CRM’s seemingly unstoppable shift toward Social CRM took another step forward today with the announcement that salesforce.com has agreed a deal to acquire Radian6, a social media monitoring firm.
The $326m deal – made up of cash and stock – gives salesforce.com access to Radian6’s technology, which monitors, tracks and analyses conversations across social media sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter as well as blogs and other online communities.
Salesforce.com is aiming to integrate the company into three sections of its portfolio, the company said. Radian6’s technology will be integrated in to its Sales Cloud and Service Cloud CRM suite, enabling businesses to keep track of what is being said about it on social media sites.
It will also create what salesforce.com calls a ‘bridge’ between public social networks and Chatter, its internal, private collaboration tool. Users will now see information from fans on, "Facebook pages, followers on Twitter, comments on blog posts and more," as well as activity from within the business, the firm said in a statement.
Radian6 will also be used on the Force.com platform, enabling developers to use it when building apps.
Radian6 was founded in 2006 and its clients include Dell, Kodak and Pepsico. Its technology allows companies to monitor and analyse conversations on various social networks and engage in conversations as well.
"Social media has made every business recognize the value of paying attention to the voice of the customer. Radian6’s technology is built for the new norm of customer engagement – real time, two way conversations that includes social channels," said Marcel LeBrun, CEO of Radian6. "Joining the salesforce.com team will allow Radian6 to grow faster to meet the demands of our rapidly expanding customer base."
Salesforce.com reckons the deal will add $45m – $50m in revenue for fiscal 2012 and it should close by July 2011.
Social media monitoring has been somewhat of a hot topic recently. Earlier this month Norwegian media buzz monitoring and talent management firm Meltwater Group announced the acquisition of social network customer relationship management firm JitterJam, for $6m.
Analyst house Gartner reckons that by 2013, "spending on social software to support sales, marketing and customer service processes will exceed $1bn worldwide." The firm also predicts that "during the next two years, 30 percent of leading companies will extend the goals of their online community activities to the design of enhanced service processes, such as Social CRM."
RightNow Technologies also got in on the act – albeit well before salesforce.com – by acquiring HiveLive in a deal also worth around $6m.
