FourNet, the Manchester-based customer experience and AI transformation group, has acquired SVL Business Solutions, a Glasgow-headquartered contact centre and customer experience specialist. The deal matters to the sector because it adds delivery capacity for AI-enabled customer service projects in regulated industries, where compliance and service continuity are critical.

The combined business has more than 230 people, more than 450 customers and revenues of around £65 million, with SVL contributing 41 employees. FourNet combines customer experience and AI consulting with cyber security and operational services.

SVL, whose history stretches back to 1967, is a UK-wide business built from Glasgow, specialising in interaction recording, analytics and workforce management that has broadened into customer experience transformation and AI over the past five years.

The two companies have worked together for nearly a decade, serve overlapping sectors including financial services, utilities and public safety, and share technology partners such as NiCE. It is FourNet’s fifth acquisition since 2020, continuing a strategy backed by private equity investor Palatine, which took a majority stake in 2021.

SVL customers will keep working with the same teams while gaining access to FourNet’s wider organisation, and the deal broadens FourNet’s customer base in financial services, which it has identified as a growth area.

Richard Pennington, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of FourNet, said: “Organisations are now moving AI out of pilots and into everyday customer service. They need help proving its value, redesigning the customer journeys and processes around it, and implementing it safely.”

David Kindness, Chief Executive Officer of SVL Business Solutions, said: “Our customers stay with us because of our people, our expertise and the quality of service we provide. Joining FourNet protects those strengths while giving our customers a much larger team and a broader range of capabilities behind them.”

On SVL, James Painter, Partner at Palatine, said: “It brings specialist expertise which strengthens FourNet’s customer experience transformation proposition into mission-critical sectors.”

The structural driver is buy-and-build consolidation, with private equity-backed platforms adding specialist capacity to serve regulated customers that need compliance, resilience and delivery capability.

For the sector, the deal shows customer experience consultancies consolidating around AI delivery capacity, with long-standing partners becoming acquisition targets.

Source: itbrief.co.uk / comparethecloud.net / scottishfinancialreview.com / prolificnorth.co.uk