Calabrio (News - Alert), a vendor of software for IP-based contact centers, announced that it has signed an agreement with Activeo to resell Calabrio's workforce optimization products. Activeo (News - Alert) is a French CRM and contact center vendor in EMEA.

 

Activeo will offer Calabrio Workforce Management and Calabrio Quality Management products as part of its Cisco (News - Alert) Unified Contact Center Enterprise offering. The French firm advises contact center users and providers on IP Contact Centers and CRM products. Activeo will also offer full support services for the Calabrio products. These include installation, design, troubleshooting and professional services.

 

In 2006 Spanlink (News - Alert) Communications, a VoIP vendor and Cisco Systems partner, acquired Calabrio, then an 11-year-old workforce management products provider based in Canada. Financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

 

The deal had the effect of deepening the Spanlink InteractiveEdge SOA software suite, which includes Spanlink Quality Management for recording, evaluation, and training, by adding Calabrio Workforce Management, which helps contact center managers develop and track adherence to schedules for multisite centers and monitor performance.

 

Spanlink sells workforce scheduling, adherence, key performance metrics, and additional reporting functionality to agent and supervisor desktop views.

 

According to industry observer Coreen Bailor, Sheila McGee-Smith, president and principal analyst of McGee-Smith Analytics, said the deal provided Spanlink customers with the opportunity to have an integrated product with what they're already using with Cisco Systems, since Spanlink OEMs software to Cisco for the Cisco Agent and Supervisor Desktops.

 

"About half the agents on Cisco call centers are already using Spanlink, so the level of integration with the existing product is very high. [Spanlink] said that they've already integrated Cisco so that if you use the Cisco Supervisor Desktop, they already have integrated KPIs from Calabrio," she told Bailor.

 

McGee-Smith also noted the combination of quality monitoring and workforce management; saying to Bailor the acquisition is similar to earlier deals like Witness Systems' acquisition of Blue Pumpkin and NICE Systems' acquisition of IEX (News - Alert). In comparison, "both Blue Pumpkin and IEX were probably more established, more name brands," McGee-Smith said.