Sagent Technology, the provider of realtime e-business intelligence solutions, has acquired Qualitative Marketing Software, Inc (QMSoft), a privately held company that delivers realtime value-added customer information and marketing e-services by hosting data on over 125m households on the Web.
Together, the companies help e-businesses use the Web to better understand their prospects and customers, optimise revenue and profitability, and maximise company effectiveness by combining valuable realtime customer marketing data with e-marketing expertise.
Under the terms of the agreement, Sagent will issue 2,5m shares of its common stock to the shareholders of QMSoft, giving the transaction a value of $70m based on Sagent's December 1999 share price of $27,875. The shares issued represent 8,7% of Sagent's fully diluted shares outstanding. The transaction will be accounted for as a pooling of interests. The combined company has over 850 customers and more than 300 employees.
Together, the companies can now deliver a single 360-degree view of the customer, based not only on historical transactions and clickstream data, but also incorporating demographic, credit, geographic and other information on more than 125m households - in realtime. This enables e-businesses to better target their marketing programmes to customers while they are at the point of sale.
QMSoft's realtime e-services offer new ways of bringing Sagent's products to market, allowing the company to make applications - and even specific transactions - available over the Web on a fee-for-service basis. The result is a more complete set of solutions for Sagent's customers, and more flexibility in purchasing those solutions. "Sagent provides a powerful platform for customers who rely on our realtime e-service offerings," says Paul Wray, president QMSoft. "At the same time, QMSoft's value-added content enhances Sagent's current and future CRM offerings in retail banking, financial services, e-commerce, insurance and other markets."
"One of the most compelling aspects of this acquisition is that the two organisations are extremely complementary," said Ken Gardner, president and CEO of Sagent Technology. "Sagent offers a suite of web-enabled CRM applications and a high performance platform, and QMSoft provides value-added customer data to help e-businesses target profitable customers in realtime."
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