Ongoing consolidation in the Spanish IT services industry: alliance facilitates international expansion
Source：Expansion財經報, El Pais電子報, Smart4Engineering集團網站
From：Taiwan Trade Center, Barcelona
Update Time：2024/08/05
Capitole Consulting - the Catalan IT consulting firm founded in Barcelona nine years ago by Oliver Pichou - has recently acquired the technology consulting and document management firm named Iconus, a subsidy of the construction firm Comsa. This transaction will allow Capitole to expand its informational communication technology (ICT) services as well as its workforce in Barcelona. Iconus has been offering IT project development and consulting services since 1990 and it specializes in IBM technologies, such as IBM Lotus and IBM Websphere.
The acquisition of Iconus arrives three years after the entrance of Smart4Engineering - the French holding investment group - in the Capitole shareholding. Apart from Capitole Consulting, other brands such as Atlantica, Closer, Eurosystem, Lexi, Technologies Nord, Profile, Sibylone, Smart4Systems, Solent, Titan France and TopNetwork are part of the group. Smart4Engineering constitutes a federation - categorized as such by the group itself - in which the absorbed companies retain their identity. In total, the holding investment group has a turnover greater than 300 million euros, is present in more than 11 countries and employs around 3,500 employees, as stated by an article published by the Spanish newspaper “Expansión”.
More specifically, the Catalan IT consulting firm obtained an individual turnover equivalent to 34 million euros in 2022, the last year with available data.
Following with acquisitions, a company from Almeria (Spain) named Cleintify - specialized in marketing and sales Customer Relationship Management (CRM) for SMEs and start-ups - announced on June 19th 2024 the acquisition of the Catalan company FindThatLead. The latter has developed a B2B sales prospecting tool which allows you to enter parameters in order to obtain an email list of potential clients with which to create personalized cold campaigns. Due to this acquisition, Cleintify will be able to strengthen its international position as well as access new markets such as Italy, Brazil, the United States and Canada.
Moreover, the CEO of Clientify, Fran López, has stated in an article published by the Spanish newspaper “Expansión” that the acquisition will not only complement their technological strengths, but will also allow Clientify to offer more comprehensive and advanced solutions to their clients. Along with this, the acquisition will benefit Clientify by permitting the company to make use of artificial intelligence (AI) in order to enrich the information.
Clientify will now have a team composed of 100 professionals present in 12 countries and will be able to improve the services it offers by implementing new solutions for tracking sales and prospecting opportunities. According to data provided by Statista - a statistics website -, the global CRM market will reach a value of almost 90 billion euros in 2027.
Source: https://www.expansion.com/catalunya/2024/06/25/667b131b468aeb4f7f8b458e.html; https://cincodias.elpais.com/companias/2024-06-19/la-startup-andaluza-clientify-se-refuerza-en-el-software-saas-con-la-compra-de-findthatlead.html