Microsoft and Yell have partnered to offer a set of online advertising and business tool to assist small and medium sized businesses (SMBs) reach and engage consumers.
Following the Yahoo! and Microsoft search alliance, Yell will join forces to offer search, mobile and local advertising solutions to small and medium businesses and to make the most of emerging business models delivered through the cloud.
Under the plans, Yell will also offer the full suite of Microsoft’s SMB productivity and business software and cloud services, including Microsoft Office 365, Microsoft Dynamics CRM and emerging SMB-focused communications solutions.
In addition, Microsoft will assist Yell to accelerate its new cloud-based services, which will provide Yell’s customers with access to these new digital offerings.
Thomas Hansen, vice president of SMB Worldwide at Microsoft, said, “Yell Group has one of the largest dedicated sales forces partnering with small and medium sized businesses and provides customers with valuable, locally focused internet directories that see over 50 million unique visitors per month. We are very excited about our plans to form a strategic alliance with Yell, as it offers us a way to better reach and serve small and medium sized businesses across the globe.”
According to a recent study by Booz & Company, the global digital services market for SMBs will be $235 billion in 2011 and is expected to grow by over 45% to $350 billion by 2015.
Mike Pocock, Yell Group CEO, indicated that “small and medium sized businesses are looking for digital solutions to help them grow their businesses, transact with customers, and be more efficient. Our plans to form a global strategic alliance with Microsoft will help us launch our local, cloud-based marketplace, serving the growing needs of our customers by providing comprehensive digital advertising, productivity and business solutions at scale, bringing small and medium sized businesses ever closer to consumers and bringing reduced costs and competitive capabilities to SMBs that have, to date, only been available to larger enterprises.”
