Workforce Productivity Feature Article

Concerto Software Inc. and Aspect Communications Corporation announced a definitive agreement to merge operations. The new agreement will assign Aspect shareholders with $11.60 in cash for each share of common stock, which represents an approximate 15 percent premium to the average closing price over the last 30 trading days. The merger also asks for holders of Aspect Series B Preferred Stock to receive an equivalent amount of cash per share on an as-converted basis. Based on the number of shares of Aspect common stock, common stock options and Series B Preferred Stock outstanding on July 4, 2005, the transaction is valued at approximately $1.0 billion.

The companies involved in this transaction claim that the merger will form one of the largest companies solely focused on contact center products and services in the space. The deal will combine Concerto's predictive dialing and unified contact center system products with Aspects contact center workforce management applications and performance analytics. Its also key to mention that the merger will combine both companies traditional voice and VoIP automatic call distributors (ACD), enabling the new entity to offer multi-channel routing, self-service interactive voice response (IVR), Internet contact and virtual contact center capabilities, reporting, monitoring and recording.

"With greater resources and scale, we will offer customers a more robust product suite, an expanded services and support infrastructure, and increased investment in research and development, making the new company uniquely positioned to be the contact center solutions provider of choice," said James D. Foy, Concerto's president and CEO. "Concerto has a proven track record of integrating people and products following acquisitions. Given the customer- centric philosophy that Concerto and Aspect share, we anticipate a rapid, successful transition."

"The merger with Concerto is an exciting opportunity to create a new standard of excellence in customer interaction. The contact center market is evolving with the advent of new technologies, like voice over IP, and growing customer demand for reduced complexity and increased capabilities. Together, we will focus on continuing to support our customers today and bringing converged solutions to them as their business needs dictate," said Gary E. Barnett, president and CEO of San Jose, CA-based Aspect. "We are pleased with this outcome. I and other members of the Aspect executive team look forward to being a part of the combined company."

The transaction was already been approved by Aspect's board of directors and is anticipated to close as early as this September, subject to customary conditions, including regulatory approvals and approval by Aspect shareholders. Upon closing, Aspect will no longer be publicly traded. The new company will be privately held by Concerto's investors, Golden Gate Capital, Oak Investment Partners and management. The chief executive officer and president of the combined company will be James D. Foy.

Morgan Stanley & Co. Incorporated advised Aspect in the transaction.

You might have noticed that Concerto has received TMCs Customer Inter@ction Solutions magazines CRM Excellence Award for its Concerto EnsemblePro product two years in a row for 2004 and 2005. The magazine presents the annual CRM Excellence award to acknowledge companies and products that help extend and expand the customer relationship to become all encompassing, cover the entire enterprise and the entire lifetime of the customer.

"Customer Inter@ction Solutions magazine implemented the CRM Excellence Awards six years ago as a way of commending the companies that have proven to be true CRM partners to their customers and clients. Concerto Software has demonstrated to the editors of Customer Inter@ction Solutions that their products and services have substantially improved the processes of their clients businesses by streamlining and facilitating the flow of information needed for companies to retain their most precious asset...their customers," said Nadji Tehrani, founder and chairman of TMC, publishers of Customer Interaction Solutions last month. The list of CRM Excellence Award winners for 2005 were published in the June and July issues of the magazine.

Just last week Aspect announced the latest release of its contact center operating environment, the Aspect Uniphi Suite 6.1. The product offers businesses ACD, CTI and IVR, on a single, centrally managed, switch-agnostic platform. The company said the new version 6.1 simplifies application development, system administration and management, while doubling the number of agents supported by last years release. Uniphi Suite v6.1 is currently available and it includes support for up to 500 agents (blended and voice-only), Microsoft .NET and Windows, Aspect Call Center, Cisco CallManager, Microsoft Exchange and eGain Service. The software is built on core standards, such as VXML, SOAP/Web Services and SIP.

"Aspect Uniphi Suite helps companies greatly simplify contact center infrastructure and manage contacts and resources easily, so agents can deliver superior customer service experiences," said Brian Gentile, senior vice president and chief marketing officer at Aspect last week. "The quality of customer care suffers when contact centers are stuck with mismatched enterprise technologies. Even making simple changes in business processes becomes a complex and frustrating task, adding to implementation time and cost, as well as maintenance. We designed Uniphi Suite to address these challenges and to provide excellent support for the migration to VoIP networks and for replacing traditional PBXs with IP-PBXs."