Sometimes being the first mover in an emerging market is not always the best thing.
InsideView on Nov. 27 agreed to purchase TrueAdvantage in a merger of rivals in the on-demand sales intelligence software sector.
An offshoot of business intelligence software, sales intelligence applications use aggregation and analytics technologies to help sales and marketing executives sift through information about companies to find better sales leads.
InsideView and TrueAdvantage are part of a long tail of SAAS (software as a service) providers that includes Salesforce.com, SAP, NetSuite and scores of others.
TrueAdvantage was a first mover in this space. Since 1999, the company has accrued more than 200 customers by letting them collect and analyze data from the Internet and more than 20,000 sources to boost sales. However, to do this, the Southborough, Mass., company employed roughly 150 employees to monitor and react to the leads.
These workers, and most of the rest of the employees, will not be retained, InsideView co-founder and CEO Umberto Milletti said. This is because InsideView, created in 2005, uses software that automatically discovers selling opportunities, alerts salespeople in real time and delivers information on companies and connections needed to engage customers and close sales.
Read the full story on eWEEK.com: InsideView Gains TrueAdvantage in Merger