Five9 today announced it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Aceyus, a 21-year year-old company offering advanced data integration and analytics. Headquartered in Charlotte, NC, Aceyus was founded in 2002 and has about 70 employees, all of whom are expected to remain with Five9.
Five9 reports that the transaction is scheduled to close by the end of the third quarter of 2023. The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. In the past few years the company has received venture capital funding, including $3 million from Cypress Growth in September 2019 and $1.5 million (from another private equity source) in May 2020.
Since 2002, Aceyus has helped companies convert vast amounts of raw data – much of it generated in the contact center – into opportunities that improve the way they conduct business and serve customers. Several elements of Aceyus’ value to Five9 are revealed in that description of the company.
Premises and cloud expertise
With a 20+ year history, Aceyus began in the contact center space in the era of premises-based solutions but over the years has transitioned to the cloud world. The list of contact center partners on Aceyus’ website tells this story well: Five9, Amazon Connect, Cisco, Twilio and Avaya. In addition to working with customers of all of the above-named contact center vendors, Aceyus has expertise in helping companies make the legacy-to-cloud transition, by aggregating, centralizing and normalizing data across systems. Using pre-built integrations, Aceyus’ software ingests data from CRMs, WEM systems, multiple ACDs, communication platforms, digital channels, intelligent virtual agents, and other key sources of customer data.
Enterprise focus
It is no coincidence that Aceyus became a partner as Five9 began to have success with major, global accounts. As seen on Aceyus’ Five9 Marketplace partner page, they have published case studies with customers Expedia and T-Mobile. Additional customers, shown on the Aceyus website, include Verizon, UPS, IRS Sony, and BlueCross Blue Shield.
As Five9 continues to have success with customers migrating 10,000+ agent seat operations from the premises to the cloud, Aceyus’ expertise with these mega-contact center transformations will prove invaluable.
AI/Data Interdependency
One can’t read an article about AI without seeing how dependent the quality of AI models is on the data used to develop and finetune them. Aceyus says its solution, “may be used to train AI-based technology to solve customer issues and deliver a connected, frictionless, and repeatable customer experience.” While it is early days, I’m looking forward to understanding how Aceyus capabilities will be used as part of Five9’s AI roadmap.
Culture
At the company’s recent industry analyst meeting, CEO Mike Burkland introduced the company’s new vision statement: to bring joy to customer experience. The C-level executive responsible for delivering on that vision for prospects and existing customers is Andy Dignan, chief customer officer, Five9. It is Dignan who provided my pre-briefing on the acquisition, and he shared that he has worked with the Aceyus team for two decades – first at Cisco and now at Five9.
Dignan highlighted that in addition to working with the leading premises-based contact center providers for the past two decades, Aceyus had developed strong relationships with key contact center channel companies. One that came to mind as a joint Five9/Aceyus partner is Presidio, quoted in Five9’s press release on the acquisition. These long-held relationships between Aceyus management and channel partners will go a long way in helping ensure the success of the acquisition.
Prior Partnership
As has been true of earlier Five9 acquisitions, e.g., Inference and Virtual Observer – both in 2020 – Aceyus has been a successful partner for several years. In 2019, Aceyus became part of Five9’s inaugural partner marketplace. By October 2022, Five9 made the decision to expand its relationship with Aceyus and began reselling Aceyus’s flagship solution, VUE. The relationship was so successful that in February 2023, Aceyus was recognized as Five9 Global ISV Partner of the Year for 2022. This history of continuing success, and the success factors enumerated above, bode well for a seamless transition of Aceyus people and technology into Five9.
Data collection, normalization, and analysis for use in AI models and customer journey orchestration are key requirements for mega contact centers making digital transformations and increasing automation. NICE’s acquisition of Nexidia in 2016 became the nucleus of that company’s data and analytics play. Genesys acquired Pointillist in 2021 to bring many of the same capabilities to Genesys Cloud CX.
With its recent move to the leader quadrant of the 2023 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Contact Center as a Service, Five9 shows with this acquisition it is ready to compete even more aggressively with these competitors at the high end of the market.
