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Cisco plays Victor Kiam to MaintenanceNet's Remington
Borg likes its supplier of sales-chasing software so much it's bought it
Long-time Cisco US supplier MaintenanceNet has been assimilated, to help The Borg digitise its business processes.
The acqui-hire's US$139 million price tag includes both cash and “retention incentives”, Cisco's Debbie Dunham says in the post announcing the transaction.
Dunham, senior veep for Global Customer Success, writes that Cisco's after the MaintenanceNet cloud-based customer management platform.
What the company has built is, apparently, “a cloud-based software platform that uses data analytics and automation to manage and scale attach and renewals of recurring customer contracts”.
Philosophically, the target is a perfect fit with Cisco's strategy of wrapping customers in a warm and eternal embrace. MaintenanceNet's software keeps track of customers' service contract coverage – is the contract coming up for renewal or overdue? Does the customer have products not covered by the service contract? – and gives channel reps tools like automated quotes, notifications and online ordering.
“This helps Cisco partners capture high-volume and low-dollar sales opportunities that may risk being overlooked”, Dunham writes.
The company, which was established in 2004, will become part of Dunham's team. She says the acquisition should complete in Q1 of the 2016 financial year. ®
Biting the hand that feeds IT
