In a bid to expand its call center product portfolio and gain a foothold in the customer relationship management (CRM) market, Lucent Technologies Inc yesterday said it plans to acquire Redmond, Washington-based Mosaix Inc in a stock deal worth around $145m. Under the terms of the deal, each share of Mosaix will be converted into 0.1927 of Lucent stock. Lucent said the merger, which is expected to be completed in the quarter ending June 30, 1999, is projected to be neutral to earnings in fiscal 1999 and slightly accretive in fiscal 2000. Lucent sees the move as its chance to gain a slice of the burgeoning market for CRM software, currently dominated by the likes of Siebel Systems Inc, Vantive Corp and Clarify Inc. It estimates the market, including software, systems and services, is currently at $11bn and is growing at 27% annually.
Under the deal, Lucent will add Mosaix’s CRM product, called ViewStar, to its CentreVu customer care solutions. ViewStar automates and streamlines data about customer requests and specifies the tasks required to fulfill them. The software creates a detailed record of customer transactions, preferences and buying patterns which, in turn, enables service staff to respond quickly to a customer and stimulate more business by, for example, promoting special products based on buying specified patterns. The software is designed to run on Microsoft’s Windows NT platform and is compatible with a variety of switches, integrated voice response systems and relational databases. As well as its CRM software, Lucent will also get its hands on Mosaix’s outbound calling and call blending solutions for call centers as well as its suite of agent effectiveness tools. It is not clear yet whether Lucent will lay off any of Mosaix’s 550 workers but officials said yesterday they expected minimal changes as a result of the deal.
