(Carving off Rotten Meat?)
(Couldn't Rationalize Marketing?)
Ah, the fun we can have with the news that Sage Group is selling off certain of its older CRM acquisitions, notably ACT! and SalesLogix (no exclamation point) to a former Sage development partner called Swiftpage.
Swiftpage, which does "white label marketing services," is financing the acquisition with a slug of capital from - you guessed it - a private equity firm, Accel-KKR.
All kidding aside, the press release doesn't say how much capital - but the 451 Group is reporting "250 employees are expected to join Swiftpage." That's a lotta headcount. Good on 'em, I guess.
UPDATE: Leonard Klie at Destination CRM puts the pricetag for these two, plus a CRM suite for nonprofits, at $101.2 million. Four additional "non-core" products are also getting the heave-ho across the pond: "In Europe, Sage will sell its C&I, ATL, Automotive, and Aytos product lines to Argos Soditic, a private equity firm based in Paris, for roughly $44 million."
The Destination CRM piece also includes quotes from Sage execs about how they're focusing on their core CRM product, just not these CRM products. Makes you wonder about the long-term viability of the rollup model, doesn't it? Will Infor, Epicor, or Aptean follow suit?
(Couldn't Rationalize Marketing?)
Ah, the fun we can have with the news that Sage Group is selling off certain of its older CRM acquisitions, notably ACT! and SalesLogix (no exclamation point) to a former Sage development partner called Swiftpage.
Swiftpage, which does "white label marketing services," is financing the acquisition with a slug of capital from - you guessed it - a private equity firm, Accel-KKR.
All kidding aside, the press release doesn't say how much capital - but the 451 Group is reporting "250 employees are expected to join Swiftpage." That's a lotta headcount. Good on 'em, I guess.
UPDATE: Leonard Klie at Destination CRM puts the pricetag for these two, plus a CRM suite for nonprofits, at $101.2 million. Four additional "non-core" products are also getting the heave-ho across the pond: "In Europe, Sage will sell its C&I, ATL, Automotive, and Aytos product lines to Argos Soditic, a private equity firm based in Paris, for roughly $44 million."
The Destination CRM piece also includes quotes from Sage execs about how they're focusing on their core CRM product, just not these CRM products. Makes you wonder about the long-term viability of the rollup model, doesn't it? Will Infor, Epicor, or Aptean follow suit?
Time to update the graveyard. Keep those head stones moving.
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting how 10 years ago Sage was buying software companies (CRM and ERP) like hot pancakes of the oven, and well today they are selling them just as fast. Or laying them to rest in the graveyard. A good sign of what is being sold and laid to rest are those software lines that did not get re-branded.
ReplyDeleteSage never got serious enough about the CRM business to provide the kind of deep integration to their account apps that would enable them to take advantage of the cross sell opportunity. Sage executives once estimated that cross sell opportunity to be greater than $1 billion. Instead, Sage managed to take a CRM business growing at 200% the year before it was acquired, and not only halt that growth, but shrink the business over 10 years.
ReplyDeleteTell me bout what is the difference between CRM and ERP..
ReplyDeleteMost people would tell you CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management. At xTuple, we'd say the C stands for "Corporate," including relationships with anyone with whom you do business - vendors, partners, competitors, etc. But regardless, CRM systems mainly track communications interactions with these people, both pre- and post-sales.
ReplyDeleteWe would say that CRM is a subset of ERP, which is by definition one database that incorporates all your business activity related to customers, vendors, products, time, and accounting.
I guess Sage have just done all they can with the ventures and now it's time to clean the cobwebs out and move on.
ReplyDelete