SPA Acquires Jigsaw, Creates SPARXiQ

In an age of analytics and process automation, two industry-focused companies have recently come together to enhance services for the industry … SPA (Strategic Pricing Associates) and Jigsaw Systems.

SPA historically has been focused on improving distributor profitability through improved price management disciplines, more strategic sales training and negotiation training. Jigsaw offered an array of business optimization with analytic tools to support distributor pricing, inventory management, customer engagement platforms as well as tools for manufacturers such as SPA pricing and process management for manufacturers, inventory management recommendations for distributors and point of sale (POS) data collection. Jigsaw was developing the infrastructure to support the next phase of the NEMRA POS initiative to support the electrical industry.

According to their press release,

SPA and Jigsaw Systems have announced today the acquisition of Jigsaw to offer unified strategic pricing, strategic costing, point of sale (POS), inventory management, sales enablement, and sales training solutions and platforms to the enterprise market. SPA will acquire the Jigsaw assets, people, and customer contracts, and the merged business will operate under the SPA brand. Both Jigsaw and SPA will continue to function as they have previously and support their respective customers with their existing products and services. Longer-term plans will be developed to further integrate the offering of the two companies and leverage each other’s strengths.

“We’re passionate about helping our clients’ sales forces accelerate profitable growth in today’s dynamic market,” said David Bauders, CEO of SPA. “In Jigsaw Systems, we discovered a partner that is equally as passionate about data and pricing analytics. Joining forces allows us to accelerate investments in our platforms and build new analytical and training solutions that will enable our clients and us to evolve and meet the unique demands of the modern, dynamic enterprise market.”

Mark McGready, Founder and CEO of Jigsaw Systems, also commented, “SPA’s acquisition of Jigsaw provides a major growth opportunity for both our businesses through an extended service offering for our clients. A shared philosophy behind the critical role of pricing (and many other diverse and complementary) analytics was the main driver that brought Jigsaw and SPA together,” said Jigsaw Systems CEO Mark McGready. “Since we know each other so well, we expect the acquisition to be a success. I’m pleased that both companies can now begin painting an even bigger picture.” 

SPA is in the process of rebranding the company to SPARXiQ and will have speakers at this year’s NAED regional conferences. Mark will be speaking on distributor analytics and Skip Tucker will speak on the art of skillful negotiation

SPARXiQ is the infrastructure that will power the next phase of the NEMRA POS initiative.

POSConnection, which will be launched prior to this year’s NEMRA annual meeting. POSConnection is a POS data collection highway. Distributors will be able to upload one data file with the POS information from participating manufacturers. The data will be cleansed, aggregated by manufacturer and then sent in one file to a manufacturer. Manufacturer sales representatives will have access to the information for their distributors for their authorized lines. A number of manufacturers have already committed to participate.

Click here to request more information on the NEMRA POS initiative.

Congratulations to SPA and Jigsaw. Combined the companies can help distributors and manufacturers power improved processes and profitability.