Perficient Buys $9M Management Consultancy to Drive End User Technology Investments

Perficient has purchased a 40-person management consultancy to boost technology investment in areas such as systems integration, data reporting and analytics.

The St. Louis-based company, No. 61 on the CRN Solution Provider 500, said its acquisition of $9 million RAS & Associates will enhance its management consulting offerings around strategy, operations and business process optimization consulting. Buying Denver-based RAS will also strengthen Perficient's presence in the Rocky Mountain region, according to the company.

"The capabilities RAS & Associates bring to Perficient broaden and deepen our high-impact business consulting offerings, and most importantly, the value we can deliver to our enterprise customers," Jeff Davis, Perficient's president and CEO, said in a statement. "Furthermore, their engagements and relationships often lead to significant and subsequent technology investment in areas we already excel."

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RAS was founded in 2008, and works with customers in the oil and gas, cable and telecommunications and high-tech verticals. Rob Swanson, RAS's CEO, is joining Perficient in a key leadership role.

"For many years, our entrepreneurial and results-driven culture has resonated with C-level executives seeking strategic guidance on enterprise transformation," Swanson said in a statement. "We anticipate this coupling will accelerate opportunities to more broadly serve our combined client base."

RAS' 40 employees span consulting, technology, sales and general and administrative roles, the company said. The company employed 26 people at the end of 2014, and 38 people as of August 2015. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, and Perficient did not respond to requests for additional comment.

RAS has dedicated practices in the aerospace and defense, energy and mining, manufacturing, financial services, and high tech, cable and telecommunications verticals. The company said it reduced procurement spending in the struggling oil and gas space by 30 percent in 2015 by developing a new way of measuring tanks, leveraging software to drive savings and taking advantage of strategic sourcing.

In the IT space, RAS said it specializes in rationalizing and consolidating unused or redundant applications, developing a comprehensive, enterprise-wide customer relationship management (CRM) strategy, aligning infrastructure and operational strategies, and balancing the provisioning of business solutions with the most efficient allocation of IT resources.

RAS is the fourth consultancy acquired by Perficient in the past two years. Perficient bought Atlanta-based mobile app consultancy Bluetube in October; Ann Arbor, Mich.-based digital marketing firm enlighten in December 2015; and Milwaukee-based e-commerce IT firm Zeon Solutions in December 2014.

Perficient's sales dropped to $119.2 million, down 1 percent from a year ago, during the company's most recent quarter, which ended Sept. 30, 2016. The company's third-quarter net income was $5.5 million, down 26 percent from the $7.4 million reported during the year-ago period.