ARMONK, N.Y. and SAN FRANCISCO, May 2,
2012 /PRNewswire/ -- IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced a
definitive agreement to acquire Tealeaf Technology, Inc., a leading
provider of customer experience analytics software that helps
organizations to gain intelligence and react more swiftly to
consumer trends in today's digitally transformed marketplace.
Financial details were not disclosed.
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The acquisition is subject to customary closing conditions and
regulatory clearance and is expected to close in the second quarter
of 2012.
With this agreement, IBM extends its Smarter Commerce initiative
by adding qualitative analytics capabilities that provide chief
marketing officers (CMOs), e-commerce and customer service
professionals with real-time and automated insights into online
customer buying experiences across online and mobile devices.
As a result, organizations can gain actionable insight that allows
them to improve customer support, transform site usability, tailor
marketing campaigns and increase online conversion rates.
The need to deliver a seamless mobile experience has become
increasingly critical to CMOs with global online commerce expected
to hit $1 trillion by 2014 and mobile
commerce $200 billion by 2015.
(1)
Tealeaf has over 450 customers worldwide including 30 of the
Fortune 100 companies. These customers are predominantly in
financial services, travel, retail and communications
services. Current clients include: Dell, Wells Fargo, Air
Canada, GEICO, Orbitz, Crate & Barrel, Neiman Marcus, Expedia, Zappos, ING Direct, Best
Buy, DirecTV, McKesson and StubHub.
Organizations today are struggling to meet the demands created
by the rapidly shifting buying patterns of their customers, who
increasingly turn to online, social and mobile channels to gather
information, make purchases and receive services. This new digital
marketplace requires companies to be highly responsive to their
customers' behaviors in order to both compete and grow. The
opportunity to better understand a customer's experience on
websites and mobile devices presents a major competitive advantage
for businesses.
Tealeaf provides a full suite of customer experience management
software, which records and analyzes a customer's website and
mobile interactions. As a result, marketers can spot patterns
and address issues in website and mobile application design and
provide a more streamlined online customer experience that leads to
improved revenue, customer satisfaction, customer service
productivity, and profitability.
For example, using Tealeaf software, the CMO of an online
retailer can identify weaknesses in a recent mobile marketing
campaign by spotting instances and replaying scenarios that
triggered customer sessions to end prematurely. As a result,
marketers can improve the customer's experience by addressing
usability, site design or ease of use and reach out to consumers to
recapture their interest.
In another instance, an online travel agency finds that when
visitors misspell a vacation package name and receive zero search
results, nearly 100 percent of the visitors leave the site without
completing a booking, prompting the website team to address the
response and offer other navigation options. By replaying and
analyzing each customer's session, the travel agent can pinpoint
the issue and immediately serve those customers and maintain their
loyalty.
"Marketers must continuously deliver a better customer
experience on both the Web and mobile devices to meet the
expectations of today's empowered consumers," said Craig Hayman, General Manager of Industry
Solutions at IBM. "With these new capabilities from Tealeaf, we can
not only provide chief marketing officers and other marketing
leaders the qualitative insights into how customers actually
experience their brands, but show them how to react in real time
across marketing, sales and service."
"Tealeaf's patented technology can be deployed into a business's
current environment with no needed modifications so they begin
capturing customer data and delivering optimal experiences
immediately," said Rebecca Ward,
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Tealeaf. "IBM Smarter
Commerce is the perfect fit for Tealeaf and further establishes IBM
as the leading partner for businesses looking to succeed in today's
fast evolving environment."
Tealeaf will extend IBM's leadership in Smarter Commerce by
giving companies qualitative web and digital analytics
capabilities, allowing them to capture and replay a customer's web
and mobile interactions to provide a more granular and richer view
of a customer's experience. This insightful view helps
marketers answer the question of "why" customers interact as they
do and thus provide a more optimized online customer experience
leading to improved revenue, customer satisfaction, customer
service productivity and profitability.
Consistent with IBM's Smarter Commerce strategy and following
the closing of the transaction, IBM will continue to support and
enhance Tealeaf's technologies and clients while allowing them to
take advantage of the broader IBM portfolio. Tealeaf will be
integrated into IBM's Enterprise Marketing and Management (EMM)
Group, which includes previously acquired assets from Coremetrics,
Unica and DemandTec. IBM has invested more than $3 billion in building its Smarter Commerce
initiative, a key driver of growth and profitability.
Tealeaf is based in San Francisco,
California with additional offices in Europe.
More information on Smarter Commerce can be found at
www.ibm.com/smarterplanet/us/en/smarter_commerce/overview/
To join the conversation, follow hashtag #smartercommerce on
Twitter
(1). BuddeComm 2012, "Digital Economy - E-Commerce and
M-Commerce Insights," February 27,
2012.
Contact: Mike Azzi
IBM Communications
914-766-1561
azzi@us.ibm.com
SOURCE IBM