French IT group Prodware acquires Westpole Benelux
IT services company Westpole Benelux, which employs over 300 people in Belgium and Luxembourg, is set to become part of its French sector peer Prodware. “We had been looking for a broader local presence for some time,” comments Bertrand Launay of Prodware. “Westpole Benelux is complementary to us in several ways.”
New markets on the horizon
In Belgium, Westpole Benelux operates offices in Vilvoorde (Flanders) and Mont-Saint-Guibert (Walloon Brabant). Its approximately 320-strong team of employees generates an annual turnover of EUR 40 million. Through its new French shareholder Prodware, Westpole Benelux – which will retain both its name and management – is gaining access to 13 markets in Western and Eastern Europe.
Prodware, which generates some EUR 180 million in sales with a team of about 1,300 employees, was founded back in 1989. The company operates mainly in the mid-market segment as a provider of ERP and CRM services in the Microsoft ecosystem.
Bouncing off each other
“Westpole Benelux complements us in several ways,” says Bertrand Launay, Corporate VP & Group Revenue Partner at Prodware. “For starters, Westpole Benelux is active in larger accounts that are difficult for us to access, such as banks and international institutions. Moreover, the company is a partner of IBM, while we work with Microsoft. But we also complement each other well in terms of company culture.”
Prodware does not rule out making new acquisitions locally to strengthen some areas of expertise, such as in security or cloud infrastructure.
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About Belgium and Flanders With Dutch as its official language, Flanders (Dutch: Vlaanderen) is the autonomous northern region of Belgium. The capital of both Belgium and Flanders is Brussels. |
Reported by
newspaper De Tijd
