When announcing its sale to Salesforce, ClickSoftware’s CEO highlighted mission clarity as a key factor for the company’s achievements to date. While that may be the case, it certainly wasn’t an easy road for the company over the last two decades. The company was actually founded in 1997, making it older than Salesforce, by Moshe BenBassat and was headquartered in Israel.
The company began trading on Nasdaq in 2000 at the height of the dot-com bubble and stayed public for a number of years until Francisco Partners acquired it in 2015. The transaction was valued at $438 million and Paul Ilse, an operating partner with Francisco was named as CEO. Later that same year, Tom Heiser replaced Paul Ilse as CEO and then a short while later in 2018, Mark Cattini took the helm.
Despite the turbulent history and changes in leadership, the company ultimately thrived and Francisco was able to dramatically improve the organization and its potential. And now that the tough times are in the rearview mirror, ClickSoftware’s leadership can look to bluer skies ahead.
Mark Cattini, CEO of ClickSoftware, states, “Our mission has been clear since day one: to be the global leader in field service management and deliver significant value to our customers, which we have achieved by combining leading-edge technology with unparalleled industry experience.”
He is bullish about the company’s new future especially now that it’s a part of the expanding Salesforce empire, “With today’s announcement, I believe we can go from strength to strength. Becoming part of Salesforce once the transaction closes will provide a tremendous opportunity for us to innovate faster and make Field Service Management an even more critical and differentiated part of Salesforce’s strategy and business.”
It’s all about customers, and through the combination, more customers will be reached by ClickSoftware, “By joining Salesforce, we will be able to further power mission-critical applications for global service leaders like Bosch, Deutsche Telekom, Ericsson, National Grid, PG&E and Unisys as well as offer a wider range of capabilities, and deliver improved efficiency, effectiveness and customer experiences to an even broader global audience,” Mark comments.
From Salesforce’s perspective, the acquisition is highly strategic and will play well into one of their key growth areas, “Our acquisition of ClickSoftware will not only accelerate the growth of Service Cloud, but drive further innovation with Field Service Lightning to better meet the needs of our customers,” stated Bill Patterson, EVP and GM of Salesforce Service Cloud.
The acquisition comes on the heels of Salesforce’s prior major acquisition of Tableau for $15.7 billion.
