Private Equity-Backed Inflow Buys Contact Center Advisory Partner

Oregon-based Inflow Communications has acquired another technology consultancy.

Inflow, which bills itself as strategic advising partner for contact center, customer experience and unified communications, is buying Epic Connections. Nebraska-based Epic specializes in contact center, offering consulting, outsourcing and professional services. Inflow is harnessing investments from the private equity firm Renovus Capital Partners.

The deal expands Inflow’s portfolio and grows its customer base. Inflow says its customers range from Fortune 500 to SMB. Epic has existed since 2003.

Inflow’s Ken Smith

“Epic has long been recognized as a trusted implementation and professional services partner in the CCaaS industry, and Inflow adds immediate scale to that line of business,” said Bill Pieper, president of Epic Connections. “I’m particularly excited to accelerate the momentum that Epic has had in operational and outsourcing consulting, with Inflow’s expanded reach and scale.”

“Inflow’s expanding service offerings provided a natural fit for Epic’s experience in operational consulting, outsourcing and customer experience technology implementation,” Inflow CEO Ken Smith said. “As a market leader, Inflow is always focused on building out our portfolio of services to best meet our client’s evolving needs. The Epic Connections team complements us well, and furthers our ability to deliver an expanded suite of value-creating services for our clients and our technology partners.”

Epic Connections’ Bill Pieper

Smith co-founded PeakView, a partner firm that Renovus purchased and combined with Inflow last year.

Private Equity

Pennsylvania-based Renovus announced its partnership with Inflow in January 2020. Crunchbase lists the transaction as an acquisition. The private equity firm led a funding round announced on Jan. 13.

The traditional telecom agent channel has seen an influx of private equity investment in the last year. While most of the money has gone to technology solutions brokerages such as Avant and Telarus, agencies like Upstack have also received large investments.

Epic’s technology solutions brokerage partners include Advantage Communications, Avant, Intelisys, TBI and Telarus.