Expansion Joins WoodWing Group, LogMeIn Updates GoToConnect and More News

WoodWing, provider of multi-channel publishing solutions including a DAM platform, announced its acquisition of Netherlands-based SaaS information management solution provider Expansion. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

In a press statement, Zaandam, The Netherlands-based WoodWing touted the new strengths in information management the acquisition will bring to its portfolio, in particular noting Expansion’s Xtendis platform. The news follows the company’s April acquisition of Scienta, a cloud-based content management solution provider. “After adding Scienta’s content management and knowledge sharing capabilities to the group earlier this year, we see the addition of Expansion as a great next strategic step in further building an international leading Content Orchestration player,” said Ross Paterson, CEO of WoodWing in a press statement.

As part of the Expansion deal, undisclosed members of Expansion membership will remain and hold an equity stake in the newly formed company.

LogMeIn Updates GoToConnect Contact Center

LogMeIn, a provider of cloud-based collaboration, communications and support solutions, last week released a new outbound calling tool aimed at small to medium businesses. The tool, which integrates into the Boston-based company’s Unified-Communications-as-a-Service platform, GoToConnect, is designed to improve visibility into contact center operations as well as add features aimed at improving efficiency. The announcement is the latest addition to the growing Contact-Center-as-a-Service (CCaaS) space.

GoToConnect’s Contact Center provides small to medium businesses with metrics to determine the efficacy of their call center operations. The release added the following features:

• Outbound dialer: Automatically returns abandoned calls if a customer was unable to reach an agent.
• Pre-recorded voicemails: Gives agents the ability to create custom messages for a variety of situations or specific campaigns. The agent can choose and leave the message through a single button.
• SMS chat queues: Allows agents to connect with customers via SMS. The feature generates transactional reports managers can review.

“Today’s launch supports our customers by adding new outbound capabilities and additional inbound capabilities to our best-in-class offering, allowing them to engage with their customers in ways that most SMBs never would have been able to with traditional and far too expensive contact center solutions,” said Mike Sharp, chief product officer for Unified Communications and Collaboration at LogMeIn, in a statement.

Comm100 Launches Free Task Bot, Aimed Squarely at Small Businesses

Comm100 has announced the availability of Task Bot, a chatbot aimed squarely at small business. And its free. The chatbot should provide SMBs with an automated 24/7 sales and customer service channel for customers of small businesses.

It will do the most common tasks of course like sharing store hours, COVID-19 health and safety protocols and bill payment information. There are also some additional capabilities that include the following:

• Troubleshooting: the chatbot can walk customers through preliminary troubleshooting steps to determine if the issue needs to be escalated to an agent.
• Scheduling: Using Calendly, the bot is capable of scheduling meetings, both in person and online. – if customers want to meet — in person or online — the chatbot can help users book a meeting through Calendly.
• Information gathering: the chatbot is capable of collecting contact information to cull all the necessary information like, next steps, event or product sign ups or sales leads.

“Customer expectations are at an all-time high, fueled by large companies with countless customer service resources and consumer demand for instant gratification — and these expectations don’t change when it comes to small businesses,” said Jeff Epstein, VP of Marketing & Strategy at Comm100 in a statement. “By helping small businesses automate answering their most frequently asked questions in a conversational format and gathering routine data via chat instead of boring old web forms, we are enabling them to deliver customer service 24/7 without further stretching their limited resources.”

DemandBase Adds Predictive Analytics Feature to ABX Cloud

This week Demandbase, a B2B targeting and personalization platform, announced the release of new features within the Demandbase One ABX Cloud that expand upon its existing analytics capabilities with Multiple Predictive Models. Their goal is to help organizations bring qualification scores and prediction pipelines in house for any product, industry or business unit.

“One of the biggest issues with other predictive models today is that they either take in too many signals across too many products and activity types, which makes the end result far too generalized, or they require significant professional services to customize, which takes too much time,” said Jon Miller, chief marketing and product officer at Demandbase in a statement.

While Demandbase can assist in setting up models, the end goal is to put the power of the creation and iteration of predictive models in the hands of customers’ marketing and data science teams so they can own their data and results, without the need for what can be costly and complex professional services.

Cloud Platform Provider, Bringg, Pulls in $100M in Series E Round

This week Bringg, a delivery and fulfillment cloud platform provider, announced a $100 million Series E investment. Leading the investment round was Insight Partners with seven additional investors that inlude Cambridge Capital, GLP, Harlap, Next 47, Pereg Ventures, Salesforce Ventures, and Viola Growth.

The funding will be used to quickly scale, through mergers and acquisitions, Bringg’s platform,, while growing its ecosystem of strategic and technology partners. This latest round of funding sets Bringg’s market valuation to $1 billion.

The pandemic and the digital transformation it brought with it, accelerated adoption of Bringg’s platform. It’s seeing 180% year-over-year new customer growth. “There’s no question that technology and innovation were necessary to help keep the world moving forward during an incredibly challenging time, and we are proud to have stepped up to the plate and continue to deliver,” said Guy Bloch, CEO at Bringg in a statement.