Dive Brief:
- Totango, an enterprise customer success software provider, and Catalyst, a customer growth platform, have closed a deal to merge their two organizations, the companies announced last week. The combined venture is backed by Great Hill Partners, a private equity firm.
- The merged company will be helmed by co-CEOs Alistair Rennie and Edward Chiu, the prior CEOs of Totango and Catalyst, respectively. The two brands will retain their names in the near-term “to help drive continuity for our current customers,” Chris Dishman, SVP of customer success at Totango, told CX Dive in an email.
- “Our mission is to provide businesses with a complete solution for managing the entire customer life cycle, driving measurable growth and proving value quickly and repeatedly,” Dishman said. “Customer-led growth will become the focus and differentiator for growing companies as [customer success] leaders prove the impact of driving ongoing revenue from the customer base.”
Dive Insight:
The merger of Catalyst and Totanago signals a strategic shift in the competitive customer success software market, according to Shari Srebnick, principal analyst at Forrester.
The merged company appears to create “a more formidable competitor” to Gainsight, another leading enterprise customer success software company, she told CX Dive in an email.
For now, the merger will not disrupt current customers. As the two brands’ work on a roadmap to merge their technologies, Catalyst CPO Kevin Chiu says the company is committed to keeping customers in the know.
“Costs will not change for current customers,” he said in an email.
The merged company aims to provide businesses with the tools to drive long-term sustainable growth for their customer base.
“Combining Totango’s advanced enterprise-hierarchy health scoring capabilities with Catalyst’s ROI-based scores gives post-sale teams the important ability to forecast retention confidently and with precision,” Kevin Chiu said.
Customer success teams need to drive revenue to cement their role in the C-suite, but struggle to demonstrate it, Dishman said. Without the appropriate tools, they miss out on opportunities to maximize post-sale revenue throughout the customer life cycle.
The merged company aims to provide the tools to fill that gap.
Srebnick says customer success leaders looking to invest in a customer success platform later this year or early next “should plan to do a thorough evaluation and expect potential disruption as the two merge their technology.”
