Dallas' Trinity Hunt Partners Acquires 3 Tech Companies, Launches Plano-based Argano

A new Plano-headquartered tech company is a combination of three firms, including two in North Texas. Plano-based Keste and Arlington-based interRel will combine with United Virtualities, which has offices in New York, Guadalajara, and Buenos Aires. Together they make up Argano.

The company focused on building cloud-based digital operating platforms has about 400 employees, and that could double in the next year, it says. Backed by Dallas-based private-equity firm Trinity Hunt Partners (THP), Argano will be led by Chip Register, the former co-CEO of global services company PublicisSapient.

Argano CEO Register and his team are armed with experience in the industry and have big plans to make their mark. That may include the addition of more groups in the coming months via acquisition.

“We’re bringing world-class firms together,” Register says.”We help businesses transform their operations through unique, integrated capabilities in the technologies that underpin a modern foundation.”

The CEO told Dallas Innovates that the company wants to remove the pain points that companies traditionally face when dealing with technological debts. Those pain points range from lost sales opportunities and distribution shortfalls to inconsistent financial management and high employee turnover.

Register says the company’s “intelligent, scalable” systems can support selling and fulfillment environments from commerce to cash to close.

The company has an acronym for its holistic approach: MIMMI (modernizing, integrating, migrating, and making intelligent). Argano will design holistic digital operating platforms for its clients that can serve as foundations for the business.

The “Digital Renaissance”

Register sees Argano as a guiding hand that leads enterprises beyond legacy technology and into “game-changing” products, services, and experiences.

By helping company leaders use insight and innovation to reimagine their digital foundation, they can help companies “not just survive but thrive.” Argano wants to be the go-to in improving operational and financial performance for businesses that might be digitally limiting themselves.

“Companies have spent the last decade feverishly working to improve their overall digital product and experience designs,” Register says. “This has led to a technology deficit in core operations which is hampering their ability to plan, sell, and deliver well in a world of increasing speed and complexity.”

• “Can you support your customers’ desire to take control of configuring and pricing complex products and services and get the self-help and support they want? To both maximize and optimize revenue, you need to deliver a frictionless customer experience that also creates the kinds of data required to enable downstream business and financial functions as well as learn more about how to re-engage successfully with your customer.
• Can your logistics and supply chains operate with resiliency and flexibility to meet customer needs while effectively managing the speed and constant changes that are part of the new operating reality? Having the right data and supporting technology in place enables visibility, efficiency and the ability to model scenarios as product life cycles, delivery speeds and the desire for personalization and customization continue to grow.
• Are you able to support agile planning and consolidation and leverage advanced analytics to make better decisions and improve overall business performance? Cloud-based enterprise Performance Management solutions provide both the technical foundation and business processes to ensure you have the necessary data that delivers the right strategic insights that are critical given the level of speed and complexity we all need to manage.
• Do you have the cloud-based enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems and processes that support data visibility and integrity across core operations and enable leading-edge decision-making to unlock innovation and drive your business forward? ERP sits at the heart of everything. And it needs to be customized to the way your company works. It always has been, and will increasingly be, the wrong idea to tailor your commercial offerings to what your systems can support. They have a job to do. Make them do it.”

Register sees Argano being known as “the best architects and builders of the digital foundations that make businesses run better.”

Its backers agree. According to THP Partner Blake Apel, the company has the leadership team and capital support in place to quickly become an industry leader.

“Service providers who specialize in modernizing, integrating, and migrating enterprise architectures into modern, agile and cloud-oriented environments are well-positioned for growth in the coming years,” Apel said.

The Argano platform

Within Argano is ArganoKeste, a tech services firm focused on commerce-to-cash solutions in the B2B space; ArganoInterRel, a provider of enterprise performance management and business intelligence software; and ArganoUV, a design and technology team that will deliver commerce experiences for leading B2C brands.

Joining Register on the founding team is CFO Kent Herring; Howard Moore, CEO of ArganoKeste; Edward Roske, CEO of ArganoInterRel; Sri Ayyeppen, president of ArganoKeste; Daniel Lopatin, CFO of ArganoUV; Priya Krishnan, chief people officer; Jenny Hughes, head of culture, experience & communications; and John Baglivo, chief marketing officer.

“The Argano executive team understands the demand for both the breadth of capability and insight of large global system integrators, as well as the agility, personalized attention and domain expertise of niche specialist firms,” Alan Herrick, former chairman and CEO of Sapient and new Argano board member, said. “The Argano platform delivers both from day one, rather than leaving businesses to approximate the combination through intensive sourcing and orchestrating multiple partners.”