In case you missed it, Verint made an unexpected play last week to acquire Witness. It’s safe to say that when most of us heard the news we paused for a moment and thought to ourselves, “HUH?”
Over the course of the last week I’ve had no less than a dozen conversations with industry analysts and vets speculating the why’s and motives behind this unexpected buy.
Although, despite of all the useless speculation, what really matters is how this merger impacts you, me, and this industry we love so much.
So here’s how I see it:
The biggest sector that will be impacted is call recording. As little as two years ago there were a ton of options to choose from when purchasing or replacing these types of solutions, now Verint WILL dominate the field.
How the ‘Verint/Witness’ product integration and end-of-life strategies play out is yet to be told and will certainly cause a great deal of short term customer (and prospect) confusion. My hope is that the rival companies will put the swords away and take a true “best of breed” approach. I can’t tell you which recording product is better, but what I can tell you is that they need to:
- figure out how to take the best of both
- create a new best-of-breed
- offer both sets of legacy customers a smooth migration path
Many other merger kings have fallen short in this arena and lost in the end. (need we mention Aspect with RightForce and eWFM)
My advice to the new combined customer base is to pay close attention to the new product roadmap. Witness spent a great deal of time building the Blue Pumpkin integration into their Impact 360 line, so if you’re being sold this solution today make damn well sure you know what its going to look like 24 months from now. Start asking questions about where and how all the moving parts will integrate. You won’t get answers to all of them now, but get them on your sales reps’ radar screen. And be relentless before you start writing checks.
By all means, if you are in the market for call recording make sure you understand the new landscape prior to purchasing either legacy application. There are other non-monolithic vendors out there that may prove to be more agile alternatives.
On a side and often overlooked note, vendor consolidation has downstream effects on the entire industry. For example, call center exhibit halls are shrinking. Eighteen months ago a demo hall would have had Verint, Opus Group, Mercom, Blue Pumpkin, Witness and Amae Software (and I’m sure I’m missing a couple others). Today these six vendors all fall under the Verint booth. AND this is just one company’s consolidation, for more carnage you only have to look at the Concerto/Aspect acquisition binges, or Cisco or… This impacts everything from conference agendas to the often watered down magazine “articles” you read…
-Chris
Technorati tags: Verint, Witness, Concerto, Aspect, Cisco, call center, call recording, cisco, blue pumpkin, mercom, chris Crosby, software, business Intelligence, mergers
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2 Responses to another one bites the dust
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Chris, I like your thoughtful writeup about this merger. Thanks for your comments. As you say, the other smaller players in the call recording industry, such as us at Veritape, will be working to understand the impact of this for some months to come. Hopefully from the customer’s perspective, Verint/Witness can offer a smooth transition to whatever the new company offers in terms of products and services. If not, the more ‘agile’ players will be able to demonstrate an alternate migration path: away from Verint/Witness.
Cam Ross
Veritape Ltd
http://www.veritape.com
Chris, I very much appreciate the tone of your blog. This is especially true regarding the consolidation of the industry amongst WFM platforms and recording companies. I think the Verint/Witness acquisition creates an environment of uncertainty for existiing and future customers/prospects trying to make intelligent strategic decisions on any of the WFO technologies that this and other acquisitions (NICE/IEX) represent.
The question of how well these teams will play togeter in the sandbox is no small concern for centers that are about to make or have just made an investment. Your question is dead on, are they going to be in for a major “upgrade” and expense in the next 24 months? And if so, what if you are one of 3000 customers, where will they actually fit into this process? And what about support of your investment towards the end the migration to the new platform with what will inevitabley be a drain of intellectual property that these mergers typcially spur? And no less daunting is the actual delivery of a tightly integrated product like Impact 360, or is that 75 at this point. These product not only need to be integrated they need to be rearchitected for the Web.
And let’s face it, professional services is not an area where call center vendors traditionally shine. Those in the know especially know this here. It is not simply about product even if they do have it.
Our industry needs simpler, less costly solutions and more intelligent delivery, not more complex, and expensive ones. So while everyone is on the consolidation bandwagon our team at WFMSG believes there is a tremendous void for a best of breed WFM platform that fulfills on the promise on which Blue Pumpkin failed to deliver. Low cost, ease of use and easy to support. I am not sure anyone of the consolidations represent this kind of solution. Keep this up great stuff.