Rivermine Acquires MBG: mindWireless is the Wild Card
On December 15th 2009, Rivermine acquired MBG, continuing a trend of consolidation in the Telecom Lifecycle Management industry. With this acquisition, Rivermine gained several strong capabilities that have differentiated MBG from the market in recent years.
MBG has traditionally been known for its strong accounting-based approach to expense management, which has resulted in call accounting and chargeback capabilities that are extremely mature in relationship to the market in general. This technical excellence has led to higher-than-average customer satisfaction and lower churn rates since MBG has been able to deliver services promised to its customers. These fundamentals made MBG an attractive acquisition target for companies seeking to improve their landline expense management capabilities. Now, MBG's core competencies and focus on Telecom Expense Management focus will be added to Rivermine's own platform, which includes wireless expense management and strong international support capabilities that have led to its current relationship with IBM Global Services. More analysis on Rivermine's current expense and support management capabilities on an international scale is available in greater detail for current Aberdeen clients and survey respondents seeking advice for their current or future deployments.
One interesting twist to this acquisition is the effect that it will have on mindWireless. mindWireless has been one of the largest wireless expense management providers in the market for several years and has one of the longest records of experience with supporting large enterprise wireless deployments out of any expense management provider.
Previously, mindWireless had a strong relationship with MBG that provided a natural partnership for landline and wireless spend. Although Rivermine has stated that there will be no immediate changes to MBG operations, it only makes sense that Rivermine would like to move MBG customers from mindWireless' platform to their own wireless expense management platform to create an integrated Rivermine experience.
This acquisition provides both a risk and an opportunity for mindWireless. Although they will eventually lose a partner as Rivermine-MBG operations begin to merge, this is also an opportunity for mindWireless to reposition its own value proposition from being part of an integrated telecom expense solution to a number of other potential routes.
For instance, mindWireless could become part of a holistic wireless management solution by partnering with companies such as MobileIron, Syncpointe, Trust Digital, Sybase, Zenprise, or Good on the device and data management support side. Or it could increasingly focus on unified communications provided by Avaya, Cisco, Siemens Enterprise, Alcatel-Lucent, and others by providing visibility to these devices that are increasingly becoming a one-stop shop for enterprise messaging. Or it could become a holistic wireless solution by working with companies such as Movero, Perlego, Boxtone, or Avalon Global Solutions to provide help desk, Blackberry support, and other mobility capabilities.
Or mindWireless could embrace all of these paths and become the hub of a true wireless lifecycle management solution. This decision will be difficult, but can potentially provide the opportunity for mindWireless to be more closely associated with a value proposition that is aligned to its core abilities. With its wireless experience, device counts, and current platform, mindWireless has the potential to branch out. It will be interesting to keep track of this company and see where it makes its next strategic move.
