Chinadotcom unit CDC Software has completed its
acquisition of midmarket CRM supplier Pivotal.
Pivotal chief executive officer Bo Manning said his company is
back in growth mode now that its financial pressures are eased.
Pivotal had been hit hard by the slowdown in enterprise software
buying. In its most recent financial year ending 30 June, it posted
revenue down 19% to $56.1m, and a net loss of $27.6m.
Chinadotcom paid $56.6m for Pivotal, issuing to Pivotal
stockholders Chinadotcom shares valued at $20.7m and paying the
rest of the purchase price in cash. The hong Kong company will use
Pivotal's sales, marketing and customer service applications as
components in the broader enterprise resource planning software
suite it is constructing through acquisitions.
Manning said he will remain with the company as head of Pivotal,
which will operate as a CDC Software subsidiary from its Vancouver
headquarters.
In the past month, as Pivotal started planning its integration
with CDC Software, it began hiring to fill open development and
sales positions. The company hopes to fill nearly 100 research and
technical support positions, half in Vancouver and half in
India.
With the backing of its new parent, Pivotal has also doubled its
marketing budget and restarted its acquisitions programme.
"We're in fairly deep discussions with two companies, in CRM and
related markets," Manning said.
Chinadotcom's focus is on the Asia-Pacific market, but the
company has no plans to scale back Pivotal's presence in North
America.
"The CDC strategy is to build a large global enterprise software
company and, concurrent with that, to take all the software that
they're building and use their Asian distribution to go after those
markets, to go after China," Manning added.
Pivotal plans two incremental product updates for this year and
a major release in the first half of 2005. Forthcoming developments
include improved analytics and business process management
capabilities, and increased integration with Microsoft's desktop
applications.
Stacy Cowley writes for IDG News Service