Resellers of CRM software SalesLogix are attempting to lure customers from its rival Pivotal with a “crossgrade” deal.
Pivotal, a Canadian mid-market CRM software company whose board had agreed to a takeover deal from US venture capitalist Oak Investment Partners but was last week also considering second and third offers, claims 47 customers in New Zealand.
Pivotal’s board earlier rebuffed bids from arch-rival Onyx, which had offered a small premium over a $US48 million offer from Oak, and CDC, a subsidiary of chinadotcom, though shareholders are likely to have the final say.
SalesLogix comes under the auspices of Interact Commerce Corporation in Australasia, which is ultimately owned by UK-based software giant Sage Group. SalesLogix resellers The Integrators and Zeron say while there is a standard “competitive product” crossgrade discount of 10% on SalesLogix prices through Interact, they could offer further training and/or implementation assistance to existing New Zealand Pivotal customers.
While no one disagrees that switching CRM packages would be hard work, Zeron head Chris Trabing says New Zealand Pivotal customers should be concerned about their investment in Pivotal and their customisations “independent of whether Oak take over, Onyx take over or another offer emerges”. Pivotal appears to be insolvent according to its balance sheet, he says. The Integrators chief Paul Roussell notes that 35% of Pivotal changed hands last week at higher prices than Oak’s offer, suggesting they may not accept the deal.
Pivotal Australasian head Helen Robinson could not be contacted by deadline.
The SalesLogix offer comes just as Microsoft is about to enter the New Zealand CRM market. Most observers expect is to initially appeal to organisations with fewer than 20 staff.
Analysts firm such as IDC and Gartner see plenty of room for Microsoft to make hay at the lower end of the CRM market. It sees a harder task at the more lucrative, larger enterprise area of the market. Large companies are much harder to please in the areas of product scalability, functionality, compatibility with non-Microsoft technologies and the development of an enterprise-level service partner network.