Top Sage North America partners BAASS Business Solutions and Axis Global Partners have merged, creating what will likely be an $18 million firm and the largest Sage reseller deal this year.
"This definitely allows us to expand our practice and our offerings but this is about a business mode. When you provide customers with more options in makes you a stronger firm," said Buigas. "It helps that we handle a few different solutions, but with the size of our staff we can manage it all. Now you have will have teams of people that are deep into the solutions and we can stay aggressive."BAASS has made other buys over the past year, merging in CA Plus and Equation, but the Axis Global purchase will help form one of the largest Sage partners in North America and establish the first official U.S. presence for the Canadian firm.
Axis Global will now be known as BAASS Business Solutions, but plans to retain all of its offices and staff with founding partner Manny Buigas becoming vice president and managing partner, U.S. territories for BAASS.
The union also brings on Axis Global's NetSuite business, further expanding BAASS' non-Sage product line. The Equation purchase brought in a Deltek practice.
For BAASS, the deal also helps them enter three areas of growth -- CRM, business intelligence and warehouse management -- as well as Caribbean and Latin American markets, all of which BAASS president Joe Arnone said Axis was very strong in.
"We’ve known each other since the 90s and we do get along and worked together on previous projects, but the main thing that worked is our culture and the way we look at things with regards to clients," said Arnone. "For BAAS, expansion into the U.S. is great but we wouldn’t have done it without having the right partner."
For Axis Global, expansion was a big part of their future strategy and while being able to offer more products to customers was attractive about BAASS, the union was more of "a business model" move, according to Buigas.
"This definitely allows us to expand our practice and our offerings but this is about a business move. When you provide customers with more options in makes you a stronger firm," said Buigas. "It helps that we handle a few different solutions, but with the size of our staff we can manage it all. Now you have will have teams of people that are deep into the solutions and we can stay aggressive."
