Armanino Consulting, the technology arm of regional accounting firm Armanino McKenna, has purchased Naperville, Ill.-based Intacct partner and cloud consultancy AccessTek, effectively expanding Armanino’s Intacct practice in addition to its overall cloud accounting and financial product sales and consulting practice.
AccessTek, a top Intacct channel partner and Presidents Club member, on Sept. 1 effectively becomes part of Armanino and will retain all of its employees, including chief executive Lindy Antonelli. She will become a partner with Armanino. Antonelli last year launched the Cloud Accounting Institute, a cloud accounting and finance education and advocacy group.
The acquisition is part of Armanino’s plan to enhance its cloud practice area, which includes representing products from Intacct as well as Adaptive Planning and, with the purchase, cloud-based social CRM and association management software vendor Avectra.
“This is two great Intacct practices combining into one, but it’s about more than just one solution,” said Armanino chief operating officer and partner Matt Armanino. “It’s about the vision of what cloud financial solutions are going to be and how to position ourselves as a leading provider of those solutions. We go into clients today, and the first thing they say is that they want to formulate a cloud strategy or understand how. We think we can be the national, dominant partner for Intacct and other [cloud financial] solutions we offer, as well as a go-to resource that CFO organizations can look to as a thought leader on best practices to help them accomplish their goals.”
The AccessTek deal was nearly a year in the making. Armanino met Antonelli last October at the 2011 Intacct Partner Summit and immediately found their visions “aligned perfectly,” according to Armanino. Antonelli sold off AccessTek’s Microsoft Dynamics GP practice to Sikich LLP earlier this year in order to focus more effort on Intacct and cloud accounting and financial systems in general, as well as her Cloud Accounting Institute. When the idea of a merger with Armanino came up, the deal soon fell into place.
“Seeing the direction the accounting software industry was going, the opportunities available there, and when speaking to clients, I knew Intacct was the direction for me,” said Antonelli. “When Matt and I finally spoke more in earnest about merging, it actually came together pretty fast after that.”
“Intacct is the core [of Armanino’s cloud financial and accounting practice], and there are other best-of-breed solutions built around that,” Armanino added. “Customers want the best capabilities to make it work well today and tomorrow, and we are positioning ourselves to do just that.”
Over the past two years, Armanino has acquired or merged in other accounting and business product VARs, including OneSource, Factory IMS and Gateway Solutions.
Armanino Consulting currently represents Dynamics GP, AX, Intacct, Avectra, QlikView, Adaptive Planning and EASi.
