CHANNEL MANAGEMENT Steven King, formerly a managing partner at allConnex who is now Amplix chief development officer; Jamie Kuzman, formerly a managing partner at allConnex but now Amplix’s chief administrative officer; and Dan Gill, formerly president of ROI Communications, who will hold that same role at Amplix. According to DeStefano, this leadership’s deep background in building and running successful trusted advisory businesses sets it apart from some of the other large private equitysupported roll-ups that have dominated the headlines. “Our big advantage is the starting point,” he said. “We’ve got four owners with 20-plus years of experience operating at the top performance level in our market – that experience is unique compared to the executive teams at most of the other roll ups.” This leadership, he continued, allows the provider to focus on the elements that make the trusted advisory model work. Namely, that entails leveraging technical expertise and deep relationships throughout the technology vendor landscape to deliver optimized outcomes for customers across their entire technology infrastructures. “In our minds, all of this change in our business is only good if it’s done with the customer in mind,” said DeStefano. “If we have not improved the ability of the advisor model to drive value to the customer and their desired outcomes, we will have failed to truly capture the opportunity. If this is just a big financial exercise, the size of its impact and its sustainability will fall short of what it could have been.” Similarly, the complementary nature of the ROI, allConnex and Blue Front teams and internal processes was an essential component of the Amplix merger, said DeStefano, rather than a situation in which individual agencies or partner organizations are “gobbled” up for various reasons, whether that be an attractive customer base or an owner simply looking for an exit strategy. “Each of the companies brings a unique value to the platform even though we are in the same business,” said DeStefano. The ROI Communications team, for its part, had made a substantial investment in client success resources and a software platform to go along with significant success in core data and voice markets as well as security and managed services. Blue Front Technologies, meanwhile, brings significant business in the public sector, a virtual practitioner practice as well as success in cloud optimization to go along with the core advisor categories. Finally, allConnex brings expertise in the UCaaS realm along with a successful sub-agent model that brings a more diverse sales approach to the combined business. “Additionally, we are starting with a truly dominant regional position,” DeStefano continued. “We’ve taken three of the four largest in New England and put them together, giving us a significant influence in market, scale of customers and spend influenced, resource advantages, data and knowledge advantages, brand recognition, sales and marketing efficiencies and much more.” All three of the Amplix companies have operated offices in Massachusetts, and the combined entity will run its headquarters out of Norwood, Mass., with offices in Boston. Ultimately, the company plans to expand its borders, but initially the plan is to double-down on its Northeast practice with a “laserfocus” on customers in-region. Other than Bridgepoint on the West Coast, the other PE-based roll-up models, said DeStefano, are much more dispersed and less dense in regions. Also unlike some of its contemporaries, Amplix has no plans to disintermediate the large technology solutions distributors – formerly known as master agencies – by establishing direct relationships with their suppliers. “We understand the value of large tech distributors in the ecosystem and the specialized nature of what they do,” explained DeStefano. “We plan to continue to embrace them, building off 20 years of relationships, and work together with them to drive great results.” It’s safe to assume that as the early consolidators continue to grow and an increasing number of advisory firms and MSPs look to take advantage of the economies of scale, new and interesting roll-up models will emerge. It would seem that one based on the core elements of operating a successful trusted advisory firm is a solid alternative to consider. o Rundown on the Roll-up Founded: November 15, 2022 Formed: Gemspring Capital has acquired a majority stake in Amplix. The owners of allConnex, Blue Front and ROI remain equity participants and have assumed executive leadership roles in the new entity. Function: Amplix provides technology advisory services and software to more than 2,000 companies across multiple industries. Location: Amplix is headquartered in Norwood, Mass., with offices in Boston. Offerings: Services include data connectivity, cloud telephony, customer experience, security and managed services, business continuity, cloud optimization, and data center solutions. Approach: “Our thought is that scale, increased influence, resource enhancement, data and analytics and always putting the customer at the center of your business will in fact get us to an optimized result, and that is the approach of AmpliX going forward,” said DeStefano What’s in a Name: “Amplix” embodies amplifying the performance of IT teams and budgets through optimized terms and shorter times to value. The “ix” suffix implies a managed technology experience (UX, CX, etc.). Latest News: In January, Amplix acquired Massachusetts-based technology advisory Net7, a provider of cloud computing, voice and telephony, connectivity, managed services, SD-WAN and cybersecurity. Competitive Advantage: Initially developed and deployed by ROI Communications, Baseline IT is a proprietary tool designed to provide clients with transparency and insight into their inventory, costs and key support metrics needed for optimizing and improving all aspects of their IT investment. Key features include order management; quote, project and task management; contract management; ticket tracking; inventory management; custom processes and workflows; custom data fields; and KPI data and metrics. Baseline IT also connects to Salesforce and ServiceNow via API and can link to any information technology service management (ITSM) platform or other system as needed. 42 CHANNELV ISION | JANUARY - FEBRUARY 2023
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