In a move adding an area of service specialty to its ICT portfolio and signalling continued strong future ANZ growth, FinXL IT Professional Services has acquired leading Canberra-based SAP consultancy and services provider, Southern Cross Computing (SCC).
FinXL provides ICT professional services to a wide range of medium to large enterprises and government organisations, counting many of the ASX 200 corporations amongst its clients. In addition to government, the organisation lists telecommunications, banking and financial services, and utilities and resources amongst its key industries.
Founded in Canberra in 1986, SCC started out as an ICT consultancy, but turned its focus to SAP services in 1997, becoming an accredited SAP Services Partner in 2001, and is now a recognised SAP business support leader, servicing primarily Australian federal government departments. The longstanding Southern Cross Computing brand will be retained as a new specialist division within FinXL.
SCC’s key differentiator is its “quality of consultants, flexibility, and ability to provide ‘on the spot’ support to SAP’s Canberra clients that interstate companies were often unwilling or unable to provide,” according to Paul McDonald, managing director, SCC.
“SCC is still the only SAP Services Partner that specialises in supporting federal government clients, and this is reflected in the growing number of sites that SCC supports in Canberra – over half the SAP sites in Canberra use SCC to help support their enterprise systems,” said McDonald.
With steady growth over the past 30 years, SCC decided that becoming part of a larger Australian-based organisation with a broader client base and complementary services was the perfect next move to accelerate the SCC business and continue to provide high quality service to their clients.
“We’ve considered many approaches over the years and formed a view of what our ideal acquisition partner would look like, and the opportunity it would offer our clients and the ‘SCC family’ post acquisition,” said McDonald, adding, “Cultural fit was very important, as was a great industry reputation and the ability to offer our clients something more. FinXL ticks each of these boxes.”
The acquisition was “an excellent opportunity to acquire a highly regarded SAP specialist consultancy and project services provider with a substantial consultant base servicing major federal government clients, and a very experienced and talented team,” said Tracy Thomson, managing director, FinXL.
“SCC both complements and extends FinXL’s existing business and provides a real opportunity to expand SCC’s market reach and delivery of SAP services further afield, leveraging our established regional network and sales teams. Looking ahead, this important acquisition provides a strong platform for future growth across Australia and into New Zealand,” said Thomson.
The SCC acquisition adds 200 consultants to FinXL’s workforce of more than 1000 consultants in offices in six Australian states plus two offices in New Zealand. All SCC staff will be retained and continue to work from their Canberra location.
