Furthering one of the most interesting UC/CEBP strategies around, Interactive Intelligence has acquired another company that specializes in business process software.
Interactive announced today that it's spending $14 million to acquire Latitude Software, which provides software and services to the debt collection industry. The deal follows up last year's acquisition of AcroSoft, a maker of business process systems for the insurance industry.
Interactive is executing on a very specific strategy: Integrate communications systems tightly with business process software, targeting specific verticals. It's a strategy that would seem quite natural for a communications company these days, given the emphasis on Communications Enabled Business Processes as a key driver for Unified Communications in the enterprise of the future.
And yet it's not something we've seen very many companies even explore. Alcatel-Lucent recently made a very interesting acquisition of a company that makes middleware for mobile computing across diverse platforms--but Interactive is the only company I can think of that's pursuing a strategy of extending itself into the business process software itself.
In a way, it makes sense that it'd be a company like Interactive doing this. Big acquirers like Cisco tend to fill their plate with either strategic acquisitions in market adjacencies, or niche startups with discrete pieces of technology relating to the products they're building--the startup functions as a kind of de facto, after-the-fact R&D arm of the acquiring company.
In contrast, the Interactive strategy could be too unwieldy for a big, sprawling company with tons of accounts in all kinds of verticals, and the technology may be perceived as too far afield from the core competency of the parent company.
But Interactive is well positioned to make its unique strategy work; they're a relatively small company that's always had a strong heritage in business process focus, thanks to their origins in the contact center space. Clearly, Interactive feels this strategy has promise and is worth pursuing and extending. It'll be interesting to see what comes of it.
