Yesterday Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories, an Alcatel-Lucent company, announced that it has acquired a reporting and analytics firm. Informiam is a 45 employee business headquartered in Atlanta with R&D facilities in Toronto.
Yesterday Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories, an Alcatel-Lucent company, announced that it has acquired a reporting and analytics firm. Informiam is a 45 employee business headquartered in Atlanta with R&D facilities in Toronto.During a press call yesterday morning about the acquisition Genesys SVP of Marketing and Business Development Nicolas de Kouchkovsky referred to the fact that Informinam will add a third leg to the stool for Genesys, a comment worth both expanding upon and explaining.
In its first ten years or so of business, Genesys became known as a premiere computer telephony integration (CTI) company. It would be the rare case to see an RFP for CTI that does not include Genesys prominently on the short list. CTI was the first leg of the stool.
In 2002, Genesys acquired Telera, a company that built one of the earliest VXML-based self service solutions. In relatively short order, Genesys built a booming business in the self service market and once again became one of the go-to vendors in the space. When companies think about transitioning from hardware-based traditional IVRs to software-based self service solutions, Genesys is typically at the top of that short list as well. Self service became the second leg of the stool.
Time to explain what the stool metaphor means. Whereas Genesys initially had just one point of entry into a contact center account, CTI, with the Telera acquisition Genesys successfully created a second entry point. With their initial success, they were able to broaden their presence in the self service space with subsequent acquisitions of VoiceGenie and Brazilian IVR company GMK in 2006.
Mr. de Kouchkovsky's reference to Informiam as a third stool for Genesys implies that Genesys intends to create another entry point into contact center accounts based on real-time reporting and analytics. The Genesys decision to keep Informiam as a separate business unit appears to reflect the company's belief that there is a significant business to be had with the Informiam suite outside the existing Genesys customer base as well as within it. This strategy underscores the fact that the Informiam acquisition is not to be viewed as a move to upgrade the Genesys reporting solution - far from it. The Informiam suite will complement, not replace, Genesys' existing Info Mart reporting solution.
Will this initial purchase be followed by additional analytics acquisitions? Time will tell. I'm also left wondering when Genesys will choose to make a chair out of that stool...
