Birchman absorbed by SMS

The official rebranding of Birchman Asia Pacific has left only five local names among the state’s top 10 information technology firms.

The name Birchman, which was launched in Western Australia eight years ago, was officially dropped this month as the local business took on the name of its Melbourne-based purchaser – SMS Management and Technology.

The $25 million deal was signed in October 2013 and the two companies have been working on integration during the 12 months since.

It has left companies Kinetic IT, Ajilon, Empired, ASG Group, and Amcom Telecommunications as the only operators holding onto their WA roots.

It’s not the first time Birchman has navigated a rebrand; in 2008, the company bought fellow WA business Beacon Technology, but took four years to complete the rebrand of Beacon to Birchman.

Brian Lee, who had been with Birchman for about three years at the time of the SMS acquisition and is now regional director for WA, told Business News the one-year timeframe of the recent rebrand indicated a level of staff acceptance of the acquisition.

“I think there’s always concerns. Initially, staff who joined Birchman joined a small company where everybody knows the key people,” Mr Lee said.

“But personally, when I heard it was SMS, I thought it was a good thing.

“Certainly when I was talking to staff about it I gave them my opinion and, in general, everyone was very comfortable with it.”

But Mr Lee conceded the company was initially concerned about losing the Birchman Asia Pacific brand name, which the WA founders modified for a local version of the London-founded Birchman Group despite not being directly linked.

“The reason for that (initial concern) was because it had taken us a while to get the brand name to where it is,” Mr Lee said.

“But what we did this time, and what we learned from the Beacon brand name change in that we didn’t do it then, was tell our customers not to worry about the brand name in one sense, because you’ve got the people who are serving you today also serving you tomorrow.”

He said that involved significant dialogue with existing customers and partners around the brand change to a point that they were comfortable with it.

From the SMS point of view, the listed company was looking for growth opportunities, which managing director of consulting, Darren Stanley, said Birchman presented.

“We already had a small number of people in Perth, but it wasn’t anywhere near the scale that we needed to be to be relevant to our clients,” he said.

“So for us we could grow organically, or we could find a company that was culturally aligned to buy.

“We wouldn’t have done it if we didn’t think the culture and values of the two companies would be complementary.”

Birchman’s existing relationship with Main Roads WA has been moved to the SMS brand, with the contract now in the SMS name.

“Our biggest customer in town is Inpex and they’ve said to us they don’t really care what our name is so long as they get the same service,” Mr Lee said.

He said other changes had taken place of benefit to WA employees, such as relocating to other offices in the SMS Management and Technology portfolio.

He said the growth of the managed services side of the business would likely increase staff numbers by 50 per cent to around 225.