Five9 today announced it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Acqueon, a 5-year-old company headquartered in Dallas, TX. Acqueon’s, Revenue Execution Platform, allows enterprises to proactively connect with customers for outbound sales, service, and revenue capture opportunities using customers’ preferred communication channels, i.e., not just with voice calls but through digital channels as well.
Acqueon is a privately-held company which received “a significant growth investment” from Long-Ridge Equity partners in 2022. Five9 has not disclosed the financial details of the transaction, which is expected to close in the second half of 2024.
Acqueon has approximately 200 customers globally supporting more than 110,000 agents. Customers include five of the world’s largest banks, two Fortune 50 insurance companies, six of the top 10 health payors in the United States, nearly two dozen hospital systems, and more than ten U.S. government agencies. Over the last few years, the company has partnered with most of the contact center solution providers, including Amazon Connect, Avaya, Cisco, Five9, Genesys, NICE, UJET and Vonage.
During a pre-briefing on the acquisition news, Ashish Koul, CEO, Acqueon, said that Acqueon will continue to support the 90+% of its customers that have deployed the company’s solutions on contact center platforms other than Five9. Ross Daniels, CMO, Acqueon, further explained that to that end, Acqueon will initially operate as a business unit of Five9.
Five9 and Acqueon have been technology partners since early 2022, when the two companies announced that Acqueon’s EPIC Electronic Health Record Connector was available on the Five9 CX Marketplace to support Five9’s healthcare customers. A year and a half later, the two companies expanded the partnership, and Acqueon’s campaign management and compliance platform became available on the marketplace.
The transition to being part of Five9 should be a seamless one. A certain level of technological integration has already been accomplished as a result of the partnership to date, though there will certainly be more in the future.
In addition, there are existing marketing and sales synergies. “We’re already strong partners, jointly selling Acqueon solutions on Five9 paper with enterprise customers” said Matt McGinnis, VP product, industry, and solution marketing, Five9, during the pre-briefing.
Growing international revenue has been a stated goal of Five9 for several years. In response to my question, Koul reported that Acqueon has “a few hundred” employees, all of whom are expected to remain with Five9. The majority of those employees are located in Chennai and Bengaluru, India, which will become a new research and development location for Five9.
In addition, Acqueon’s customer base is global, with approximately 30% of the company’s revenue coming from customers based outside the US. According to Koul, that includes, “the top four banks in India as well as banks in Thailand, Malaysia and Australia.” While Five9 has established a presence in EMEA, the acquisition should accelerate its move into Asia.
Since returning to Five9 as CEO in November 2022, one of Mike Burkland’s strategies for the company has been to expand Five9’s vision and products beyond the walls of the contact center. The acquisition of Acqueon supports that strategy, as its solutions have traditionally been sold into sales and marketing departments as well as contact centers.
With the acquisition, Five9 takes a step toward realizing its ambition to become the orchestration engine for every interaction across the entire customer journey, including marketing, e-commerce, sales, and customer service.
Acqueon’s Revenue Acceleration Platform was built in the AWS cloud but supports contact centers still operating with premises-based technology. Koul estimated that 30-40% of Acqueon’s existing customers are using on-prem contact center platforms connected to Acqueon’s cloud.
It is my opinion that many companies that are not actively moving their contact center to the cloud envision making that change sometime in the future. The acquisition gives Five9 existing customer relationships to leverage to compete for that business.
Today’s acquisition follows a familiar pattern for Five9. One year ago, Five9 acquired Aceyus, which had also been a successful Five9 partner. Both acquisitions also bring technology to support the very largest and most complex contact centers in the world – companies Five9 is increasingly successful moving from premises to cloud contact center technology.
Editor’s note: Sheila McGee-Smith wrote about Acqueon several years ago.
