This section highlights news announcements, solution provider growth news and platform enhancements in the B2B industry.
HootSuite, a social relationship platform, has integrated with Marketo to provide enterprises with the ability to connect social interactions from the HootSuite dashboard directly into their Marketo lead database.
The app, which will be unveiled at Marketo's Marketing Nation Summit, will be available in the HootSuite App Directory.
IBM announced its plans to invest $100 million to globally expand its marketing consulting services. As part of the investment, the company plans to 10 new IBM Interactive Experience labs, which are designed to provide clients with the opportunity to work with experts in mobile and digital marketing.
In a separate effort to bolster its marketing offerings, the vendor is said to be in talks to acquire marketing automation vendor Silverpop.
IBM Corp. is reportedly in acquisition talks with Silverpop and a deal is imminent, according to multiple sources. IBM is said to be offering about $270 million, which is about triple Silverpop’s estimated annual revenues of $90 million. Representatives from Silverpop declined to comment and IBM officials were not available to respond to the reports.
The news points to more consolidation in the industry, including Adobe’s recent purchase of Neolane, Salesforce.com’s deal for ExactTarget and Oracle’s acquisition of Eloqua.
LeanData, Inc. a startup vendor specializing in lead management software for Salesforce.com, has secured $5.1 million in Series A funding.
LeanData’s focus is to enable sales and marketing professionals to address the emerging challenge of account-based selling. LeanData’s solutions are designed to simplify lead management by matching leads against existing pipeline and accounts.
Demandbase recently received $15 million in equity financing from various investors. The B2B targeting and personalization company financing will use the investment to accelerate the growth of its advertising solutions and fund additional innovations slated for release in 2014.
The company has experienced significant growth in 2013, with the cloud-based platform tripling its volume of web interactions.
FusionStorm, an IT solutions provider, has implemented two solutions CallidusCloud solutions — Commissions and Territory and Quota — to boost sales performance and accelerate time-to-close.
The CallidusCloud Commissions solution will enable FusionStorm to leverage incentives and commission programs to motivate and drive the sales team, while also providing key analytics that highlight current sales performance and offer more accurate forecasts of future performance.
Brainshark launched SlideShark Anywhere, which makes SlideShark features accessible from PCs, Macs and Windows 8 tablets.
The platform, which was initially only available on iOS devices, enables users to access, present and share presentations from a wider selection of devices. Presenters are also able to collect data on who attended and for how long, along with which decks and slides were shown.
Gagein, a platform that provides actionable news for sales teams, announced that its proactive selling solution Gagein for Salesforce (G4SF) is now available to all Salesforce Sales Cloud users.
G4SF is designed to deliver real-time news that identifies high-value prospects for Salesforce users, pinpointing when and why to call on them to maximize sales.
ServiceSource, a recurring revenue management platform and solutions provider, announced that its Scout platform is now available on the Marketo LaunchPoint app marketplace.
Scout's predictive analytics, along with Marketo’s automation capabilities, provides subscription-based businesses with the ability to create loyalty and increase customer lifetime value through user nurturing across the entire customer lifecycle.
