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I haven’t talked too much about nGenera yet, mainly because they don’t focus entirely on sales performance management, and also because although they have an SPM solution that looks pretty good, it’s not widely deployed yet. My first post about them was when they laid off a lot of my former colleagues, not long after I left Iconixx/nGenera to join OpenSymmetry.
If you don’t remember the story, nGenera raised $70 million and went on a shopping spree, purchasing several companies last year. Last May they purchased Talisma Corp, which brought together two Oak Investment Partners’ portfolio companies. In that press release, Talisma Chief Executive called the match with nGenera a “perfect fit”.
So I was a bit surprised when I found out today that nGenera was selling the Talisma CRM business. It seems that maybe the fit was not so perfect. Actually, only the Talisma Customer Relationship Management line product suite, Talisma education business, the Bangalore’s operations, and the Talisma brand name are being purchased. nGenera will retain ownership of Talisma’s Customer Interaction Management software products and business.
Given how long these deals take and that only 7 months have went by since the acquisition of Talisma by nGenera, it sounds like nGenera may have acquired Talisma with only an interest in the customer interaction management products.
What does this mean for nGenera’s Sales Performance Management focus? When I read the first release, I thought they decided to sell Talisma entirely, and I interested this as a change of focus from an on-demand everything approach to more focus on research and sales performance management. When they acquired Talisma, I imagined we would see an integrated CRM and SPM solution in the future. I’m sure we will see a CRM/SPM solution eventually, but not yet.
Since nGenera is keeping Talisma’s Customer Interaction Management solution, it looks like we can still expect their “on-demand-everything-2.0-high-performance ” strategy which also includes their nGen Total Compensation Solution.
This particular strategy (buying the whole just for one of the pieces) seems to be the particular style of the nGenera executives. As with the Iconixx deal, it seems all they wanted was the nCent software module instead of the overall compensation service that Iconixx built its name around and became the primary player in that space after Callidus bought Comptech.
It makes one question if nGenera is thinking things through or are they doing things on a whim and then selling off/laying off to make it fiscally possible. Or did they know exactly what they were doing and had a large pool of money. They just felt they needed to do it all on the down low. I seems slimey.
The whole dealings with nGenera makes me feel dirty. I think I’ll go take a shower.