“The deal will also enable us and ROI to focus on what our respective businesses do best. I think the experience for Xeretec and ROI customers will only be enhanced by this merger,” said Xeretec director of production Warren Beard.

“It also makes us the largest Xerox production reseller in the UK,” he added.

According to Beard, as a result of ROI Digital joining the Xeretec fold its customers will benefit from enhanced service and support and a bolstered in-house customer support helpdesk.

Two members of ROI Digital’s sales staff were transferred under TUPE as a result of the deal and will continue to be based in March, Cambridgeshire, and according to both companies, the merger will cement an already established partnership.

The deal was signed at the end of March and follows a similar merger between Xeretec and Scottish resellers North East Reprographics (NER) and Solution X in 2012.

According to ROI Group managing director John Murphy, the sale will enable ROI to focus on its ROI360 web-to-print software business, which is based on a “flavoured version” of Pageflex, and also its separate data business.

“A lot of our investment has been around software and data; we’ve been working with Cranfield University and talking to end-users identifying areas that keep our customers, and our customers’ customers up at night,” said Murphy.

“So this deal stemmed from us recognising that if we’re going to do something well, we want to make sure we continue to do it really well and by merging our reseller operation ROI Digital with Xeretec, we’re enabling both of us to focus on our core strengths – basically we’ve done the deal for all the right reasons,” he added.

ROI360 has around 120 software customers, and as well as its UK headquarters it also has a strategic development team based in Vietnam and a customisation development team in the Czech Republic.