Thryv Holdings, Inc. announced yesterday the closing of the acquisition of the Australia-based digital marketing and directory services provider, Sensis. This addition will bring in over 100,000 customers to the leading software provider for small businesses. It will also pave the way for Australian small business owners to adopt cloud-based solutions and reach more customers by meeting their digital demands in this post-pandemic economy..

Thryv CEO and president, Joe Walsh, remarked: “This is a transformational acquisition for Thryv, and one that will help Australian small businesses better compete in a digital economy."

Digital disruption is occurring in businesses everywhere, fueled by the virtual demands brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. Customers want contactless options to search, order, and settle up with a company. They have increasingly little patience for companies that can't address both the safety and practicality concerns they have.

For instance, customers might reasonably prefer to pay without having to touch the same device that dozens of other customers have used. Or they might only choose small businesses that have created an ordering experience that makes it possible to select and pick up products without having to stand in line. More and more, a fully integrated cloud-based solution is less of a luxury and more of a necessity for businesses to succeed in today’s economy.

Thryv® Software is the company’s flagship SaaS platform that delivers an end-to-end client experience. The platform was designed to optimize the business owner's usage and drive sales for small-and-medium-sized companies all over the world. Acquiring Sensis is a part of a larger corporate strategy to enter more international markets this year.

Today, small businesses can't afford to be without a strong digital presence, one that accounts for a customer base that has grown ever-more accustomed to being online. Sensis has a similar mindset, one that is driven by its strong portfolio of directory services. This company has connected countless Australians to consumer businesses of every variety.

Sensis provides search engine marketing, data mapping solutions, and a number of website products. The company is Australia’s largest directory print publisher, which includes Yellow and White Pages.

CEO of Sensis, John Allan, has said "Our organizations share a similar heritage through our profitable Yellow and White Pages brands, which we will continue to develop." Allan would go onto to say that the goal for both organizations is to be the go-to partner for SMBs that want to streamline and improve daily activities through mobile services.

The flagship product of Thryv Holdings is Thryv®, a software that makes it simple for business owners to communicate with customers, build customer lists, and deliver invoices. It can also help owners implement contactless payments and generate more ratings or reviews.

Many business owners already have these elements in place, but not to the scale that customers would like to see. Thryv makes it possible to bring everything together on one platform, allowing owners to track their progress and better understand their customer’s behavior.

These capabilities will be welcome news to small business owners in Australia and to the country at large. The country's GDP can thank small businesses for more than a third of its share, and 44% of the country's workforce is employed by small businesses.

As strong as these numbers are though, just over half of small businesses have a web presence and far fewer have a social media presence. The majority of them (about 63%) are also unable to take orders over the internet. This is a huge opportunity for small business owners to shift their strategy and become that much more attuned to their customer's preferences.

Sensis supports this transformation, and welcomes the inherent value of what it will bring. John Allan will be leading Australian operations and reporting to Walsh for collaboration and cooperation. Allan's decision was easier to make primarily because the two companies were already aligned.

Allan had already seen small businesses in Australia struggle with how to budget their marketing dollars. Owners would end up spending more money for IT platforms than they did on their employees, a demoralizing and often counterintuitive approach. These platforms might be useful in some areas, but ultimately harmful in others. Owners didn't always fully grasp the functionality, leaving tools to go underutilized or ignored entirely.

Thryv has managed to innovate in this space, putting an end to the fractured and cumbersome platforms of yesterday and helping professionals move forward into the modern age. Even small business owners without a lot of technical skills find Thryv software easy to use.

The user-friendly experience has helped them open new doors and discover more options than they would have even dreamed possible before. It might be why Thryv already works with more than 360,000 small businesses in America.

Walsh notes that he knows that Australia will be a different market than the US. The demands of customers in both countries aren't a precise parallel, and Thryv can only thrive if they appreciate the nuances behind the two. However, he's prepared for those challenges because he understands the core issues that both countries face.

At the heart of it, small business owners are trying to entice customers to choose their company over a national chain. They battle against these juggernauts every day of the week, even as those juggernauts become increasingly more powerful.

There may be some cultural differences (and several oceans) between a business owner in American and a business owner in Australia, but the root challenges are very much the same. As conglomerations invest more in technology in an attempt to drown out the efforts of their smaller counterparts, Thryv software is there to level the playing field. CEO Joe Walsh is confident that his software can make a huge impact on the SMB owners and their 5 million employees.

Every day, consumers look to small businesses for a more personal connection to the purchases they make. Whether it's a product or a service, a smaller company serves a valuable purpose that a larger chain cannot. Thryv was created to make it possible for owners to keep up with customers in a digital space.

Whether it's increasing the number of payment options or sending a notification of a monthly sale, Thryv makes it possible for small business owners to succeed in an increasingly crowded space. When everyone is fighting for customer attention, Joe Walsh and John Allan look forward to working together to give their customers an edge that they can't find anywhere else.