Indianapolis, Indiana-based Software Artistry Inc has acquired Atlanta, Georgia-based sales management software developer Sirius Systems Inc as part of its strategy to expand its offerings in the Customer Relationship Management market. The acquisition marks the company’s promised move into sales automation and field dispatch (CI No 3,220). The transaction will be structured as an asset purchase consisting of an initial cash payment of $5.125m and a $2m earnout. The company says that it expects to incur a one-time charge in the third quarter of a substantial portion of the initial cash payment which it attributes to in-process research and development and other integration expenses. Founded in 1991, Sirius’ flagship product is its G2 client/server software. Designed to enable sales managers control sales processes and forecast trends, it provides contact management, activity management and funnel management capabilities with more advanced functions available through add-in modules. Software Artistry says it has been looking into partnering and bundling software from other companies, but decided that buying was the best investment in terms of cost. Vice president and managing director of European operations Peter Prince commented: We looked at five companies in that area and found Sirius best fitted our long term strategy and had functionality which went beyond our thinking. Software Artistry says it is currently working on integrating G2 with its existing Customer Relationship Management products and will reveal further details of new capabilities in the near future. It expects to be shipping the new release before the end of the year.
