INDIANAPOLIS (July 14, 2004)- Aprimo, Incorporated, a global leader in enterprise marketing management (EMM), today announced that it has acquired Then, Limited, a leading U.K.-based marketing resource management (MRM) software developer. Aprimo is increasing the breadth of the Aprimo Marketing suite of products by incorporating Then's strong capabilities in collateral and advertising creation, fulfillment and delivery, along with Then's expertise in operational analytics for marketing. Through this acquisition, Aprimo is strengthening both its current offering and vision for the space, which analyst firm Gartner acknowledged by designating Aprimo as the sole leader quadrant vendor in its MRM Magic Quadrant*. The companies will fully integrate their offerings, creating the most comprehensive MRM capabilities for marketers.
This strategic investment expands Aprimo's international operating platform, offering both U.S. and European-based hosting capabilities and increasing customer support on both continents. The union of the companies also doubles Aprimo's number of European customers and significantly increases the amount of both employees and channel partnerships overseas.
"As the recognized leader in the MRM market, it is important for Aprimo to build on our existing capabilities and continue to provide our customers with the most intuitive and innovative solutions," said Bill Godfrey, CEO of Aprimo. "With the introduction of Aprimo Marketing 6.0 earlier this year, we took major steps to modularize our product offerings. Adding Then's asset-centric solutions to intelligently create, customize, produce and deliver marketing collateral and advertising will allow Aprimo to deliver a more comprehensive suite of MRM products and addresses the market's growing need for integrated fulfillment and delivery capabilities. The acquisition of Then is strategic to both our vision for MRM and to our international expansion."
MRM is growing rapidly as an essential tool for marketers, due to its ability to apply technology to better manage and measure the business of marketing. Applications within MRM help marketers better plan and budget marketing activities, create and develop marketing programs, collect and manage physical and digital assets, fulfill and distribute marketing collateral and measure and report results. With this acquisition, Aprimo is the only company providing best-in-class products across all aspects of MRM.
"We are very excited to become part of Aprimo at such a significant time in the maturation of the MRM marketplace," said Andrew Yates, CEO of Then. "Marketers have come to recognize the important role that software can play in automating the many different business process and resource issues that enter their world on a daily basis. By uniting our capabilities with Aprimo, our customers the world over are now able to leverage technology to improve financial visibility and control, accelerate marketing throughput, reduce waste and other unnecessary expenses, and drive results through improved brand consistency and message relevance. Our combined strength particularly in marketing operational analytics will enable marketers to gain critical insight in order to drive better-informed decisions."
Then's products will be consolidated into Aprimo's EMM suite, resulting in the availability of three new intelligent asset management products, Collateral Customizer, Print On-Demand and Ad Builder & Publisher. Then's expertise and technology will also be leveraged to significantly enhance Aprimo's existing Digital Asset Manager and its supporting Asset-Access product, which enables Web-based access to marketing assets. Additionally, Aprimo's operational analytic offerings and roadmap will be strengthened due to the technology integration.
For more information on Aprimo(tm) Marketing, contact Aprimo at 1-877-8APRIMO or via email at
info@aprimo.com.
About Then Then is an independent developer of Marketing Resource Management (MRM) software that enhances the brand, marketing and sales functions of dynamic organizations. Then's Web-based technology helps to automate marketing processes and better coordinate resources allowing regionally dispersed colleagues and partners to collaborate, create campaigns and procure marketing services online, as well as gaining marketing visibility with real-time analysis and measurement. For more information, please visit
www.then-solutions.com.
About Aprimo Aprimo, Incorporated develops the most insightful, intuitive platform for managing today's complex and interconnected world of marketing. Aprimo Marketing, a suite of web-based software applications, is used by leading companies to streamline the way they operate, get better insight into where they're investing their marketing resources and bring unprecedented control across their extended marketing team-inside and outside their companies. Aprimo is delivering value to many industry-leading companies such as Bank of America, Amway, AOL, Computer Associates, Cummins, Delta Faucet, Ernst & Young, Merrill Lynch, Sony and Pfizer. Aprimo is headquartered in Indianapolis, and has offices throughout North America and in London. Visit
www.aprimo.com for more information. Aprimo is a registered trademark of Aprimo, Incorporated. All other trademarks and registered trademarks are the properties of their respective owners.
*The MRM Magic Quadrant is copyrighted February 18, 2004 by Gartner, Inc. and is reused with permission. The Magic Quadrant is a graphical representation of a marketplace at and for a specific time period. It depicts Gartner's analysis of how certain vendors measure against criteria for that marketplace, as defined by Gartner. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in the Magic Quadrant, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors placed in the "Leaders" quadrant. The Magic Quadrant is intended solely as a research tool, and is not meant to be a specific guide to action. Gartner disclaims all warranties, express or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.