Most consulting firms that make M&A headlines are acquired either by a fellow consultancy or an investment firm. Rootstock Software, which bought a Virginia-based Salesforce advisory firm last week, is neither. We caught up with its CEO to get a closer look at the deal. We also heard from the CEO of Bond, a customer loyalty consultancy that recently closed a buyout of its own. Plus, news from Akkodis, Kantata, Valliance and Japan’s NTT DATA.

Rootstock Software grows its professional services practice. The company, which sells an ERP platform for manufacturers, has acquired a Salesforce consultancy called Praxis Solutions. It seems like a strange match at first glance, but there’s a fairly simple rationale behind the deal. Rootstock’s ERP platform is built on Salesforce and it has worked with Praxis for several years to support customer rollouts of its software.

Rootstock Software CEO Rick Berger told Boardroom Insight that the deal is primarily about talent acquisition. “Praxis founder and CEO Ohad Idan joins us on day one to lead Product—he brings a rare blend of expertise as a Salesforce MVP, ERP expert, and manufacturing practitioner who deeply understands our customers and where the market is heading,” Berger said. “Bringing him in-house immediately accelerates our innovation agenda.”

Rootstock is also absorbing the rest of the Praxis Solutions team, which will be folded into its professional services organization. “The expertise they bring—especially in manufacturing and the Salesforce platform—can now flow directly into our product roadmap and customer success efforts in ways a traditional partner model just can’t achieve,” Berger explained. “Praxis’ service model aligns with our vision for helping customers not only implement Rootstock but continually optimize and run it.”

Bond broadens its CRM capabilities. The Toronto-headquartered firm helps companies such as retailers boost customer loyalty. In plain terms, that means making buyers less likely to churn and convincing them to spend more. One of the main ways Bond goes about the task is by scanning the data a brand collects about its customers for behavioral patterns and adapting the brand’s loyalty program accordingly. Much of the customer data needed for that task is stored in CRM systems. That’s where Bond’s latest consultancy acquisition, UK-based Armadillo, comes into the picture.

Armadillo works on CRM-focused marketing projects for its clients. In one project, the firm analyzed the internal CRM data of McDonald’s and determined that one of its menu items is often purchased by customers who order for a group. Armadillo then used that information to create a marketing campaign geared towards groups.

“Armadillo enhances CRM execution and systems that deliver one-to-one personalization at scale with measurable impact,” Bond president and CEO Morana Bakula told Boardroom Insight.

Armadillo is far from the only consultancy that offers to help clients make better use of their CRM datasets. Bakula said Bond decided to buy the firm after a lengthy review of the other options out there. “Bond had been actively looking for a strategic acquisition to bolster our current 1:1 and CRM capabilities for nearly a year,” Bakula recounted. “In this process we spoke to a number of organizations with matching capabilities across Canada, the US, Europe, and Australia. We were in search of a best in breed organization that combined strategy, 1:1 creative and depth in martech stacks.”

The deal brings the number of offices Toronto-based Bond maintains in Europe to four. It previously established a presence in Barcelona, Hamburg and Berlin. Bond employs over 850 staffers across its various office locations.

New opportunities for AI consultancies. Akkodis, a 50,000-person technology services firm based in Zurich, recently asked 500 CTOs about their companies’ AI programs. It found that the number of executives who are confident in their firms’ AI implementation strategies dropped by 20% in a year to 62%. That trend could potentially boost deal volumes for IT consultancies. When a large company struggles to roll out a new technology on its own, it often turns to an external services provider for help. 

Akkodis surveyed the CTOs who responded to its question as part of a broader survey that also polled tens of thousands of other professionals. The firm found that companies seem to be extracting more returns from their AI investments than a year earlier. According to Akkodis, the 37,5000 workers it surveyed said AI tools are saving them about two hours per day on average. That’s up from one hour in 2024. 

Kantanta teams up with Provus. Kantata provides a software platform that consulting firms use to manage client projects, forecast sales and perform other tasks. Provus, in turn, is a California startup with a platform that helps consultancies generate quotes. Provus and Kantata recently built an integration between their respective platforms that they say can boost joint customers’ margins. 

The integration syncs the consulting project data a company keeps in Kantata to Provus. That data includes details such as the number of staffers who work on a client engagement and the associated expenses. According to Provus, customers can use the synced information to generate project quotes that more accurately reflect their costs, which reduces margin erosion. The integration also lends itself to syncing data from Provus to Kantata.

Valliance launches with £15 million in funding. The newly established consultancy, which has offices in the UK and the Netherlands, focuses on helping organizations implement AI. Valliance’s differentiator is that it plans to bill clients based on “value delivered” rather than billable hours. The firm says that its approach can help clients reduce unnecessary AI costs.

Valliance’s initial team comprises 18 professionals. It says those staffers specialize in areas such as system architecture, product design and data science. The firm has so far won AI consulting contracts with three unnamed clients.

A Boardroom Insight deep dive: NTT DATA is a Tokyo-based IT services provider that generated about $30 billion in revenue last year. Sandip Gupta, the firm’s senior vice president of global strategic alliances, recently briefed Boardroom Insight about its newly expanded partnership with ServiceNow. The collaboration is designed to help joint clients deploy AI automation workflows atop ServieNow’s platform. Gupta told us the firms are focusing on clients in the finance, manufacturing, healthcare, telecommunications and public sectors.