The first time Trifecta Technologies founder and CEO Doug Pelletier was approached about selling the company's IBM Smarter Commerce business practice, he resisted.
 
Not only were these solutions integral to the Allentown, Pa.-based solution provider's early growth, IBM was an "excellent" business partner, Pelletier said. "IBM used to pull us in to close deals," he recalled.
 
But Trifecta's rapid ascent as a high-profile developer of Salesforce.com applications and solutions – the company is one of just five Platinum partners for the Heroku platform – convinced Pelletier to rethink that decision. The timing made sense, plus it was an opportunity to let employees share in Trifecta's ongoing success. And in early May, the company announced the sale of the unit to another elite IBM partner, Perficient, in a deal valued at $13.7 million.
 
"This transaction positions Trifecta really well, and will allow our team to better focus on Web, mobile and Salesforce.com application development in markets that are growing exponentially," Pelletier said in a statement, when the deal was announced. "Current client demand for Salesforce.com together with our enterprise mobile and Web application development expertise is unbelievable."
 
Two of the company's high-profile customers for these services are Carlo's Bakery (the Hoboken, N.J., company behind the "Cake Boss" reality TV show); and yearbook publishing company Herff Jones.
 
The first account demonstrates how Trifecta is putting its e-commerce skillset to work on the Salesforce1 platform: it integrated a solution using the Heroku cloud and Salesforce.com's mobile development tools to create a mobile-optimized point-of-sale (POS) system that passes order and customer information back into the company's Salesforce deployment.
 
The Herff Jones project is also highly mobile: the company created a custom Salesforce1 Platform application distributed via the AppExchange that lets about 300 Herff Jones sales representatives access pricing information and share data both internally and externally with business partners. The app is also used to streamline a six-week-long employee onboarding process. It replaces a system that had been pieced together using several antiquated software applications.
 
"The work Trifecta did to reproduce Worksheet Pro in SFDC was well received," said Mike Heneghan, director of IT for Herff Jones. "Knowing the complexity of this price book, I consider the final product nothing short of amazing."
 
While most of Trifecta's work is currently for hire – such as the Herff Jones app and the award-winning Musikfest mobile app that it developed for ArtsQuest – the company is toying with the idea of developing software that is distributes on the App Exchange. "One day, we're leaning ISV, the other day, we're leaning the services route," Pelletier said.
 
The IBM business unit sell-off leaves Trifecta's remaining 70 or so employees focused on building their Salesforce and Heroku development skills, and on applying main of the company's e-commerce related services and intellectual properaty to the Force.com platforms. The company is on a hiring spree: when I spoke with Pelletier in mid-May, his team had added six people in the past three weeks and he's looking for more.
 
"There is a lot of opportunity for our people to study and get certified in new methodologies," he said.