ServiceNow Pure-Play Partner CoreX Targets Global Growth With Volteo Digital Buy
‘[Volteo Digital is] a ServiceNow authorized training partner and built a ServiceNow training center. They are part of ServiceNow’s Rise Up program, where they would train a large number of consultants. And they established a delivery center in Guadalajara, Mexico, that drives a lot of their delivery across the globe,’ says CoreX CEO Rick Wright.
ServiceNow-focused solution provider CoreX this week unveiled a definitive agreement to acquire fellow ServiceNow channel partner Volteo Digital as a way to not only expand its business to Latin America, but also to gain access to the latter’s Mexico-based delivery center.
The value of the acquisition was not disclosed.
CoreX is a ServiceNow consultancy focused on helping customers extract value from the ServiceNow platforms, specifically around their core business operations, said Rick Wright (pictured), CEO of the Radner, Pa.-based solution provider. The company’s business is focused 100 percent on ServiceNow, Wright told CRN.
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“That includes everything from products we have in the ServiceNow store to resell to the majority of our revenue, which comes from helping clients drive transformation leveraging the ServiceNow platform,” he said.
CoreX was founded in 2023 specifically as a ServiceNow solution provider and as a platform for making further acquisitions to build a global practice, Wright said. Volteo Digital is the company’s second acquisition, following the acquisition last fall of ITS Partners.
“Our mission is we need to show up in a very differentiated way,” he said. “We think there’s a massive opportunity in the ecosystem for a player that would show up to help close ServiceNow deals and drive transformation with deep industry expertise in manufacturing, life sciences, services and deep functional knowledge.”
CoreX is focused on being a different type of solution provider, Wright said.
“Our mission is to really focus on core operations,” he said. “And to achieve that mission, we’re building a different type of consultancy. While we have great ServiceNow technology people, we also have great technologists. We hire people from industry. We have people that we acquired through the ITS acquisition, other people we’ve hired who have spent their life in industries. … So when we show up to a customer, we have people that have sat in their seats, run their jobs and understand the business problems they’re trying to solve.”
CoreX’s first acquisition, ITS, brought a focus on operational technology and enterprise asset management in the manufacturing space.
Volteo Digital, on the other hand, brings CoreX deep industry insight in financial services and telecom, both high-priority targets for ServiceNow, Wright said. It also brings a global footprint. The company has been in the ServiceNow ecosystem for 10 to 12 years, particularly in Latin America.
“Volteo Digital is the top ServiceNow partner in northern Latin America from Columbia,” he said. “They do a lot of work in Costa Rica and Mexico, as well as in Spain. So it gives us a global footprint.”
The acquisition also expands CoreX’s ServiceNow relationship in North America as well, Wright said.
“They’re a ServiceNow authorized training partner and built a ServiceNow training center,” he said. “They are part of ServiceNow’s Rise Up program where they would train a large number of consultants. And they established a delivery center in Guadalajara, Mexico, that drives a lot of their delivery across the globe.”
Wright agreed it was unusual for a solution provider to go international with only its second acquisition.
“We think we can get to $200 million to $250 million in the next couple years through a series of acquisitions,” he said. “We’re private equity-backed by New Spring Capital out of Radnor, Pa. So we have big aspirations. But more importantly, we have customers and we have the ServiceNow sales teams engaging us from Canada down to Latin America and all across Europe. The opportunity is directly in front of us.”
CoreX also needed a delivery center, Wright said.
“I was at KPMG for 20 years,” he said. “I’ve built 1,000-plus-person operations in India. To me, that’s not the right model anymore. The price advantage of India is diminished. Also, having a delivery center in an Americas time zone is critically important. We have probably seven or eight customers today that have managed service contracts with existing providers being serviced out of India, and they cite the time zone difference as probably the biggest issue they have. So we see opportunity, and we’re going after it now.”
Volteo Digital brings CoreX close to 90 new employees in Mexico, 25 in Spain and another dozen in the U.S., said Meghan Lockwood Rexer, CoreX’s head of marketing and people.
For Volteo Digital, getting acquired was an opportunity to grow, Wright said.
“Fernando Gordoa is a great CEO,” he said. “They had aspirations to be bigger. That takes funding and cash flow. We hit it off from day one. They’re a really buttoned-up shop in terms of their CSATs [customer satisfaction scores]. They are known, especially in the Latin America and southern European markets, as one of the top partners that ServiceNow loves to work with. They just checked all the boxes.”
Going forward, Gordoa will lead CoreX’s strategy and operations in Latin America, Wright said. His experience will help build CoreX’s ServiceNow business across all of Europe, he said.
ServiceNow, which has a program under which it takes an equity stake in many of its channel partners, has yet to do so with CoreX, but Wright said he hopes his company will be ready for such an investment soon.
“We’ve had multiple conversations,” he said. “They have some parameters around minimum levels of investment, so I think the next acquisition will be sizable enough that they can have their required slice and dollar value. We have had conversations on having them involved.”
Lockwood Rexer told CRN that CoreX has big aspirations for its future.
“Our goal is to be the largest GSI [global systems integrator] alternative ServiceNow consultancy by the end of next year,” she said. “We plan to grow pretty aggressively. Look at ServiceNow’s growth trajectory. What will it take for them to get to $30 [billion] or $40 billion or beyond that? ServiceNow had been traditionally known in a lot of buying centers as an IT ticketing tool. We see the value to be true consultants that drive business value with the best possible ServiceNow consultancy, but also their industry play. So we’ve been really well aligned with them as they talk about ServiceNow as the business transformation platform leveraging AI.”
Paul Smith, ServiceNow’s president of customer and field operations, told CRN that Latin America has become an important market for the company, which recently hired a new general manager for the area, and that CoreX is making the right move to embrace that market.
“We’ve got huge, huge growth ambitions for Latin America,” he said. “We’re going to see, I think, a lot of M&A happening in the ServiceNow partner landscape. As we grow, our partners grow. And I like seeing these pure-play partners emerging, such as Thirdera, which was acquired by Cognizant, get very focused on executing ServiceNow.”