Business transfers

May 2022

The ESN SoftFluent, expert in development on Microsoft technologies, is getting closer to the Verbus Group and signs its first external growth with the acquisition of its Norman counterpart, the Devolis company.

Customers and counterparties

SoftFluent is a company of experts in the development of Microsoft technologies created 17 years ago by former Microsoft employees. PAX Corporate Finance has accompanied its founder, Daniel Cohen-Zardi, in the context of its affiliation with the Verbus Group and also in the context of the acquisition of the Devolis company.

The group is active in the provision of specialized services with a consulting division and a high-level advisory force (Master Plan, Code Audit, Due Diligence, CTO as Service, R&D as Service), an application development division (application modernization, custom software, migration to the Azure Cloud, Hybrid Squad, agile methodologies, DevOps processes), and through its two subsidiaries in digital transformation based on functional approaches and the publication of a collaborative SaaS tool RowShare.

Verbus opens a digital branch and diversifies its activity by supporting the ambitious plans of the group: geographical extension of the services and transformation of the potential of the SaaS RowShare software. Indeed, SoftFluent aims to support its customers all over France in a culture of proximity, while making its product part radiate beyond national borders thanks to a technically very successful product already used all over the world.

Sharing the same values, the transmission of SoftFluent to Verbus will take place within 10 years, thus allowing to continue to build and perpetuate the human model of SoftFluent.

In parallel to this operation, SoftFluent announces its merger with Devolis, a leader in Normandy also in Microsoft technologies. The strategic alliance between Devolis and SoftFluent will result in a capital merger while maintaining a decentralized governance model. This union of forces allows the group to better respond to large-scale projects, by increasing its critical size to more than 100 consultants in the field.

For SoftFluent and its clients, it also means access to complementary development skills, particularly in Microsoft Office 365 and Power Apps, one of the major areas of expertise of Devolis, as well as in the data business and in project management.

"We have been following the respective developments of our structures since our creation and have collaborated on various subjects. We had considered a merger in the past and the evolution of our companies has made this alliance an obvious one at this stage," explains Daniel Cohen-Zardi, President and founder of SoftFluent.

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