p>Responding to large clients’ growing desire to deal with a few large suppliers, information technology staffing firm CNC Global Ltd. has acquired most of the Anjura Group of Companies, an Ottawa-based provider of staffing, call centre
and other services.
The transaction includes Anjura Services Inc., Solutions Anjura Inc. and the contract consulting division of Anjura Technologies Corp. It does not include Anjura’s bio-informatics division, which will continue as a separate entity, which developed the STaCS software used by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to track DNA samples. This unit was a more or less separate operation before the acquisition, said Jacques Hooker, vice-president of finance at Anjura, and its management and staff will remain in place.
All shareholders of Anjura will become shareholders of CNC Global. Other financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
Lyle Kerr, chief executive of CNC Global, said the time is ripe for consolidation in the IT staffing business because many large organizations are pursuing strategic sourcing strategies, whittling down the number of suppliers they deal with. “Many of them are looking at over the next few years going to a single vendor for these sorts of services,” he said. “If you’re not big, strong and national, then these people won’t deal with you.”
Hooker – who becomes vice-president of call-centre operations at CNC Global following the merger – said this trend is evident not just in the private sector but in government as well.
Hooker said some of Anjura’s larger clients have been looking for more national reach than Anjura – whose strengths are primarily in Ottawa, Toronto and Montreal – has been able to offer them, and the combination with CNC Global will help the company address that demand.
Kerr, meanwhile, said the deal will significantly increase CNC Global’s strength in the Ottawa area. Anjura numbers the Department of Foreign Affairs, the Solicitor General’s department, the RCMP and other major government departments and agencies among its clients. “We have some business with the federal government,” Kerr said, “but Anjura has about seven times what we have.”
Anjura is also strong in the telecommunications sector around Ottawa, Hooker said.
Kerr added that acquiring Anjura will also give CNC Global added strength in managing customer contact centres, a business Anjura has been in for several years and CNC Global has been eyeing with interest. Hooker said Anjura helped a client set up and manage a contact centre in 1996 and from there developed a portfolio of services it calls “partner-assisted insourcing,” in which Anjura manages a contact centre on the customer’s premises.
“Anjura has taken the call centre business to a whole new level,” Kerr said, saying that market is “a new vertical business for us – we’ve been quite interested in it.”
Finally, Kerr said, acquiring Anjura “gives us some absolutely terrific people to help manage our company as we grow.” Kerr said job losses as a result of the merger will be minimal. “There may be a couple of administrative staff we won’t need going forward,” he said, “but we are an employment firm, and we will work hard to make sure there are no painful disruptions.”
While CNC Global is combining partly to be able to win the business of large clients looking for a single staffing supplier with national reach and broad capabilities, Kerr said there are still niches for smaller staffing firms. “There’s opportunities for smaller companies to sell to smaller companies,” he said. They can also partner with larger firms, he added, and CNC works with a number of smaller firms that address particular niches.
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