Many large cybersecurity providers have embedded LLM chatbots into their software over the past three years. Those chatbots automate tasks such as creating network traffic filtering rules. But while AI has made cybersecurity tools easier to use in certain respects, many organizations still need the help of a professional services provider to use the software. Boardroom Insight caught up with the CEO of one such service provider, RedZone Technologies, for an exclusive look at its growth roadmap. On the vendor side, we heard from the CEO of publicly-traded Banqup Group and Nintex’s new global head of partner sales and strategy. Plus, business updates from SDI Presence, Riviera Partners, Aureon and Kantata. 

RedZone Technologies launches a new growth push. The firm, which provides cybersecurity services to highly regulated organizations, will scale its business with funding from ParkerGale Capital. Technology executive Gary Simat has joined as CEO to lead the effort. 

“We are building an enterprise sales and marketing team that will help align consistently with clients, and we are developing a world-class partner ecosystem to extend the solutions and expertise we can bring to them,” Simat, who joined RedZone from a managed services provider called Performive, told Boardroom Insight.

RedZone also plans to enhance its tech stack. “We are investing in customer-facing platforms and tools,” Simat said. “We believe by combining stronger partner alignment with these investments in service delivery, we will deliver a continuous standard of posture, compliance, and confidence for our clients.”

Deloitte Belgium adopts Banqup’s accounting platform. The Big Four firm will use the software to process invoices for thousands of organizations. The platform provides features for billing customers, paying suppliers and managing the associated documents. It also speeds up related tasks such as account reconciliation. That’s the process of comparing a firm’s ledger against business documents to verify its accuracy.

There are many other cloud-based accounting platforms out there, some of which are sold by megacap tech firms such as SAP. Boardroom Insight was curious how a pure-play vendor can compete in such a crowded product category. Nicolas de Beco, Banqup’s CEO, said the firm differentiates itself by providing features for not only accountants but also the company owners who hire those accountants. Entrepreneurs can create invoices on a self-service basis to avoid email threads with the finance team. 

We don’t just build for accountants or for entrepreneurs — we build for both, with equal weight,” de Beco said. “Banqup is designed around the entrepreneur’s day-to-day operations, while at the same time delivering the rich, structured information that accountants need to do their job at scale.”

Removing the need to use multiple applications is another major theme of Banqup’s value proposition. The firm offers payment features that let users process invoices without opening another cloud service in a new tab. “Our integration of e-invoicing and payments with automated reconciliation eliminates the inefficiencies that traditional tools still struggle with,” de Beco said. He added that accountants get “far deeper insights than fragmented systems.”

Riviera Partners acquires Board and Technology. Riviera Partners is an executive search firm that works with tech companies and institutional investors. Board and Technology, in turn, is a talent strategy consultancy that helps publicly-traded firms with tasks such as managing leadership changes. Its founder, Olof Pripp, has joined Riviera Partners as a partner. 

“What this partnership with Olof Pripp and Board and Technology adds is a deeper seat at the table in the boardroom,” explained Riviera Partners CEO Michael Newcomer. “Olof’s decades of experience advising public company boards across Europe gives Riviera clients privileged access to board-level conversations on governance, succession, and technology strategy.”

Riviera Partners is headquartered in San Francisco, which is home to OpenAI, Anthropic and many other large AI startups. The firm plans to incorporate its access to the local AI talent pool into its value proposition for European companies. “This means we can now engage European organizations not only in building world-class executive teams, but also in guiding boards and CEOs as they navigate the opportunities and challenges of AI,” Newcomer said.

SDI Presence grows its ServiceNow practice. The IT services firm, which helps clients with tasks such as modernizing legacy code, has appointed David Deal as principal ServiceNow solutions architect. In that capacity, Deal will lead pre-sales and solution design engagements for ServiceNow customers. He will also help SDI Presence’s delivery teams put solution designs into practice.

ServiceNow significantly expanded its business after former SAP boss Bill McDermott joined as CEO in 2019. The company widened its focus from helping IT teams process help desk requests to a long list of adjacent use cases. It also added numerous AI features along the way. According to Deal, those product investments have changed how ServiceNow’s consulting partners approach client projects. 

“For consulting partners, this evolution has raised the bar for us all,” Deal told us. He explained that “success is no longer about basic implementation—it now requires deep domain knowledge, fluency in AI-driven workflows, and the ability to guide clients strategically” on how to extract value from their ServiceNow subscriptions. 

“The ecosystem has become far more dynamic and outcomes-driven,” Deal added. 

Nintex launches a global partner program. The company, which generated about $300 million in annual revenue as of 2022, sells process automation software that helps organizations speed up tasks such as employee onboarding and contract reviews. According to Nintex, its new partner program will give professional services firms access to more co-selling opportunities. The software maker also plans to help consultancies with marketing campaigns.

“Our joint marketing initiatives – from co-selling to co-branded case studies – enable our partners to strengthen leads and campaigns with the support of dedicated account managers,” Brian Kuettel, Nintex’s newly appointed global head of partner sales and strategy, told Boardroom Insight.

The incentives that consulting firms receive depends on the level they reach in a newly introduced partner tiering system. “The new model for partner levels aligns with our partners’ business models and rewards partners for working with Nintex,” Kuettel explained. 

Aureon debuts a unified communications as a service platform. The IT services and staffing firm says that the cloud-based offering, Ascend for Teams, lends itself to tasks such as fielding customer service calls. Under the hood, it’s based on software from a private equity-backed tech firm called Intermedia.

“Aureon is partnering with Intermedia as a value-added reseller of its UCaaS and CCaaS platform,” an Aureon spokesperson told Boardroom Insight in response to a press inquiry. “Through Aureon, businesses gain access to advanced call routing, analytics, and omnichannel capabilities. These are supported by our trusted client support, industry expertise, and delivery on Iowa’s most reliable business networks.”

New technology spotlight

Kantata launches a new AI agent. The Resourcing Agent, as it’s called, is designed to help professional services firms find projects that are at risk of going over budget. It also spots other issues. For example, the tool can point out if more consultants should be assigned to a client engagement. It ships as part of Kantata’s namesake cloud platform, which consulting firms use to automate back-office tasks such as forecasting revenue.

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