Yell partners with Microsoft to broaden digital offer
Yellow Pages owner Yell Group has formed a global alliance with Microsoft to broaden its digital offering to small to medium-sized companies.
Yell will now be able to sell Microsoft’s range of cloud computing tools, including Office 365 and marketing software Dynamics CRM, on top of its traditional directory services, website building tools online and advertising offer, to clients in UK, US, Spain and Latin America.
Search results from Yell will also move up the rankings on Microsoft’s Bing and Yahoo!’s search engine.
The partnership will help Yell expand its digital operations, as its print advertising revenue continues to plummet.
Yell’s full-year revenue fell 12.4% to £1.9bn in 2010. The company has net debt of £2.8bn.
The tie-up announcement was welcomed by investors and shares in Yell rose almost 16% during trading yesterday (12 July).
No financial details of the deal have been released, although Yell is due to hold an investor day tomorrow (14 July).
Yell acquired technology start up Znode for £12.5m earlier this week, which will allow the former company to offer small business e-commerce technology. E-commerce will form a division of the group, called Yell Connect.
