Interact Software Acquires Sideways 6 to Boost Employee Engagement
Intranet solution provider Interact Software is acquiring Sideways 6, the software company that harnesses employee ideas to help companies increase employee engagement. Financial details of the transaction are not available, but the acquisition comes at a time when enterprise firms are seeking ways to increase employee engagement in hopes of attracting or retaining top talent in a competitive labor market.
Simon Dance, CEO of Interact, calls Sideways 6 “the gold standard” in providing companies with real-time data on employee sentiment as to how they are feeling, what they need from an employer, and where they believe a business could improve. “Our enterprise customers need to harness this information from a variety of sources, and Sideways 6 allows us to easily integrate with existing systems and serve this functionality right inside the Interact intranet,” Dance says. Sideways 6 integrates directly with platforms like Teams, Workplace, and Slack.
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Will Read, the CEO of Sideways 6, says joining Interact will confer benefits, including increased access for the company and its customers to resources that drive innovation and bring more value to the business.
The acquisition of Sideways 6, founded in 2013 and currently headquartered in London, is the latest growth indicator for New York City-based Interact, whose customers include Domino’s, Teva Pharmaceuticals, Levi’s, and Sony PlayStation.
Edenred Acquires GOintegro, Extends its Employee Engagement Program to Latin America
Edenred, the international company based in France specializing in employee benefits and a leading operator of a digital services and payments platform, has signed an agreement to acquire 75% of the share capital of GOintegro, the provider of an employee engagement platform for Latin America headquartered in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Financial details of the transaction have not been disclosed, but the deal sheds light on Edenred’s ambitious strategy to serve as the “everyday platform for people at work,” notably by extending the breadth and scope of its employee benefits portfolio to Latin America.
Founded in 2002, GOintegro offers a broad range of engagement solutions designed to help companies enhance their organizational cultures. Its solutions include employee services and programs for financial savings and discounts, rewards and promotions, and wellbeing content. GOintegro provides these solutions through a unique multi-module platform available in seven Latin American countries,with GOintegro’s 130 employees serving more than 1.2 million users and 500 clients, including large companies such as Bayer, General Electric, HP, and PepsiCo.
For its part, Edenred has successfully extended its portfolio over the years, offering specific-purpose payment solutions for food, such as meal benefits; incentives, such as gift cards, mobility, such as multi-energy, maintenance, toll, parking, and commuter solutions; and corporate payments, such as virtual cards. Overall, Edenred connects 52 million users and 2 million partner merchants in 45 countries via 950,000 corporate clients.
The transaction, subject to the approval of the Brazilian competition authority, is expected to close by June.
Nextiva Acquires India’s Simplify360 for Solidifying Customer Support
Cloud communications company Nextiva has acquired Simplify360, a CX platform based in India that uses AI and automation to enable businesses in delivering omnichannel customer support. Financial details of the transaction are not known, but the acquisition adds capabilities in social media, reputation management, live chat, and helpdesk customer relationship management to Nextiva’s core offerings in voice over internet protocol (VoIP), text messaging, and videoconferencing.
Tomas Gorny, co-founder and CEO of Nextiva, says the company keeps teams productive and connected with customers, colleagues, and vendors wherever they may be located. “Conversations are the fuel of business growth,” Gorny notes. “From day one, Nextiva’s vision has been to bring together all communication channels into a single stream of conversations with productivity, customer and contact management, and collaboration tools. We are on a mission to put an end to unhappy customers and frustrated teams.”
The acquisition of Simplify360 opens the door to the Asia-Pacific market for Arizona-based Nextiva as the company expands to support more businesses globally. Backed by Goldman Sachs and with more than 50 patents to its name, Nextiva was valued at $2.7 billion during its initial and most recent financing round in late 2021.
“Joining forces with Nextiva is an ideal fit for Simplify360, as we share a vision to make amazing customer experiences available to every business,” says Rohit Gupta, co-founder and CEO of Simplify360. “We are excited to partner with Nextiva to accelerate our shared mission on a global scale, and empower businesses around the world to rise to the CX challenge—and win.
Singapore’s Capillary Technologies Acquires Brierley+Partners
Capillary Technologies, the customer loyalty company headquartered in Singapore, is the new owner of Texas-based Brierley+Partners, a recognized leader in loyalty technology, strategy, and execution. The transaction is Capillary’s fifth acquisition globally and its second in the US after it purchased Persuade in 2021.
An enterprise-level technology provider with customers around the world, Capillary focuses on comprehensive customer engagement, experiential loyalty, and AI-enabled programs to build brand and customer devotion to facilitate growth. Acquiring Brierley+Partners, a well-respected name in the loyalty and customer engagement space with extensive industry expertise, constitutes a valuable addition to Capillary’s existing store of capabilities.
Aneesh Reddy, founder, managing director, and vice chairman at Capillary, says that combining forces with Brierley will propel Capillary “to the next level,” especially in the North American and Japanese markets. Bill Swift, CEO of Brierley, says the joint expertise of the two companies will provide clients with even more innovative and effective loyalty and customer engagement solutions.
Customer Feedback Firm Savio Raises $160K from TinySeed
Savio, the provider of a platform for centralizing customer feedback to inform product planning, has raised $160,000 from TinySeed, the collaborative network of more than 90 startups and the operators of an accelerator program that funds early-stage, bootstrapped software-as-a-service (SaaS) firms. Vancouver, Canada-based Savio aims to help the product management teams of SaaS companies to better organize and prioritize product feedback, enabling developers to maximize their time building software with high return-on-investment (ROI) features.
“We’ve been big believers in TinySeed’s philosophy since they started,” says Kareem Mayan, co-founder of Savio. “We feel TinySeed will play an important role in helping Savio accelerate its mission to rid the world of terrible software.”
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SaaS businesses can log feedback with Savio without leaving their customer relationship management programs via integrations with popular tools like Zendesk, Salesforce, Intercom, Slack, Shortcut, JIRA, and a Chrome Extension. Savio also lets users segment feedback by customer attributes, such as feedback originating from enterprise firms; or by customer lifecycle stage, such as feedback from lost customers. By organizing customer feedback chaos, Savio enables teams to prioritize feature requests and create evidence-based roadmaps to align their work with customer demand.
Mayan and co-founder Ryan Stocker launched Savio in 2019 after working at large companies like ESPN and Microsoft, where they found it chaotic to build roadmaps using incoming customer feedback. The duo created Savio as a simple tool to help them become better product managers, understand customer pain points, and take action that reflects customer needs.
Rob Walling, general partner and co-founder of TinySeed, expresses excitement, saying “Savio offers a simple solution that helps SaaS businesses better understand and organize customer feedback to guide their product planning. We’re excited to see the Savio team tackle this problem that technology companies face on a daily basis.”
Author Information
Alex is responsible for writing about trends and changes that are impacting the customer experience market. He had served as Principal Editor at Village Intelligence, a Los Angeles-based consultancy on technology impacting healthcare and healthcare-related industries. Alex was also Associate Director for Content Management at Omdia and Informa Tech, where he produced white papers, executive summaries, market insights, blogs, and other key content assets. His areas of coverage spanned the sectors grouped under the technology vertical, including semiconductors, smart technologies, enterprise & IT, media, displays, mobile, power, healthcare, China research, industrial and IoT, automotive, and transformative technologies.
At IHS Markit, he was Managing Editor of the company’s flagship IHS Quarterly, covering aerospace & defense, economics & country risk, chemicals, oil & gas, and other IHS verticals. He was Principal Editor of analyst output at iSuppli Corp. and Managing Editor of Market Watch, a fortnightly newsletter highlighting significant analyst report findings for pitching to the media. He started his career in writing as an Editor-Reporter for The Associated Press.
