Sentiment Raises £1 Million to Take Social to the Contact Centre

LONDON, January 13, 2014 /PRNewswire/ --

Sentiment, (the trading name of Macranet Ltd), the social intelligence and engagement platform, announced today it has secured £1 million in a Series A financing led by Elderstreet Investments, with participation from AIM listed technology company Netcall plc. The funding will accelerate the company's growth strategy.

Sentiment will use the financing to increase investment in its market leading social intelligence and engagement platform, invest in additional sales and marketing resources and expand its global reach.

"Billions of conversations are generated every day in social media. Intelligence into this is critical for organisations, however, over the past 18 months we have seen a shift from pure analysis requirements to actual customer engagement," commented Leon Chaddock, CEO of Sentiment.  "By deploying Sentiment companies have recognised they can both generate new business and retain existing customers at scale, providing direct and tangible ROI."

Sentiment's SaaS platform provides teams with the capabilities to analyse, drill down and respond in real-time to critical conversations across Social Media including Facebook and Twitter.

The platform is currently used by 200 companies across the globe including Alitalia, Deutsche Bank, The Environment Agency, PR Newswire and Peer 1 Hosting. Sentiment was founded in 2007 and as is based in Farnborough, UK.

In conjunction with the funding, Sentiment announced the appointment of Elderstreet co-founder and managing director Michael Jackson to the Sentiment board of directors as chairman. Michael was previously chairman of FTSE 100 companies The Sage Group plc and PartyGaming plc.

The deal was led by William Horlick of Elderstreet who stated: "Elderstreet are delighted to have invested in Sentiment. We believe their market leading technology coupled with the partnership with Netcall in the contact centre market will help to grow the business rapidly."

"Our vision has always been to provide organisations with real understanding and value from social media," noted Leon Chaddock, founder and CEO of Sentiment. "We are thrilled to be partnered with Elderstreet and Netcall to accelerate this process."

About Sentiment

Sentiment is a Farnborough (UK) based cloud platform provider. Its technology enables companies to effectively incorporate social as a business channel, giving them insight into customers' social activity and a highly effective way of engaging with them directly. The platform can be used across the whole customer life cycle, from acquisition to retention as well as providing intelligence on customer sentiment on products and services. Sentiment clients have seen a tangible ROI from its technology that has helped with new revenue generation, increased customer retention rates and higher levels of customer satisfaction.

Sentiment has over 200 customers including Alitalia, Deutsche Bank, The Environment Agency, PR Newswire and Peer 1 Hosting.

For further information please see http://www.sentimentmetrics.com

About Elderstreet Investments

Elderstreet Investments is a London based UK venture capital firm investing in early stage and development capital for UK growing businesses. Founded in 1990, Elderstreet has invested over £100 million in over 100 investments. Elderstreet  provide funding for MBOs and development capital in most industry sectors with investments typically in the range of £0.5 and £2m and have a specialist technology practice investing in the software and computer services market. For more information on Elderstreet and its investments, visit http://www.elderstreet.com.

About Netcall plc

Netcall is a UK company quoted on the AIM market of the London Stock Exchange. Netcall's software product suite provides compelling business process solutions for end-to-end customer engagement, incorporating intelligent contact handling, workforce management, business process management, customer relationship management and enterprise content management. Our target markets comprise organisations of all sizes, including many blue-chip companies with global contact centre operations. The Netcall software platform helps organisations meet the growing demands of their customers and prospects whilst improving internal efficiencies, thereby increasing profitability and customer satisfaction.

Netcall's customer base contains over 700 organisations in both the private and public sectors. These include over 65% of the NHS Acute Health Trusts, major telecoms operators such as BT and leading organisations including Interflora, Lloyds, Cineworld, Interserve, Prudential, British Sugar and Thames Water.

For further information, please consult the Netcall website: http://www.netcall.com

Contact: Marc Duke, Marketing Director, T: +44(0)7764-950-953