Microsoft is planning a fresh acquisition in the CRM space, with the proposed purchase of cloud-based customer service software provider Parature. It is another move to strengthen the Dynamics CRM offering, which has already been bolstered by the MarketingPilot addition which improved marketing resource management capabilities, and collaboration capabilities from the Yammer acquisition. Parature’s multi-channel capabilities, such as social, email, Web-based chat, and Web self-service, will fill some of the gaps in Dynamics CRM, which is strong on case management and processes to unify service interactions with customers.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed but news media are suggesting a c$100m deal. 13 year old Parature was estimated to have revenue of $16.4m in 2012 and customer base of 500.
The move suggests the company is feeling more pressure from the likes of Salesforce.com, and Oracle’sRightNow customer-service offering, but also indicates rising activity levels in the customer service/self-service area of the market, e.g. Verint announced plans to buy customer service specialist Kana earlier this week (see here). The Parature knowledge base is an important part of the value proposition because it enables customer self-service which is a key aspect of the customer experience proposition that will be a major theme during 2014 (see ESAS Predictions 2014, here).