Executive Q&A: eMazzanti Technologies and Forceworks on portfolio acquisitions and P2P strategies

In this particular portfolio acquisition, one partner's albatross is the other's "bird of flight." The sale will enable Forceworks to grow its Microsoft Dynamics 365 practice, while eMazzanti grows its Office 365 customer base.

Tampa, Florida-based Forceworks is transitioning away from services and integration into an ISV, and has just released an update of its RapidStart for Dynamics 365 solution (through its RapidStart division). eMazzanti Technologies, meanwhile, was just named to the 2017 Inc. 5000, with 49 percent growth over three years - largely organic growth, though Forceworks is its fourth acquisition in recent years.

These Microsoft Partners of the Year (once for Forceworks, three times for eMazzanti) knew one another well. Forceworks CEO Steve Mordue and eMazzanti President Carl Mazzanti describe below their strategy behind this portfolio acquisition, and why the partners themselves must chart their own partner-to-partner strategies, versus relying upon Microsoft. 

MSDynamicsWorld: Do you see this practice acquisition as an alternative to an all-out partner-to-partner acquisition?

Mordue: We see a lot about acquisitions with companies buying whole companies, to obviously increase market share, gain a customer base, expand what they're doing.

What you'll probably start to see more of is this partial acquisition of a particular practice area for strategic reasons. I'm not going to work for Carl [Mazzanti], he's acquiring our Office 365 practice, [which] wasn't core to our mission and that he's ideally suited to do something with.

Microsoft has pressed partners for years to get into areas that frankly, a lot of us shouldn't even be ...