition of Helm. The transaction brings together two of the bigger players on the East Coast. Pennsylvania-based Helm has deep enterprise consulting expertise as well as a strong cloud communications skill set.
Bluewave isn’t saying how much it’s paying for Helm.
Helm executives say Bluewave’s unified processes and life cycle management capabilities will help drive deeper relationships with customers. Bluewave has used private equity funding to bring together several complementary agencies and standardize them around a single platform.
Bluewave’s Seth Penland
“We are at an inflection point in the transformation to digital where the technology ecosystem is changing rapidly and becoming increasingly complex. Helping our clients embrace these changes requires our combined capabilities with Helm,” Bluewave founder and CEO Seth Penland said. “Helm’s deep technical acumen, diligence, and consideration of client requirements, together with their substantial relationships with vendors, provide our clients with the advantage they need to stay ahead of the competition.”
Helm Partners’ Rich Wilson
In addition, Bluewave’s $75 million-plus war chest from Columbia Capital will accelerate Helm’s growth plan, Helm CEO Rich Wilson told Channel Futures.
“We would have had to invest in all of this stuff in 2023 if we stayed by ourselves, and instead it made much more sense to to get there faster on both sides and complete this deal,” said Wilson, who will serve as chief strategy officer at Bluewave.
Staying In the Business
Helm will fully integrate into Bluewave, taking on the Bluewave brand. However, it will maintain its office in Plymouth Meeting, Pennsylvania. According to an statement, Wilson and managing partners David Grau and Paul Weiss are equity partners in Bluewave. Helm managing partner Bill Quinlan will take up a senior management role in the company. Moreover, Wilson said everyone in Helm’s 35-person team will be going over to Bluewave.
“They’re not picking pieces of us or taking certain groups. We are merging the entire organization into the entire Bluewave organization. The ownership is in for the long haul,” he said.
Wilson shared details with Channel Futures about why his team agreed to the acquisition and where he sees customer demand moving. See the eight slides above to see his comments.
Want to contact the author directly about this story? Have ideas for a follow-up article? Email James Anderson or connect with him on LinkedIn. |
Read more about:
AgentsAbout the Author(s)
You May Also Like