Intracto Group buys We are you, largest acquisition

Intracto Group is taking a major step forward with the takeover of agency group We are you. As a result of the technically oriented takeover, the workforce grows by a quarter to 1,325 in the Netherlands and Belgium.

Last Saturday morning, the parties signed the final signatures to complete the transaction. Only ACM has yet to give its approval. Intracto Group will gain four hundred employees in Rotterdam, Amsterdam, Utrecht and Den Bosch. Coincidentally, these are also four of the five cities where Intracto Group is setting up its campus concept.

We are you is the group of companies that arose from a series of acquisitions from Colors. They were: Mangrove, Redhotminute, Virtual Affairs, Estate Digital and DearNova. CEO Jorg Verweij: “This is how we have become a strong player in the Netherlands. At the beginning of this year, we set ourselves the goal of being a broader agency by 2023 in addition to our core, technology. ” This is mainly work in Microsoft .NET.

“Of course we regularly came across Intracto Group in our market orientation. We started talking and our ambitions turned out to be a good fit. We wanted to expand with the type of services they are strong in: growing on the marketing and strategy side without sacrificing our execution power. Conversely, they are strong in Drupal, Java, PHP and open source. ” Technically they complement each other.

Pieter Janssens, CEO of Intracto Group, adds: “We are well on track to become a technology-driven service agency that can serve customers end-to-end. Technically, Microsoft’s .NET was missing from our portfolio. That is actually not possible if one in three Benelux companies is naturally oriented towards Microsoft. From that perspective, we were often referred to We are you. They turned out to have the same vision on the market, are people-oriented, think culture is important and deliver what the customer expects. ”

Janssens wants to realize a total of nine so-called campuses in the Benelux. These are ‘houses’ in certain economic regions where all imaginable digital expertise is available. These are strategy, creation, content, marketing and technology. In terms of content, people speak to customers at board level. Before you can move into a campus, “you have to have a certain volume in a region. With We are you, that substance is created in five of the six cities in the Netherlands. ” Only not in Eindhoven. “This accelerates the implementation of the campus strategy.”

The Belgian expects to be able to open one and possibly even two campuses in the coming year, buildings where several labels from a region offer their services. It goes without saying that Amsterdam is the first. “We have joined the right companies in 21 months. We are working at a rapid pace to build the business of the future with the entrepreneurs. In 2021 we will show what we prepared in two years. ”

Jorg Verweij will continue to lead We are you unchanged in the new constellation. In the medium term he will pay more attention to the integration with Intracto Group. “Then my role will change.”

Janssens: “We only actively pursue our joint integrated proposition when we feel that we are operational where we want to be. You have to be able to keep your promise. Nevertheless, we already work together across multiple locations and projects. I think that ten to fifteen percent of the work is already done cross-project and cross-campus together. ” That came about organically, from the initiative of the employees and customers themselves. ”

Intracto Group has seven to eight hundred employees in the Netherlands. From a consolidated perspective, all affiliated offices in the Benelux would show a total turnover of 170 million euros.

In recent years, several full-service digital agency groups have emerged in the Netherlands. Two other big ones are Dept and Candid Group.

Other companies from the Intracto Group in the Netherlands are Booming, Burst, OneShoe, Isaac, GUC Agency, Frontmen and EZcompany. In Belgium, it added the performance specialist iValue to the group last week.

The group management works together with investor Waterland in its expansion plans.

*) Photo from left to right: Roel Beerten (CFO We are you), Beppie ten Böhmer, (CHRO We are you), Pieter Jannsens (CEO Intracto Group) and Jorg Verweij (CEO We are you)