Onyx Finalizes M2M Deal, CRM Vendor Satuit's Certification, Broadlook, etalk call center's Qfiniti 3.0

David Sims : First Coffee
David Sims
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Onyx Finalizes M2M Deal, CRM Vendor Satuit's Certification, Broadlook, etalk call center's Qfiniti 3.0

By David Sims

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is The Band's second album The Band, a.k.a. The Brown Album, in this humble reviewer's opinion noticeably better than their more critically heralded debut Music From Big Pink:

CRM vendor Onyx Software Corp. has announced that Onyx shareholders have approved the company's acquisition by M2M Holdings Inc. at a special meeting of shareholders held at the company's headquarters in Bellevue, Washington.

Shareholders of approximately 76 percent of the total outstanding shares of Onyx stock voted in favor of the merger proposal, representing approximately 93 percent of the total shares voted, according to company officials.

According to terms of the agreement, M2M will acquire all outstanding shares of Onyx Software for $4.80 per share in cash. The transaction is expected to close today, at which point Onyx Software will cease to be a publicly traded company.

M2M Holdings Inc. is the holding company that is jointly owned by Battery Ventures VI, L.P. and Thoma Cressey Equity Partners and whose primary asset is Made2Manage Systems Inc., an enterprise software and services company.

In late July Onyx announced that China-based CDC Corporation was "withdrawing and terminating its previously announced $5.00 per share all cash tender offer for all outstanding shares of common stock of Onyx Software Corporation."

The offer was put on the table July 12, 2006 and was scheduled to expire on August 8, 2006.

Back in January Hong Kong-based CDC had offered to combine all the assets of CDC Software with Onyx, and $50 million in cash, for a majority of Onyx's common stock, keeping Onyx a publicly-listed company. Onyx's management announced almost immediately they were rejecting the deal.

The Puget Sound Business Journal reported at the time that "Onyx officials gave a variety of reasons for turning down the offer, including: CDC Software assets are performing poorly; CDC lacks a sustained history of profitable operations and has a poor record of delivering shareholder value; and synergies between the Onyx and CDC product lines are limited."

Specifically, Dow Jones reported, Onyx said on January 5 its board unanimously rejected CDC's offer for being "highly dilutive" to Onyx shareholders. Plus they didn't think there would be anything but "limited synergies" between the companies. And they didn't like CDC's idea that Onyx pay a premium for CDC Software division assets.

In March John Clough, chairman of the executive committee for CDC Corporation and vice chairman of the board for CDC Software, said CDC Software still really, really wanted to acquire Onyx, particularly for its Pivotal CRM division, but confessed he was "surprised by the lack of interest" the proposal received from Onyx.

Then in June Onyx announced it signed a definitive agreement to be acquired by privately-held M2M Holdings Inc. At the announcement it was described as an all-cash transaction valued at $4.80 per share, or approximately $92 million.

"We believe that this transaction is the right decision for Onyx shareholders, customers, partners and employees," said Janice P. Anderson, chairman and chief executive officer of Onyx upon announcing the M2M deal. "Upon closing, this acquisition will provide liquidity to shareholders and a premium to our recent trading prices."

In early July CDC offered a cash bid of $5 per share in their hostile takeover bid for Onyx, essentially upping a $50 million cash bid to $80 million. When Onyx decisively rejected CDC's overtures for M2M the Chinese company released a statement that "On July 17, 2006, Onyx announced surprisingly poor preliminary financial results for Q2 2006, including license revenues of only $1.6 million and total revenue in the range of $11.7 million to $11.9 million." Aesop had a name for this sort of thing.

Yesterday Janice P. Anderson, Onyx's chairman and chief executive officer said "we are looking forward to a speedy closing of the merger."

CRM vendor Satuit Technologies, Inc., which focuses on the investment market, has announced the launch of the SatuitCRM Certification program.  

Karen Maguire, Satuit's CEO said the company's user base "has been growing rapidly" and that they've been "adding new functionality to our configuration and SDK toolkits." 

The company created a two-day workshop for SatuitCRM system administrators for participants in the asset management industry, allowing for highly-focused sessions. 

Satuit's inaugural certification workshop held June 7-8, 2006, included client companies Brandywine Global Investment Management, Pioneer Investment Management, RMK Timberland Group, Sands Capital Management, South Texas Money Management, and Strategic Investment Group.

According to the Writer's Almanac, today in 1876, James Butler "Wild Bill" Hickok was killed in (what is now) Deadwood, South Dakota at a poker game holding what's today known as The Dead Man's Hand -- a pair of aces and a pair of eights.

Human Capital Institute, a global professional association and Broadlook Technologies, a provider of real-time Internet search products, have announced that Broadlook will support HCI initiatives as a global underwriter.

Broadlook Technologies provides real-time Internet search applications and services for sales, marketing and recruiting to find, aggregate, and prepare information about companies, contacts, and niche markets. The company's products integrate with more than 100 CRM applications.

Among Broadlook's products and services are Content Hound, a product for websites that allows for news content aggregation based on keywords; News Pulse, a desktop news search tool; and other technologies such as Eclipse, a data capture tool; and Profiler, a single interface that performs real-time research.

As a result of the agreement, HCI will provide corporate membership, with associated access to education, resources, and tool sets, to Broadlook's employee base and select Broadlook client companies.

Etalk, a division of Autonomy Corporation plc and a vendor of contact center recording and analytics products, has announced the availability of Qfiniti Expert 3.0 for agent eLearning.

Qfiniti Expert "automates agent education through the targeted, intelligent delivery of online training programs" according to company officials, who describe it as "the next step to extend training content as a real-time information resource during customer-agent interactions."

"Traditional eLearning systems provide agents with desktop training that is typically not reviewed after passing the course," says Scott Shute, etalk CEO, explaining that Qfiniti Expert " facilitates the learning process during training" and "closes the loop later when the agent needs to refer to that information while on the line with the customer."

Qfiniti Expert users have the tools necessary to learn new concepts while at their desk, Shute said, and can access it while on the phone, responding to e-mail, or during interactive chats.

Company officials say the new release further simplifies the training process with open authoring support, allowing pre-developed training material to be used without modification.

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