Synechron Builds ServiceNow Financial Services Channel Giant Via Three Acquisitions

‘Every single one of our top 20 clients, all of them big banks, have ServiceNow inside, and have asked us for help in leveraging the platform. The ServiceNow product set has grown exponentially, outward and upward, from its origins. And over time, I think the opportunities that clients see to use that platform in other ways within their environments have grown. And they're looking for a partner to help them do that,’ says Synechron Managing Director for Corporate Development Christine Olmsted.

Digital engineering and digital platform consultancy Synechron Thursday unveiled plans to become the planet’s largest financial services-focused ServiceNow practice with the acquisition of three ServiceNow channel partners.

The acquisitions of Boston-based RapDev, London-based Calitii, and Tampa,
Fla.-based Waivgen give New York-based Synechron a giant ServiceNow footprint in the banking, financial services, and insurance businesses, said Synechron Managing Director for Corporate Development Christine Olmsted (pictured).

Synechron declined to discuss terms of the acquisitions.

Synechron is a global digital engineering and digital platform consultancy with 16,000 employees, Olmsted told CRN. The company, which in the 25 years since it was founded has not taken any outside investment, just recently passed the $1-billion annual revenue mark, she said.

“It's a company you may not have heard of if you're not in the BFSI (banking, financial services, and insurance) sector, but in that sector, we're very well known as being a digital transformation partner.”

Prior to the acquisitions, Synechron had a small ServiceNow business, but knew that it was a capability its clients wanted, Olmsted said.

“Every single one of our top 20 clients, all of them big banks, have ServiceNow inside, and have asked us for help in leveraging the platform,” she said. “The ServiceNow product set has grown exponentially, outward and upward, from its origins. And over time, I think the opportunities that clients see to use that platform in other ways within their environments have grown. And they're looking for a partner to help them do that. We knew we wanted to grow that capability quickly, and the quickest way to grow is through acquisition.”

Pulling off three acquisitions at once made for a very “fun” Summer, Olmsted said.

“We went out looking for a company in this space, and we got lucky and found three that fit our culture,” she said. “That's the first thing we check in a people-based consulting acquisition. We want the cultures to align. We want the people we’re bringing into the family to feel at home. And we got lucky in that we met three companies that fit our culture, first and foremost, and fit the way we operate with our clients.”

Olmsted said Synechron realized the three companies it eventually acquired each brought something different to the equation:

Rap Dev, she said, has some of the best ServiceNow engineers in the world. “They're amazing, and they are known for their engineering prowess,” she said.
Calitii, she said, is known for its banking expertise. “They do complex ServiceNow implementations, integrations, and re-implementations in big banks all over the world,” she said.
Waivgen, she said, is the smallest and youngest of the three. “They've got agentic AI capabilities,” she said. “They've got a library of something like 95 agents that they've built that are just compelling to a banking or financial services customer looking to leverage the power of AI.”

“Combined, they're magical,” she said. “And that's what we're going to do: combine their skills and bring them collectively to our clients, to their clients, to new clients in the market. We are, we think, the biggest banking and financial services-focused ServiceNow partner in the world now, and we intend to continue to grow that as fast as we can.”

The leadership teams of the three acquisitions are planning on staying on with Synechron to build the company’s ServiceNow business, and in fact members of those teams all attended the leadership meeting Synechron held last week in India, Olmsted said.

The leaders of RapDev, Calitii, and Waivgen will all report directly to Synechron CEO Faisal Husain. However, Olmsted said, her company does not plan to have a single person in charge of ServiceNow business.

“We're going to do it as a club, as a collective, which is always fun to put together,” she said. “While it’s four companies coming together, we've got an operating model we're putting into place and an approach that’s all about leveraging the best thing for our clients. And that's how Synechron, and frankly all three of those companies, approach everything we do. What's the best answer for the client? What's going to give the client the best result, whether it's time or location or cost? And now we've got a lot of different levers we can pull to make that happen.”

Synechron takes that team approach to all its business worldwide, Olmsted said.

“What's really lovely about Synechron is that, at the end of the day, it's a team running a business around the world of IT,” she said. “We don't have the same sort of, let's call it a hierarchical structure, that a big company might have. It's a collaborative effort all around. There are lots of us that are going to get involved, for sure. But our teams who manage client relationships are very excited about what this brings. We've got an operating model in place to help service that demand, to understand what’s the right organization to engage first. But at the end of the day, it doesn't matter, as I said before. What matters is what the right answer is for the client.”

There is very little overlap between the customer bases of Synechron, RapDev, Calitii, and Waivgen, Olmsted said.

“Most of our clients, as I said before, are very large banks, and sometimes they might have two or three partners inside doing different parts of ServiceNow implementation inside the bank, in different departments or on different pieces of work,” she said. “There wasn't a lot of overlap between the clients of the three and us, so it all kind of fit and felt right.”

When asked if that also means now moving to take business from Synechron’s customers’ existing ServiceNow channel partners, Olmsted replied, “I hope so.”

Synechron and its three acquisitions have already discussed the acquisition with ServiceNow, Olmsted said.

“So ServiceNow is aware of what we were doing and very supportive,” she said.