Another CRM Vendor Gets Acquired - RightNow Buys Salesnet
RIGHTNOW ACQUIRES SALESNET TO ACCELERATE DEVELOPMENT OF CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE SOLUTIONS
RightNow Acquires Significant Sales Automation Expertise
BOZEMAN, MONT. (May 22, 2006) - RightNow® Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ: RNOW) today announced the acquisition of Salesnet, Inc., an on demand software firm focused on sales workflow automation. The acquisition will accelerate RightNow’s customer experience management development efforts by combining RightNow’s patented knowledge foundation with Salesnet’s sophisticated workflow engine. With the acquisition, RightNow adds 26 employees and a dozen off-shore development contractors with a long history of delivering sales automation solutions to mid-market and enterprise customers, including deployments of up to 2500 users.
“Our acquisition of Salesnet brings substantial sales workflow domain expertise to our business, accelerates our roadmap by more than a year and adds hundreds of customers to our client base,” Greg Gianforte, founder and chief executive officer at RightNow, said. “RightNow will continue to build out its capabilities to offer organizations solutions and expertise to create a competitively differentiated customer experience throughout every customer interaction channel.”
Jonathan Tang, president and co-founder of Salesnet, will become vice president of sales solutions at RightNow. “This is a great opportunity for Salesnet customers. Joining RightNow will enable us to extend and realize our vision much more quickly. RightNow’s strategy and roadmap is a direction that provides our customers a significant long-term competitive advantage,” said Tang.
Salesnet was an early pioneer in on demand sales force automation with particular expertise in successfully implementing sales methodologies in sophisticated environments. Salesnet brings to RightNow an increased domain expertise in customer facing sales functions, as well as significant vertical expertise in financial services and business-to-business.
“Salesnet excels in providing users with the sophisticated tools needed to handle more complex selling environments,” Denis Pombriant, managing principal at Beagle Research Group, said. “When customers need to move beyond simple contact management to standardize practices for sales forces across geographies and divisions, they look to Salesnet. The combination of RightNow and Salesnet will create a powerful solution set for small and large organizations that see value in leveraging a patented knowledge foundation with a sophisticated work-flow engine in the sales channel to deliver superior customer experiences.”
RightNow will support Salesnet’s existing customers and provide a seamless upgrade path to much broader customer experience management solutions. Initial integrations between the Salesnet application and RightNow applications will be completed this summer with all major features expected to be included by summer of 2007. Rich Perkett, chief technology officer and co-founder of Salesnet, will join RightNow as a director of product development, responsible for the integration and expansion of Salesnet’s technology into RightNow’s solution.
“Salesnet’s products continue to be a key factor to our sales success. We are excited to see a market leader like RightNow acquire Salesnet to further enhance customer value and long term investment in the platform,” said O. John Groebl, IT project manager for American Express Incentive Services. “We look forward to having the ability to roll out a full complement of customer experience management capabilities offered as a result of RightNow’s acquisition. This is a positive development for us and re-affirms the selection we made with Salesnet.”
Under the terms of the acquisition, RightNow has acquired Salesnet through an all-cash merger. RightNow expects the transaction to be neutral to cash flow from operations and dilutive to GAAP EPS in 2006. Salesnet’s corporate office in Boston will become RightNow’s Boston office and will continue to include development, sales, marketing and support functions.