Perficient Acquires IBM Division Of Trifecta Technologies For $13.7 Million

Perficient is on an acquisition roll. It has picked up its third company purchase since the beginning of the year, saying Thursday it had acquired the IBM Smarter Commerce division of Trifecta Technologies for $13.7 million.

The latest acquisition comes on the heels of the St. Louis-based solution provider's February acquisition of financial services company ForwardThink and its April acquisition of life sciences and pharmaceutical technology consulting company BioPharm Systems. Last year, Perficient also went on a buying spree of IBM and Salesforce.com solution providers, picking up CoreMatrix in October, and Clear Task and TriTek Solutions in May.

The Trifecta Technologies acquisition deepens the IBM assets and expertise for Perficient, No. 79 on CRN's SP500 list and already the vendor's top U.S. partner in its midsize partner category for the past three or four years, Perficient President and CEO Jeff Davis said.

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"They have something we weren’t doing and didn’t have," Davis said. "We like the whole package, the assets, the financial performance, the cultural fit and the depth of technology focus they bring to the table."

In particular, the division of Trifecta Technologies includes a retail asset that Davis called a "store in a box," a preconfigured storefront with back-end operations on the IBM Commerce Suite. In today's market, having strong software assets such as this are "table stakes" to a competitive business, Davis said.

"They've got a solid business. We've been building more and more on the assets. That's a shifting trend in the industry that began some time ago, and we just began participating in it and stepping up," Davis said. "More importantly, it represents differentiating value to the client as much as we can accelerate the projects and get time to market accelerated as well," he continued.

In addition to its technology depth, the acquisition adds more than 40 employees and enterprise client relationships, including Bon-Ton, Cardinal Health, Carhartt, Perfumania, Sears Canada, Tandus, Varsity Wacoal and more.

While the Trifecta Technologies acquisition is less vertically focused on the surface than Perficient's last two acquisitions, Davis said the company will be a great addition to boost the solution provider's retail vertical. Davis said that Perficient has been "bullish" on retail. The division will be integrated into Perficient's IBM business group, although Davis said it will play a strong role in the company's retail business.

"This will play very strong in the retail space, make no mistake," Davis said. "Long term, I think that's a strong opportunity for us," he continued.

Trifecta Technologies isn't the end of the acquisition road for Perficient just yet, Davis said. He said the company expects to make at least one more acquisition in 2014, most likely in late third or fourth quarter. However, he did say that the company is going to take a "little pause" with the Trifecta acquisition to integrate the three acquisitions.

At the rate the company is going, he said, it is set to hit its goal of $500 million in revenue by the end of the year, posting 23 percent compound annual growth dating back to 2001. The Trifecta acquisition brings the company's annual revenue to more than $450 million.

"We're going to continue to execute that strategy with additional deals and organic growth. We're going to be very, very close to our long-stated goal of $500 million in revenue," Davis said.

PUBLISHED MAY 8, 2014