I just received an email from Bill Stover, CEO & President of YourMembership, announcing the merger of YourMembership and Affiniscape. According to the press release, the combined companies now serve over 2,300 organizations in 32 countries around the world. This would make them one of the very largest AMS providers, in terms of number of clients served.
I’m generally skeptical of software company mergers, so this will be very interesting to watch.
Full disclosure: EDM is an independent third-party consulting firm. This means we have no financial relationship with any of the vendors mentioned in this blog. We provide unbiased opinions on what we see.
What a surprise, Wes!! You are against mergers in the association space. I can tell you why: if one company dominates the space you’ll need to get a 8-5 job.
I didn’t say I was against them, I said I’m skeptical of them, because they rarely work. The business world is riddled with software company merger failures.
I am sure Oracle/PeopleSoft. Oracle/Siebel. Oracle/BEA Systems are failures…
You named Oracle three times. The exception that proves the rule.
How about CDC Software, which spent the past three years acquiring countless software companies, including AMS companies, only to file for bankruptcy?
As a past employee at gomembers, I have some insight into acquisitions/mergers. During my time at gomembers, the company acquired several different AMS companies. While it looked good on paper and made for great conversation, our clients were hurt by these acquisitions. We ended up bleeding our client base because we could barely support one AMS solution let alone several different AMS solutions. I would add we had more than 200 employees and still couldn’t pull it off. The rest is history.
1. Will Yourmembership continue to support two different AMS solutions? The last time I checked both Affininscape and Yourmembership both served the small to midsized market.
2. If Yourmembership decides to phase out one solution, which solution goes away and what happens to the clients on that solution?
3. Will their clients be forced into an upgrade or lose support if they begin phasing out one product?
I think a merger with a company that compliments or fills a gap with the existing AMS product makes more sense (social media tool, CMS, LMS etc.).
Good thoughts, Tim. I appreciate your perspective as someone on the “inside” of one of these deals.
Tim, Your Membership is an infinitely better managed company. They were able to get rid of a competitor for cheap.
It appears Affiniscape customers will be sunsetted onto the Your Membership platform. This is advantageous to Affinidcspe’s clients seeing how Your Memebrship is an infinitely better product. This also benefits Your Membership now they hsve one less competitor.