Briefs

February 20, 2003. (CNET) Xchange, a publicly traded software company specializing in customer relationship management, laid off all but one employee and shuttered its doors last week, indicating further consolidation in the stagnating market for CRM applications.

The Boston-based company has shed about 75 employees over the last two months as it wound down its operations, according to Wayne Townsend, a former senior vice president of Xchange. In its prime two years ago, the company employed 450 people, he said. Xchange sold software applications for streamlining marketing campaigns to more than 300 companies. It had been losing money for several years amid a shakeout in the business software market. The company's stock was delisted from the Nasdaq stock exchange last year.

Saddled with millions of dollars of debt and declining revenue, Xchange executives had hoped to take the company private and raise new capital after a major restructuring last year. But the financing plan recently fell through, and the company underwent a bank foreclosure, Townsend said.

About 100 companies are still using Xchange's applications, which cost an average of $500,000 to license, Townsend said.

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