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NICE Acquires eGlue, Adds Decisioning Adhesion to NICE SmartCenter
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NICE Acquires eGlue, Adds Decisioning Adhesion to NICE SmartCenter

 
June 10, 2010

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By Brendan B. Read, Senior Contributing Editor
 

Decisioning and guidance tools make the information from customer analytics stick to the interactions, enabling enterprises to create stronger bonds with customers and increase their ability to maximize lifetime value from them via successful sales, cross-sells and upsells. Gluing these solutions to customer analytics products makes both stronger and easier to deploy via an integrated suite that will increase the stickiness of such suppliers to their contact center customers.

 
NICE Systems appears to have those objectives in mind in a just-announced deal to acquire eglue, which supplies decisioning and guidance solutions for $29 million, which  will enable integration of eglue's (News - Alert) solutions into the NICE SmartCenter suite. And just as many smart contact centers and organizations add a measure of pay-per-performance the eglue transaction price may be increased by up to an additional $6 million, subject to certain performance criteria.
 
NICE's customers will benefit from the purchase by enhancing and further impacting compliance adherence, operational efficiency, customer experience, handling time and sales and marketing effectiveness. Integrating these important capabilities, says NICE helps it to execute upon its vision for Customer Dynamics optimization. Customer Dynamics is NICE's description for the 'myriad complex, continuous interchanges that occur between customers and businesses-to deliver tangible value to contact center, sales, marketing and back office operations.'
 
Here is an example of how eglue with NICE SmartCenter works. An agent servicing a customer who has previously called the contact center regarding the same issue will receive a real-time alert about the customer's sequence of prior interactions across the different communication channels (e.g. web, chat, text), and be presented with all the necessary information and steps to efficiently resolve the customer's issue. The agent will be provided with personalized real-time guidance to leverage and act upon cross-sell or up-sell opportunities.
 
'A major trend that will dominate customer service strategies over the next five years is providing contact center agents a combination of business rules and business knowledge in real time,' said Michael Maoz, Research Vice President at analyst and advisory firm Gartner (News - Alert). 'The ability to impact interactions based on analysis of the most relevant customer and interaction data is key to delivering an excellent customer experience.'
 
Further, eglue's process automation, real-time monitoring and guidance capabilities will extend NICE's ability to address workforce efficiency, effectiveness, and compliance adherence in back office operations. Doing so will enhance NICE's workforce optimization solutions; NICE SmartCenter incorporates IEX (News - Alert) TotalView workforce management software.  Back offices are an important growth market for WFO products and suppliers as these operations have similar scheduling issues as contact centers but are still relatively unsophisticated, with many of them relying on clumsy spreadsheets.
 
The eglue deal, which promises to be as successful for NICE as the IEX purchase, further reinforces a consolidation of WFO product lines: call recording, workforce scheduling and analytics away from standalone offerings by separate vendors into integrated one-stop-shopping suites. These packages are attractive to organizations as they make purchasing, IT resource allocation and support easier and less costly. eglue represents a key enhancement to these products by adding a critical new set of solutions that would have to had to sourced and meshed into them by customers separately. Incorporation of such offerings makes WFO solutions like NICE SmartCenter arguably best of breed.
 
 'Joining NICE is an important and exciting step for eglue and its customers,' said Omer Geva (News - Alert), co-founder and Chief Executive Officer, eglue. 'Together, we'll expand our global outreach to support the evolving needs of customers in both the contact center and back office arena worldwide. Being a part of NICE will enable us to provide unmatched capabilities to our customers by addressing their most pressing business challenges.'
 
'The joint eglue-NICE SmartCenter solutions close the loop on key business improvement processes required by enterprises worldwide, turning business insights into impact in real time,' said Zeevi Bregman, President and Chief Executive Officer, NICE Systems (News - Alert). 'Together, we will further advance NICE's innovative Customer Dynamics strategy to improve the complex, ongoing exchange between companies and their customers, as companies strive to gain a competitive edge, retain satisfied and loyal customers, while operating in the most efficient and profitable manner.
 
'We are excited about the many opportunities presented by this strategic move. With eglue's real-time decisioning and guidance offering, we augment our intent-based business solutions -- a major growth driver for NICE -- as well as extend our reach into back office operations, which today is a significant and underserved market. We expect that the addition of eglue will contribute to NICE's growth and profitability in the years to come. We look forward to having eglue's strong management and professional teams join NICE.'
 
 

Brendan B. Read is TMCnet's Senior Contributing Editor. To read more of Brendan's articles, please visit his columnist page.

Edited by Juliana Kenny

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