FARGO – Sundog Interactive, an award-winning digital marketing and technology firm based in Fargo, has entered into a sales agreement with digital consulting firm Perficient Inc.

Perficient, headquartered in St. Louis, first announced the news on its website Monday morning, May 13:

"Perficient, Inc. (NASDAQ: PRFT) ("Perficient"), the leading digital transformation consulting firm serving Global 2000 and other large enterprise customers throughout North America, today announced it has entered into a purchase agreement to acquire the assets of Sundog Interactive, Inc., a $14 million marketing and technology consulting firm that delivers Salesforce solutions for the world’s leading manufacturers."

A spokeswoman with Perficient declined to disclose the purchase price. She did, however, confirm that Sundog will continue to do business in Fargo as Perficient, expanding the company's geographic footprint. The deal is expected to be finalized later this month.

In a statement, Jeffrey Davis, Perficient's chairman and CEO, pointed to Sundog's experience with Salesforce, an integrated customer relationship management platform, as something that appealed to Perficient.

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“We are excited to continue to strengthen our Salesforce consulting and digital marketing capabilities with the strategic acquisition of Sundog Interactive,” Davis said. “Sundog Interactive’s marketing strategy, data and insights, and technology integration services are highly complementary to Perficient’s end-to-end digital transformation offerings. Adding specialized Salesforce capabilities aimed at accelerating results through smarter marketing further enhances our innovative cloud solutions and better serves our clients’ unique needs.”

The post also included the following details:

Broadens and deepens Perficient’s Salesforce consulting capabilities, bringing strategic marketing and technical delivery services focused on the manufacturing industry.

Brings industry-specific intellectual property, including a partner relationship management solution extending and accelerating several Salesforce products for the manufacturing vertical; a white-label, multi-industry solution for marketing intelligence; and several packaged code offerings leveraging Salesforce and Google tools.

Adds about 100 consulting, technology, sales and general and administrative professionals.

Brings a strong concentration of strategic client relationships with Fortune 1000 customers within the manufacturing industry, leading to significant opportunity for cross-selling synergies to accelerate mutual success.

Perficient plans to retain Sundog leaders Brent Teiken, Eric Dukart and Johnathon Rademacher in key roles.

Sundog Interactive was founded by Teiken and Chuck Duffie, a former co-worker from Great Plains Software, in 1996.

Initially, their focus was on building custom websites. It wasn’t until 2003 when the company merged with GL Ness, a traditional advertising agency, that Sundog began to focus on marketing as well.

During an interview about the company's 20th anniversary in 2016, Teiken referred to Sundog as a "revenue performance marketing organization."

The company focuses on connecting clients' products and services with customers in a way that is "accountable in terms of budget and also, in the end, successful," he explained.

In a statement, Teiken said the acquisition will benefit both businesses.

“Perficient is well-known for its expertise across many technology platforms, including Salesforce, and continues to be a key technology provider of marketing and sales cloud solutions,” he said. “We’re thrilled to join the Perficient team, which is widely-recognized as one of the largest and most capable digital transformation consulting firms in the country. The acquisition will accelerate our collective opportunities for continued growth and success within the Salesforce ecosystem.”

Teiken was unavailable for an interview Monday, but he released a number of reasons the deal made "perfect sense" through Communications Director Heidi Haven:

Like Sundog Interactive, Perficient is a leader in end-to-end digital transformation solutions including digital experience, strategic marketing and marketing automation services, cloud transformations and implementations, and systems integration consulting, with deep industry vertical expertise.

Perficient has built a fast-growing, highly skilled Salesforce practice focused on helping leading brands accelerate business innovation and transform their customer experience using the Salesforce platform.

The majority of clients should notice few, if any, immediate changes.

Our clients will continue to receive the same quality attention but now have access to a broader range of services and solutions as we begin to offer the capabilities and resources of Perficient and its enterprise partners.

Founded in 1997, Perficient has 3,500 "colleagues" working in offices throughout North America and global delivery capabilities in India, China and Mexico. The business, which projects $550 million in revenue in 2019, is publicly traded on Nasdaq.