ServiceNow
Global deal volume cooled in 2024. APAC didn't get the memo.
Business consulting M&A slowed globally in 2024 compared to 2023. Australia, India and Singapore barely noticed. Those three markets stayed genuinely active through the slowdown, and ServiceNow partners were a big part of why.
That divergence matters more than it might first appear, because it's not just about deal count. It's about who's doing the buying.
The buyer pool is wider than the headlines suggest
It's easy to assume ServiceNow consolidation is a story about the top five IT services players hoovering up everything in sight. Accenture, Capgemini and their peers are still very active, and they're not going anywhere. But look at the actual deals closing across APAC over the past 12 to 18 months, and most of them were done by what we'd call "new corporate acquirers": mid-size platforms and regional players making a strategic bolt-on, not global giants ticking a box.
That's a meaningful shift for founders. A wider, more varied set of buyers means smaller businesses that might assume they're too small for the top-tier acquirers actually have real paths to an exit. It also means running a process with only one or two obvious buyers in mind leaves value on the table. Approaching multiple potential acquirers matters more now than it did a few years ago.
Recent deals worth watching
Three APAC transactions from the past 18 months capture the pattern:
- Coforge acquired TMLabs, a Melbourne-based ServiceNow Elite partner with around 60 staff and deep expertise in Integrated Risk Management, Healthcare and HR Service Delivery modules. Coforge isn't one of the traditional top five, but the deal gave it an immediate, credentialed foothold in the Australian public sector and healthcare verticals.
- AC3 acquired JDS, a 100-person Melbourne firm that was both a ServiceNow Elite partner and an Atlassian Gold Solution Partner. The two businesses were similar in size, ownership structure and client base (public sector and regulated industries), which is exactly the kind of cultural and commercial fit that makes for a clean integration.
- RGP acquired CloudGo, a Singapore-headquartered, 80-person Elite ServiceNow partner with delivery capability across Singapore, Australia and India. RGP used the deal specifically as its platform to expand ServiceNow capability into the US and European markets, a reminder that APAC firms are increasingly the ones exporting expertise outward, not just importing it.
None of these three acquirers is a household name in IT services the way Accenture or Deloitte is. All three deals were still strategically significant enough to be worth doing.
What the multiples tell you
Recent private transactions put EV/Gross Revenue multiples for ServiceNow consultancies between roughly 2.4x and 3.7x, averaging around 2.8x. That's the richest multiple range we track across the ecosystems in this series: higher than Google Cloud (around 2.3x) and meaningfully higher than Salesforce (around 1.2x to 1.5x). Headcount in these deals also skews larger, typically 150 to 500 people, which suggests buyers are paying up for firms with genuine delivery scale, not just a certification badge.
Two different markets, two different playbooks
The broader IT services market splits roughly 60/40 between large enterprise clients and SMEs, and each half is driving a different kind of consolidation. Acquisitions by the top five players are mostly about winning and retaining large enterprise accounts that need deep, complex capability across ERP, cloud and cybersecurity. The SME side of the market is behind more of the roll-up activity: multiple focused providers combined into one broader platform that can credibly serve both ends of the market.
Which pattern applies to you depends entirely on your client base. If your revenue skews toward large enterprise accounts, you're a more natural fit for a top-five buyer looking to deepen expertise. If your book is SME-heavy, you're more likely to be approached as part of a roll-up, and the conversation will be less about prestige clients and more about how well you fold into a combined delivery model.
What this means if you're building a ServiceNow-focused business
The buyer list is longer than you think. Don't rule yourself out of a process because you assume only the top five are buying. Some of the most active recent acquirers in APAC are mid-size platforms making their first or second strategic move.
Scale and specialisation both matter, but scale is the newer story. The multiples data suggests buyers are increasingly paying for firms with real headcount and delivery depth in specific modules, not just broad ServiceNow competency.
Know which side of the market you sit on. An enterprise-heavy client base and an SME-heavy client base lead to genuinely different conversations with genuinely different buyers. Being clear on this before you start a process saves time and sharpens your positioning.
If you want to talk through where your business fits, or what a realistic valuation range looks like given your client mix, we're happy to help. Our full breakdown of the ServiceNow partner M&A landscape, including the enterprise/SME segmentation, deal multiples, and our READY+ framework for exit preparation, is available in the whitepaper below.
