| Oracle snaps up Hyperion for $3.3bn
Oracle announced on Thursday that it has agreed to buy Hyperion Solutions for $3.3bn, in a move to expand in the area of performance management systems. The acquisition is yet another multibillion-dollar deal in recent years for Oracle, which has shown a hunger for expanding quickly via mergers. The software maker acquired customer relationship management software maker Siebel Systems for $5.85bn last year and archrival PeopleSoft for $10.3bn in 2005. While the PeopleSoft and Siebel acquisitions had product overlap to varying degrees with Oracle's existing business, the Hyperion deal is expected to have little redundancy, Oracle executives said in a conference call with analysts. Hyperion sells business intelligence tools and financial applications to corporations.
Google, Salesforce to buddy up over CRM
Google and Salesforce.com are expected to today launch a combined website that is designed to allow the online customer relationship management software maker to act as a reseller for Google's AdWords. For Salesforce.com, the alliance expands its efforts to tie its hosted CRM software with Google AdWords, following its acquisition of privately held Kieden last year. Salesforce.com will expand beyond allowing its customers to launch Google AdWords from a Salesforce.com application to one in which it will act as a reseller of the Google AdWords platform. The two companies jointly developed Salesforce Group Edition featuring Google AdWords and plan to jointly market the offering, said Kendall Collins, senior vice president of marketing for Salesforce.com. Salesforce Group Edition is designed to allow companies to connect to Google AdWords and have their advertisement displayed on Google.com when related search terms are entered on the site, as well as distribute their ads on Google AdSense.
SAP making a play for on-demand e-tail CRM?
Business software giant SAP has acquired Praxis Software Solutions as it attempts to weave on-demand applications into its offerings. Technology from Praxis will be incorporated into SAP Business One, a business management product aimed at small and medium-sized companies, to help them set up online stores and deploy customer relationship management software via the internet. The two key elements that SAP is gaining from its long-time partner are Praxis' NetPoint Commerce and NetPoint Focus applications. The first is an ecommerce package that offers customisable shopping-cart and customer support functions, designed to handle data access for both business-to-business and business-to-consumer needs on a single website. It integrates pricing and inventory data originated from the SAP Business One System.
Autobytel sells AVV software business for $22.75M
Autobytel Inc. has sold its AVV data extraction and customer relationship management software business to Dominion Enterprises, the company said Thursday. The deal was for $22.75 million in cash plus a working capital payment of about $1.1 million that is subject to adjustment, according to a release. Autobytel expects a gain of about $8.2 million from the transaction. The sale was part of the company's strategy to divest non-core operations. The Columbus, Ohio-based AVV unit develoeps and markets software applications under the brand name Web Control to help auto dealers manage prospects, sales and customer relationships, according to a release. Irvine-based Autobytel (NASDAQ: ABTL) is an automotive marketing services company. .
NetSuite Partners Introduce New Vertical Versions of NetSuite and ...
SAN MATEO, Calif., Oct. 24 /PRNewswire/ -- NetSuite Inc., a vendor of on-demand, integrated business management application suites that provide Accounting/ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning), CRM (Customer Relationship Management) and Ecommerce functionality for small and medium-sized businesses and divisions of large companies, today announced that NetSuite partners and solution providers have introduced, via SuiteBundler, a host of new vertical and micro-vertical solutions spanning markets including Software; Agriculture Equipment Dealerships (please see accompanying press release: "Iron Solutions and NetSuite Collaborate to Develop Industry-Specific Software Solution for Agricultural Equipment Dealerships, Delivered via NetSuite's SuiteBundler"); Seaport Management; Retail (Point of Sale); Franchises for packaging and shipping materials; Electronics Wholesale / Distribution; and Pharmaceutical Distribution.
RealtyWare 2.2
RealtyWare is a contact and property management software designed specifically for international and multilingual real estate agents. Realtors can easily create reports and present their properties in multiple languages. The fully integrated contact relationship management provides quick access to all customer details, such as activities and history. Listings can either be sales or rentals, are linked directly to the contacts and have their own history. The free Starter Edition of RealtyWare supports property presentations (on-screen, reports, flyers, or window cards) in English, German and Spanish (more languages are available on request). Version 2.2 adds direct property upload to Kyero. CNET Networks is not responsible for the content of this Publisher's Description.
Westpac invests $30m in training
WESTPAC has spent more than $30 million teaching staff to use its new customer relationship system, according to sales and service head Fernando Ricardo. Speaking at a customer event held by Teradata in Las Vegas yesterday, Mr Ricardo said banking industry purse-strings rarely loosened for training budgets as easily as they did for technology. In Westpac's case, the investment had been worthwhile. "I don't know why it's much easier for executives to buy $10 million worth of hardware than to invest $10 million in people," he said. "I've spent hundreds of millions of a couple of companies' money and the hardest money to get is for training. "Sometimes we're surprised that customer relationship management programs don't work after we spend $200 million or $300 million, and a key part of that has to do with the investment we make in our people." Using a mix of technology, including Oracle, Seibel, IBM Websphere and Teradata's data warehousing software, Westpac has spent about $300 million building its customer relationship management system over the past five years.
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