Infor Buys Saleslogix from Swiftpage

A year and a half after it acquired the Saleslogix product line from Sage Group, Swiftpage has sold the cloud-based CRM software to Infor, a provider of business application software and cloud services. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Infor will rebrand the Saleslogix CRM product as Infor CRM, adding sales and service functionality to Infor CloudSuite, a group of industry-specific application suites available on Amazon Web Services. Infor plans a major investment in the product, including increased scalability, a refreshed user interface, and added industry-specific functionality.

Together, Infor and Saleslogix have more than 300 mutual customers.

"CRM systems have typically tracked a small subset of customer, marketing, and sales data. Infor's industry applications have a vast repository of information on a customer's overall interactions derived from deep industry processes we automate, and we'll build in context analytics that deliver unique customer insight," said Charles Phillips, CEO of Infor, in a statement. "Infor can now deliver the first truly end-to-end demand-to-supply chain, from lead to ship, by integrating marketing and sales processes with supply chain planning, sales and operations planning, and production scheduling in real time."

Infor expects even higher demand for CRM capabilities prebuilt into industry suites as more companies seek to take advantage of vast data from across the enterprise in sales and service efforts. With Infor CRM, customers will be able to manage the full customer lifecycle in one environment, accessing relevant enterprise resource planning (ERP) data to help win customers, manage future sales opportunities, and deliver exceptional customer service.

Based in Scottsdale, Ariz., Saleslogix was founded in 1998 and employs approximately 100 people. Roughly 1,700 businesses around the world use Saleslogix CRM. "No industry has not been touched by [Saleslogix]," says Grant Halloran, global vice president and general manager of CRM and marketing at Infor. "They were one of the pioneers in the CRM space."

Halloran says Infor found the Saleslogix brand attractive for a number of reasons, including its product, people, and price.

"Saleslogix has built a fantastic platform for integrating with other systems," he says. "And it's got some really cool functionality built in."

Halloran singled out Saleslogix's advances in mobile as one of its advantages, noting that mobile applications "are a very important part of CRM today."

Halloran also likes that the Saleslogix product integrates seamlessly with the Microsoft Outlook email program and will soon also work within Google's Gmail application.

 Swiftpage acquired the Saleslogix product line, along with the Act! product line, in February 2013, from Sage as part of a larger seven-product sell-off by Sage that involved several buyers. Sage received $101.2 million for the products.

In the year and a half that Swiftpage owned the Saleslogix brand, the company launched Saleslogix Mobile 3.0 and a mobile subscription-only option and Saleslogix 8.1, a software update with extensive social CRM capabilities.

According to H. John Oechsle, president and CEO of Swiftpage, the Saleslogix sale allows Swiftpage to focus on accelerating the growth of the Act! portfolio worldwide.

"All of us at Swiftpage are tremendously excited for the opportunity to devote the full complement of our resources to providing micro and small businesses with the tools they need to grow using the Act! portfolio," he said in a statement. "Swiftpage is now well-positioned to create a truly unified global Act! business and serve as a worldwide leader in the small business conversion and retention space."

Swiftpage has traditionally served small and midsized firms, while the Saleslogix product is geared more toward larger midsized firms and smaller enterprise-scale companies.

Saleslogix, Oechsle said, "is a fantastic product and will be in good hands with Infor, as it is a perfect strategic fit within their CRM portfolio.

"Infor adds a best-in-class solution to its portfolio and can provide the size, scale, and resources to position Saleslogix as a leading product globally," Oechsle added.

Halloran agrees. "Saleslogix is the perfect product for us," he states. "It made all the sense in the world for us to acquire it."

In addition to Infor CRM, the company will continue to support and enhance Inforce, an Infor-developed solution built on the Force.com platform, that joins Infor's back-office ERP and financial applications with Salesforce.com through Infor ION.

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