HFS Highlight: With the pandemic economy being defined by the cloud, Wipro adds European muscle to its Salesforce capabilities with 4C acquisition

The battle for adding cloud talent to deliver services around the leading SaaS solutions continues unabated in this pandemic economy. If anything, the pace for acquisitions appears to be accelerating, especially in areas like Salesforce services, where enterprises are polarizing their focus around tried and trusted SaaS solutions that help them with their full pivot into the cloud.

In July 2020, Wipro announced a definitive agreement to acquire Salesforce Platinum partner, 4C. Headquartered in Belgium, 4C serves customers across Europe and the Middle East and boasts being EMEA’s largest independent Salesforce Platinum Partner. It has experience across multiple Salesforce Clouds, with specific expertise in Salesforce’s Configure, Price, Quote (CPQ) and Billing solutions. The acquisition closed in August 2020.

Wipro strengthening outside of North America and gaining important CPQ skills

4C will become part of Wipro’s Salesforce practice, which is largely the Appirio capability that Wipro acquired in 2016. The practice is now called Appirio Cloud Services (ACS), headed up by Hari Raja. Exhibit 1 shows the combined experience strength of the 2 companies.

Exhibit 1: Appirio and 4C Salesforce Services Experience

^*HFS Salesforce Services Top 10 report 2020

Other important additions that 4C brings to the Wipro table include:

• CPQ (Configure, Price Quote) Salesforce cloud skills: While it has experience across Salesforce clouds, 4C has a specific focus on the CPQ Salesforce cloud. CPQ is one of the fastest-growing Salesforce clouds in the market, so strengthening this expertise is a differentiator for Wipro.
• Europe and Middle East feet-on-the-street: HFS estimates that approximately 70% of Wipro’s Salesforce services business is from North America. 4C brings much-needed feet-on-the-street in Continental Europe and the Middle-East, not just for deployment projects but also to facilitate consulting-led engagements, which Wipro wants to prioritize.
• Analytics investment: Wipro can leverage 4C’s investments in analytics to strengthen its existing tools and technologies. For example, this could strengthen Wipro’s Close the Experience Gap Framework tool and its accompanying PURVUE tool which helps industry-specific customers along their Salesforce experience journey to gain value realization on the platform. 4C would also have access to Wipro’s library of over 2,000 pre-built Salesforce assets.

Wipro on a journey to strengthen an OneOffice Salesforce services capability

Wipro ACS with 4C creates a strong Salesforce services practice that aims to deliver business value to customers.  Approximately 70% of its current Salesforce services business is from implementation and strategy services, and 30% is from application management services (AMS).

Wipro has prioritized strategic consulting and ongoing managed services for growth in the next year. It positions Salesforce as a holistic deployment that includes integration between the front and middle office. Wipro hopes that this approach will in turn cement true partnership relationships with clients.  It’s worth noting that Wipro continued to support Salesforce customers during the COVID-19 pandemic since April 2020. And these were not simple module implementations either. They include enterprise-wide digital transformations that delivered significant cost savings.

This is a strong acquisition for Wipro, that bolsters its Salesforce expertise and strengthens its presence in Europe and the Middle East. However,  competitors, including Infosys and Cognizant have also invested in Salesforce services partners in 2020 so Wipro needs to continue to invest to remain competitive. Salesforce services is a big, strategic bet for Wipro and a market in which it wants to be seen to be a clear leader.

The Bottom Line: This acquisition helps Wipro to move up the value chain to provide both consulting and implementation skills. It adds critical nearshore muscle. Moreover, 4C’s CPQ focus has clear synergies with Wipro’s broader digital transformation business.