ScanSource and Intelisys partners have a new resource with strong customer relationship management (CRM) skills available to them with the distributor’s acquisition of Canpango, a silver Salesforce implementation and consulting partner.

The Canpango acquisition comes about 18 months after the POS Portal acquisition and two years after the Intelisys acquisition. The Canpango buy is part of ScanSource’s strategy to carve out a new and growing practice area.

ScanSource’s Tony Sorrentino

“This fits our desire, where we’re always looking for new markets and opportunities for our partners to help them grow their business,” Tory Sorrentino, ScanSource co-president, told us. “Canpango made a lot of sense with all of the growth and expansion in [unified communications as a service and contact center as a service], and the need for CRM integration increasing. It gives partners an opportunity to sell more to their existing customers.

ScanSource will retain the Canpango brand and it will operate as a ScanSource company. Canpango will retain its silver-level Salesforce partner status.

Canpango brings to the table other Salesforce consulting-partner skills such as business process consulting, training and education, application development, data migration and reporting. The Salesforce partner reports having worked on more than 1,000 projects with more than 700 satisfied customers in a variety of industries including manufacturing, technology, health and life sciences, consumer packaged goods, and legal.

“We believe the CRM opportunity is a massive one,” Andrew Pryfogle, cloud transformation, Intelisys, a ScanSource company, said. “We picked a company that’s an up-and-coming leader in that space and is doing an amazing job at executing, specifically around Salesforce.com, the market leader.”

Gartner reported that worldwide CRM software revenue amounted to $39.5 billion in 2017 and expects it to be the fastest growing software market in 2018, with a growth rate of 16 percent.

ScanSource suggests that the Canpango acquisition allows partners to build out their CRM capabilities without having to build out their own CRM practices. It also will help them get to market faster with new offers and drive new revenue opportunities, including CRM and customer-support solutions integrated directly with contact center as a service (CCaaS) and unified communications as a service (UCaaS).

SacnSource’s Matt Lautz

Headquartered in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Canpango also has offices in Chicago, New York, London, and Port Elizabeth, South Africa. The company has 70 employees. Matt Lautz, co-founder and CEO of Canpango, will join ScanSouce and head up the new ScanSource CRM and business process consulting practice. He became a Canpango board member three years ago and CEO in 2016, according to his LinkedIn profile.

“CRM is at the core of every customer conversation, as reliable data allows for more meaningful customer relationships. The CRM conversation provides a natural entrance point for partners to extend their current offerings beyond UCaaS and CCaaS to include CRM, marketing automation, business consulting services and more,” said Lautz. “We are excited to join the ScanSource team and to deliver the professional services that can help both ScanSource and Intelisys partners accelerate these business opportunities.”

Pryfogle stresses that the CRM opportunity coincides with ScanSource’s CX – or customer experience – strategy.

“The acquisition opens up a broader conversation that our partners can have with their customers about a broader strategy around CX – which is an integral part of our CX strategy overall,” he said.