Why the acquisition by Forterro is good news for BM Group customers.
When Forterro acquired the BM Group at the start of the year, it was a new name to many in this industry.
However, Forterro, whose stated mission is ‘powering the businesses powering the future’, is a significant player in the European software market. It is focused entirely on the industrial midmarket, providing support and software for more than 25,000 industrial businesses. In fact, Forterro has just been named Tech Company of the Year at the prestigious National Technology Awards.
Forterro in figures:
- 40+ office locations throughout Europe
- More than 20 industrial software solutions
- 2500 people in total – 700 in fenestration
- €330m in revenues in 2024
- 5 strategic acquisitions in 2024, including BM Group, Orgadata and AI start-up Prodaso
It is Forterro’s focus on specialised, future-proof software solutions for local markets that make it a perfect fit for BM. Like BM, Forterro products are designed to strengthen and accelerate customers’ ability to operate efficiently and compete effectively.
Prior to the acquisition of BM, Forterro also acquired Orgadata, the company behind BM Aluminium’s LogiKal software, and together they are now part of a new line of business within Forterro focused on windows, doors and facades.
Nick Bailey, Team Leader for Sales at BM, has been quick to reassure customers in the UK that both the acquisition and the creation of a new line of business within Forterro are wholly positive. He said: “As we reported at the FIT Show, Forterro’s strength in R&D and tighter integration within the teams means product development for the UK market will be quicker and at a scale not seen before.
“That’s good news for customers using LogiKal and particularly for users of our ground breaking TOUCH platform. We certainly expect to be able to speed up the roll out of TOUCH to even more UK fabricators, as well as making it an even more comprehensive offering.
“As you’d expect, a huge amount of work is happening behind the scenes to determine our future product strategy and development, but it will certainly enhance our existing offering and help support our customers’ growth alongside ours.”
As an example, BM Aluminium is already rolling out the LogiKal MES (Manufacturing Execution System), allowing fabricators to digitise their factories and move to fully paperless operations. LogiKal MES displays real-time order status, errors and solutions on an integrated dashboard – giving fabricators full visibility of their production so that they can respond quickly to deviations and optimise their efficiency. Details of the first LogiKal MES installations in the UK will be released soon.
Nick added: “We’ll be making more announcements about new products and features in the coming months, as well as identifying further opportunities for cross selling products which we can see have applications in this market.”
Forterro is accelerating its focus on cloud solutions in response to the growing adoption of cloud technology amongst its industrial midmarket customers. In 2024, sales of Forterro’s cloud-based products increased by 177%. The company recently announced a strategic partnership with Amazon Web Services (AWS), enabling customers to rapidly deploy Forterro applications through a cloud platform that leverages the reliability, security and scalability of AWS.
Forterro’s ERP solutions, warehouse management systems (WMS) and material requirement planning (MRP) applications, could also have applications in this industry.
Nick added: “Forterro has already stated that its focus is on driving digitalisation and automation within the doors and windows market, and it certainly has the expertise and the product range to be able to deliver that. BM and Orgadata are strong and trusted brands in this sector and the acquisition by Forterro only strengthens our offering.”
More at: https://www.thebmgroup.co.uk/
