RightNow Technologies
Encyclopedia
RightNow Technologies is a U.S.
software company that develops customer relationship management
(CRM) software for enterprise organizations. It is incorporated in Delaware
and headquartered in Bozeman
, Montana
.
In spite of multiple assurances by the founder/CEO to the employees that the company was not for sale, on October 24, 2011, Oracle Corporation
announced it had agreed to buy RightNow Technologies for $1.5 billion.
in Bozeman, Montana. Additional offices have opened in California
, New York
, New Jersey
, Massachusetts
, Texas
, Illinois
, Washington, DC, Colorado
, Canada
, Europe
, Australia
and Asia
. The company employs over 1000 people worldwide.
RightNow is primarily known for its business model of offering its software as a hosted service
in the cloud. As of November 2009, the company has nearly 2000 customers, including Australia Post
, British Airways
, Iomega
, Continental Tire NA, Linksys
, Nikon
, iRobot
, British Telecom, Motorola
, Black and Decker, Overstock.com
, Electronic Arts
, NC Soft, GameFly
, Bank of New Zealand
, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services
, the Department of Education
, the Social Security Administration
, Australian National University
, the University of South Florida
, Quicken
, Telstra
, Fandango
, and Columbia University
.
with an integrated knowledge base
. As the company grew, it added marketing and sales functionality, voice automation, customer feedback management, analytics and a social platform to its product, creating a full customer experience suite.
, CapGemini
, and Deloitte. Major technology partners include Birst for business intelligence. AmberLeaf is used as a systems integrator.
for $34 million.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
software company that develops customer relationship management
Customer relationship management
Customer relationship management is a widely implemented strategy for managing a company’s interactions with customers, clients and sales prospects. It involves using technology to organize, automate, and synchronize business processes—principally sales activities, but also those for marketing,...
(CRM) software for enterprise organizations. It is incorporated in Delaware
Delaware
Delaware is a U.S. state located on the Atlantic Coast in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. It is bordered to the south and west by Maryland, and to the north by Pennsylvania...
and headquartered in Bozeman
Bozeman, Montana
Bozeman is a city in and the county seat of Gallatin County, Montana, United States, in the southwestern part of the state. The 2010 census put Bozeman's population at 37,280 making it the fourth largest city in the state. It is the principal city of the Bozeman micropolitan area, which consists...
, Montana
Montana
Montana is a state in the Western United States. The western third of Montana contains numerous mountain ranges. Smaller, "island ranges" are found in the central third of the state, for a total of 77 named ranges of the Rocky Mountains. This geographical fact is reflected in the state's name,...
.
In spite of multiple assurances by the founder/CEO to the employees that the company was not for sale, on October 24, 2011, Oracle Corporation
Oracle Corporation
Oracle Corporation is an American multinational computer technology corporation that specializes in developing and marketing hardware systems and enterprise software products – particularly database management systems...
announced it had agreed to buy RightNow Technologies for $1.5 billion.
Profile
The company was founded in 1997 by Greg GianforteGreg Gianforte
Greg Gianforte, is CEO, Chairman and Founder of RightNow Technologies, provider of cloud-based solutions.Gianforte founded RightNow in 1997 and took the company public in 2004.-Career:...
in Bozeman, Montana. Additional offices have opened in California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
, New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
, New Jersey
New Jersey
New Jersey is a state in the Northeastern and Middle Atlantic regions of the United States. , its population was 8,791,894. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York, on the southeast and south by the Atlantic Ocean, on the west by Pennsylvania and on the southwest by Delaware...
, Massachusetts
Massachusetts
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. It is bordered by Rhode Island and Connecticut to the south, New York to the west, and Vermont and New Hampshire to the north; at its east lies the Atlantic Ocean. As of the 2010...
, Texas
Texas
Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...
, Illinois
Illinois
Illinois is the fifth-most populous state of the United States of America, and is often noted for being a microcosm of the entire country. With Chicago in the northeast, small industrial cities and great agricultural productivity in central and northern Illinois, and natural resources like coal,...
, Washington, DC, Colorado
Colorado
Colorado is a U.S. state that encompasses much of the Rocky Mountains as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the western edge of the Great Plains...
, Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
, Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
, Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
and Asia
Asia
Asia is the world's largest and most populous continent, located primarily in the eastern and northern hemispheres. It covers 8.7% of the Earth's total surface area and with approximately 3.879 billion people, it hosts 60% of the world's current human population...
. The company employs over 1000 people worldwide.
RightNow is primarily known for its business model of offering its software as a hosted service
Software as a Service
Software as a service , sometimes referred to as "on-demand software," is a software delivery model in which software and its associated data are hosted centrally and are typically accessed by users using a thin client, normally using a web browser over the Internet.SaaS has become a common...
in the cloud. As of November 2009, the company has nearly 2000 customers, including Australia Post
Australia Post
Australia Post is the trading name of the Australian Government-owned Australian Postal Corporation .-History:...
, British Airways
British Airways
British Airways is the flag carrier airline of the United Kingdom, based in Waterside, near its main hub at London Heathrow Airport. British Airways is the largest airline in the UK based on fleet size, international flights and international destinations...
, Iomega
Iomega
Iomega is an American producer of consumer external, portable and networking storage hardware. Established in the 1980s, Iomega has sold more than 410 million digital storage drives and disks. On April 8, 2008, EMC Corporation announced its plans to acquire Iomega for a consideration of US $213M...
, Continental Tire NA, Linksys
Linksys
Linksys by Cisco, commonly known as Linksys, is a brand of home and small office networking products now produced by Cisco Systems, though once a separate company founded in 1995 before being acquired by Cisco in 2003...
, Nikon
Nikon
, also known as just Nikon, is a multinational corporation headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, specializing in optics and imaging. Its products include cameras, binoculars, microscopes, measurement instruments, and the steppers used in the photolithography steps of semiconductor fabrication, of which...
, iRobot
IRobot
iRobot Corporation is an American advanced technology company founded in 1990 and incorporated in Delaware in 2000, the iRobot Corporation designs robots such as an autonomous home vacuum cleaner , the Scooba that scrubs and cleans hard floors, and military and police robots, such as the PackBot...
, British Telecom, Motorola
Motorola
Motorola, Inc. was an American multinational telecommunications company based in Schaumburg, Illinois, which was eventually divided into two independent public companies, Motorola Mobility and Motorola Solutions on January 4, 2011, after losing $4.3 billion from 2007 to 2009...
, Black and Decker, Overstock.com
Overstock.com
Overstock.com , also known by its shortcut, O.co, is an online retailer headquartered in Cottonwood Heights, Utah, near Salt Lake City. Founded in 1997 by Robert Brazell, under the name D2: Discounts Direct, it was a pioneering online seller of surplus merchandise which, upon its failure in 1999,...
, Electronic Arts
Electronic Arts
Electronic Arts, Inc. is a major American developer, marketer, publisher and distributor of video games. Founded and incorporated on May 28, 1982 by Trip Hawkins, the company was a pioneer of the early home computer games industry and was notable for promoting the designers and programmers...
, NC Soft, GameFly
GameFly
GameFly is an American online video game rental subscription service that specializes in providing games for game consoles and handheld game consoles....
, Bank of New Zealand
Bank of New Zealand
Bank of New Zealand is one of New Zealand’s largest banks and has been operating continuously in the country since the first office was opened in Auckland in October 1861 followed shortly after by the first branch in Dunedin in December 1861...
, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services
Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services , previously known as the Health Care Financing Administration , is a federal agency within the United States Department of Health and Human Services that administers the Medicare program and works in partnership with state governments to administer...
, the Department of Education
United States Department of Education
The United States Department of Education, also referred to as ED or the ED for Education Department, is a Cabinet-level department of the United States government...
, the Social Security Administration
Social Security Administration
The United States Social Security Administration is an independent agency of the United States federal government that administers Social Security, a social insurance program consisting of retirement, disability, and survivors' benefits...
, Australian National University
Australian National University
The Australian National University is a teaching and research university located in the Australian capital, Canberra.As of 2009, the ANU employs 3,945 administrative staff who teach approximately 10,000 undergraduates, and 7,500 postgraduate students...
, the University of South Florida
University of South Florida
The University of South Florida, also known as USF, is a member institution of the State University System of Florida, one of the state's three flagship universities for public research, and is located in Tampa, Florida, USA...
, Quicken
Quicken
Quicken is a personal finance management tool developed by Intuit, Inc.Quicken runs on Windows and Macintosh systems. Previous versions ran on DOS. An online version is also available. The last version of Quicken for Macintosh computers was Quicken Essentials for Mac released in February 2010...
, Telstra
Telstra
Telstra Corporation Limited is an Australian telecommunications and media company, building and operating telecommunications networks and marketing voice, mobile, internet access and pay television products and services....
, Fandango
Fandango (ticket service)
Fandango is a corporation in the United States that sells movie tickets over the telephone and Internet, enabling customers to ensure ticket availability and avoid lines at the movie theater.-Services:...
, and Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
.
History
Greg Gianforte started the company in 1997 with no investor money and created a software product that was initially focused on customer serviceCustomer service
Customer service is the provision of service to customers before, during and after a purchase.According to Turban et al. , “Customer service is a series of activities designed to enhance the level of customer satisfaction – that is, the feeling that a product or service has met the customer...
with an integrated knowledge base
Knowledge base
A knowledge base is a special kind of database for knowledge management. A Knowledge Base provides a means for information to be collected, organised, shared, searched and utilised.-Types:...
. As the company grew, it added marketing and sales functionality, voice automation, customer feedback management, analytics and a social platform to its product, creating a full customer experience suite.
RightNow CX
RightNow CX, a customer experience suite, is the software offered by RightNow Technologies. RightNow CX is divided into RightNow Web Experience, RightNow Social Experience, RightNow Contact Center Experience, and RightNow Engage.RightNow partners
RightNow has an extensive partner network including Solution Partners, Contact Center Partners, Implementation Partners, and Technology partners. Major solution partners include IBMIBM
International Business Machines Corporation or IBM is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas...
, CapGemini
Capgemini
Capgemini is a French global IT services company, one of the world's largest management consulting, outsourcing and professional services companies with a staff of 114,274 operating in 40 countries. It is headquartered in Paris and was founded in 1967 by Serge Kampf, the current chairman, in...
, and Deloitte. Major technology partners include Birst for business intelligence. AmberLeaf is used as a systems integrator.
Recent acquisitions
In 2009, RightNow Technologies acquired social networking company HiveLive; in 2011, the company acquired Q-goQ-go
Q-go is a privately owned international company that specializes in semantic search SaaS, based on Natural Language Processing technology. The technology provides relevant answers to users in response to queries on a company’s internet website or corporate intranet, formulated in natural sentences...
for $34 million.