“This is a piece of the puzzle that is necessary for AI that we haven’t had,” said Blue Mantis Chief Revenue Officer Terry Richardson. “You can’t be successful with AI if you don’t have a good grip on your data. SME brings a much needed and desired capability around data analytics and business insights.”

Blue Mantis has stepped up its AI solutions sales offensive with the acquisition of SME Solutions Group, a boutique business intelligence (BI) and AI data readiness provider with a formidable BI as a service offering.

Terms of the acquisition for the 14-year-old Tampa Fla. consulting and services company, which has won big enterprise deals going up against AI and business intelligence system integrator behemoths and specialty industry integrators, were not disclosed.

“This is a piece of the puzzle that is necessary for AI that we haven’t had,” said Blue Mantis Chief Revenue Officer Terry Richardson (pictured), who will oversee the new data analytics practice formed from the acquisition of SME Solutions Group. “You can’t be successful with AI if you don’t have a good grip on your data. SME brings a much needed and desired capability around data analytics and business insights. AI starts with data.”

The acquisition provides Portsmouth, N.H.-headquartered Blue Mantis with a talented team of data experts – sometimes referred to by SME enterprise customers as a BI Swat team – with deep expertise in getting data organized for the AI transformation journey.

“SME has for many years been doing projects that were called data enablement, business insights or data analytics but today it is called AI,” said Richardson. “They bring AI experience, skills and capabilities that we want to provide to our customers and prospective customers.”

The deal comes just two months after Blue Mantis was acquired in a majority stake deal by new private equity owner Recognize as part of a “high growth” build out that will be fueled in part by acquisitions.

Richardson said he sees the acquisition as an inflection point that will set the “foundation” for the Blue Mantis AI solutions business going forward. “You are going to see Blue Mantis continue to be focused on helping customers on all aspects of their data needs,” he said.

In fact, he said, Blue Mantis – with $250 million in annual revenue and a three-year compound annual growth rate of 26.5 percent –has already begun getting its sales team ramped up to sell the SME Solutions Group capabilities in order to have “relevant” and “impactful” AI conversations with its 1,200 customers.

Blue Mantis’ bread and butter midmarket customers are already allocating budget for 2025 to drive AI solutions into their business, said Richardson.

“Those midmarket customers are scrambling how to figure out how to participate in this industry (AI) shift and are looking to leverage AI so they are adding budget for 2025,” he said. “We think it is going to be a real significant growth driver for the industry, the overall market and for Blue Mantis.”

SME – which stands for Subject Matter Expert – was founded by SME President and CEO Chris Moyer, a former power plant operator and energy company analytics expert who was determined to bring an industry specific focus to the business intelligence solutions market. Ninety percent of the company’s tech talent have industry expertise. What’s more, SME has the U.S. trademark for that SME acronym.

“Our folks have the business acumen and technology expertise,” said Moyer, who will serve as vice president of the new Blue Mantis data analytics practice. “When you put those two together that is why we win. We have folks that have been in the industry and they understand what technology means to their customers and are able to execute on it.”

Among SME Solutions Group’s top vendor relationships – which Blue Mantis intends to expand – are data analytics and power BI partner Microsoft; data integration and AI partner Qlik, AI power analytics provider ThoughtSpot; AI data cloud provider Snowflake and GenAI pipeline platform provider Matillion.

SME was a Thoughtspot North America Emerging Partner of the Year in 2019 and a Qlik North America Partner Culture award winner in 2015.

Moyer said his team of 27 full time employees and 10 contractors are set up to help dramatically expand the AI and business intelligence reach of Blue Mantis. “We call it AI readiness,” he said. “Everybody knows they want to do it and are trying to figure it out. We come in and look at where they are at from a data perspective…We’ve been doing AI for 13 years.”

Moyer said he and his team refer to AI as “augmented intelligence” because it is critical for customers to back up AI with experienced employees with strong customer relationships. “It is not all AI,” he said. “I would never recommend a company to be all AI. It has got to be augmented. The risk is thinking that AI is the solution for everything. It is another data point. But you can’t think it is going to be a perfect fix for every organization. There is a lot of bad data and bad information out there and you just need to make sure you curate it properly.”

SME Solutions Group’s flagship offering is a business intelligence as a service (BIAS) with a recurring revenue model that is winning over customers grappling with how to extract actionable business insights from their data.

“The BIAS approach is for an organization that knows they need to get to business insights but they don’t know how so we come in and help them build out a road map and plan,” Moyer said. “Then we stick around and ensure they are able to operate efficiently…I firmly believe this is going to be a staple like any SaaS model.”

AI is already being used by enterprises to proactively identity and remediate equipment failures in the energy industry and for safety purposes with internet of things sensors and capabilities that limit in the field personnel in potentially dangerous environments, said Moyer.

Moyer said he has been approached by a number of potential buyers regularly over the last five years, but it was the “culture” fit with Blue Mantis that convinced him to make the deal.

“My goal was to make sure my team had a culture that fit exactly how SME has grown,” he said. “We are very philanthropic. Blue Mantis and (CEO) Josh (Dinneen) and the team have that same community approach. I wanted to make sure my team was in a good spot.”

Moyer said the BI Swat team approach has made SME a critical extension of customers. “When there is an immediate need- a problem that needs a solution- we are a bat phone call away,” he said. “The team and I take a lot of pride in that. We are trusted advisors and partners to our customers.”

SME’s enterprise customers include a number of large energy, utility and financial services companies that have continued to rely on SME for one project or service after another.

“Getting in there is one thing, delivering on it and sticking around is another,” he said. “We’ve been successful in doing good work and having repetitive customers who refer us to other customers. We’ve grown just through referrals over the years.”

The crux of the SME business is strong relationships with customers that trust SME, said Moyer. “It comes down to who organizations want to work with and trust,” he said.

SME insists upon a data readiness approach before taking on a client, said Moyer. “We go in and do a full assessment,” he said. “We’ll interview people on the teams. We’ll look at the data they already have. Is there a lot of duplicate data? Is the historical data correct. If you don’t do that first you’re just setting yourself up for failure.”

Ultimately, the data readiness approach comes down to “data integrity and data trust,” said Moyer. “If you don’t have that underlying foundation AI really doesn’t mean anything. A big backbone of our business is on QA (Quality Assurance), QC (Quality Control), data integrity and trust. If the data isn’t clean, crisp and secure it is not going to work.”

Moyer said he and his team are committed to staying put and driving the business forward working hand in hand with Blue Mantis. “We’re energized and excited about the future,” he said.

As for the SME sales potential under Blue Mantis, Moyer said if SME can penetrate 40-50 percent of the 1,200 Blue Mantis customer base the combination is going to have a “massive” impact. “A lot of customers need this and a lot of the (Blue Mantis) sales folks have said they have been asked for this and haven’t been able to deliver,” he said. “Now we have an engine and a catalyst to do that.”

Richardson, for his part, said he could not be more “jazzed” about the AI future with SME Solutions Group.

“The underpinning of all successful AI projects is data and everything that spins out of that – how do you secure it and how to protect it- which is one of our strengths,” he said. “This is the next wave of IT spend. We are in the early stages of it. We’re excited about bringing the SME employees into the Blue Mantis family. We are going to lock arms and work together to bring some innovative solutions to customers.”