CommSoft buys Brains

The CommSoft Group today announced its acquisition with Marketing Technologies. CommSoft added significantly to its telecommunications software offerings with this acquisition of Marketing Technologies, a developer of the award winning Brains Customer Relationship Management (CRM) product.

CommSoft has made a significant investment for the assets, business interests and intellectual property of Marketing Technologies. The consideration will be paid in cash and CommSoft shares over a three year period.

"This represents a major acquisition of core intellectual property for CommSoft," says CommSoft Chairman, Greg Gardner. "Brains complements our existing CRM offerings and positions CommSoft as a serious contender in the fast-growing international CRM marketplace."

"The technology is easy to use, flexible and highly scalable," says CommSoft Chief Operating Officer, Rodney Martin. "Brains is a highly sophisticated CRM and Call Centre offering which is web and WAP enabled."

"This is the first of a number of acquisitions that we plan to make over time. It will enable us to grow revenues and earnings by selling new product through our existing sales force staff via our existing channels to our existing customers," adds Mr Martin.

"Growth by acquisition is a core strategy for CommSoft. We are continuing to evaluate businesses with excellent scalable products in the Communications Management Systems (CMS) and CRM space where we can see potential to leverage our sales and channel strengths into significant revenue growth."

"Brains will be totally integrated into the CommSoft family of shrink-wrapped, multi-platform telecommunications software products. It is expected that all Marketing Technologies staff will continue with CommSoft. All senior management will have three year employment contracts with CommSoft and will receive options as part of their remuneration packages. Brains product training begins immediately for our international sales force and will be concluded by the middle of February. We expect to be closing sales before the end of this financial year with significant contributions flowing in the next financial year."

Marketing Technologies is recognised as a regional leader in CRM convergence with a focus on client-led research and development. Brains can be used from a WAP phone when sales and marketing personnel are in the field and need remote access. It is web-enabled, therefore it is particularly simple to use for casual CRM users.

Operational Director of CommSoft South Africa, Philip Melton, says "We are very enthusiastic about this new relationship and foresee great benefits for South Africa."

Brains powers the Call Centre of the Year in both Australia (Fosters Brewing Group won state Australian Teleservices Greenfield Centre of the Year 2000) and New Zealand (Toyota New Zealand won Teleperformance Grand Prix Customer Service Award 2000 and was runner up in the global awards held in Paris).

Brains also won the Saatchi and Saatchi/NZ Direct Marketing Association Gold Nexus award for Channel Management for 2000.

Furthermore, Brains supports multi servers and multiple databases including Oracle and Microsoft SQL Server concurrently, so that sales agents can share information across many divisions or organisations from a single desktop. These benefits, when matched by CommSoft`s current CRM family of products and sales and channel capabilities, will enable CommSoft to offer a truly scaleable CRM system from SME to enterprise level and from traditional CRM operations to the latest technology.

"We spent considerable time evaluating how best to grow Brains into a truly global leader in CRM," says Marketing Technologies Managing Director, Andrew Segar. "CommSoft`s record in product standardisation and sales force and channel strength persuaded us that this is simply the best way to secure a global and lasting future for our product."