Verint Systems announced last week that it experienced a 45 percent growth rate in workforce optimization customer sites sold during the 2007 fiscal year. The company attributes this explosive growth to the release of its newly-revamped Impact 360 solution -- a tightly integrated suite of WFO applications including performance management, workforce management, call recording/quality monitoring, eLearning and analytics which it introduced in December 2007.
The revamped platform brings together Verint’s industry leading speech analytics software and the field-proven workforce optimization software of Witness Systems, which it acquired in June, 2007. Now, the contact center solutions of both companies are combined on a single platform.
The combined solution, called Impact 360 (named after the popular WFO solution from Witness), is “analytics-driven workforce optimization software,” with an emphasis on the word “analytics.” Verint has added new functionality to the apps which will help organizations “improve the entire customer service delivery network, from contact centers to branch stores and remote offices to back-office operations.”
The new Impact 360 offers a slew of new features and capabilities, as well as a major upgrade to the overall “look and feel” of the GUI. The fact that was no major rewriting of code is good news for customers using legacy Witness or Verint apps, as they now have a seamless migration path for upgrading to Impact 360 (or any pieces of it they want to use).
Major improvements include a new, more integrated dashboard style portal, giving managers and agents (in fact each and every user) just the views they need and just the views they are supposed to get (as defined by business rules); faster and more accurate speech analytics (including “category wizard” and “root cause clusters” to give supervisors better business insights through more sophisticated control over the speech analytics); a richer data set for data analytics (including the integration of speech and data analytics); and a streamlined architecture (including better support for enterprise wide data and improved virtual contact center support). It also sports a “single sign-on” feature which lets any user securely sign on using a single password from any end point. Also new is the “integrated customer feedback” – which includes tools for creating, maintaining, administering and analyzing customer surveys which are delivered post-transaction over the phone or on the Web. The integration also means users will be able to perform speech analytics on recordings made using the legacy Witness QM platform.
The revamped platform also adds new functionality for back-office operations. This is a key move, because, as contact centers become increasingly “virtualized,” through Web technology, many organizations are now adopting the “informal contact center” model, which breaks down the walls of the traditional center and lets other knowledge workers within an organization take on the role of “company representative.” As such, as employees working in back office operations find themselves increasingly coming into contact with customers, it has become increasingly important that they be able to have access to the same resources as traditional agents -- and they be able to deliver the same level of customer service. With the new Impact 360, these back office workers can handle more difficult customer requests, or complex or “high value” transactions, just as if they were an agent in the main center. Furthermore, their interactions can be recorded, monitored and later analyzed so that customer service can be improved across all touch points.
Another key selling point for this flexible solution is that it lets organizations use just the apps they need, and then seamlessly grow into other apps as they become larger and more successful, or as their needs change. With the next generation Impact 360, a company can start with a few basic pieces, such as workforce management, call recording/monitoring, and analytics, and then later add other pieces, such as performance management and eLearning, without the “integration headache.”
Perhaps most importantly, this one of the first WFO solutions to come tightly integrated with both speech and data analytics -- therefore it not only has the ability carry out analytics on the recorded interactions on the agent side and the customer side, and to carry out analytics on the data coming from agent side and the customer side, but to carry out analytics on both speech and data, simultaneously, to get a wider (and more balanced) view of all contact center operations.
The introduction of the new Impact 360 means the end of the IntelliFind brand, as this technology has now been absorbed into the Impact 360 platform (but is still supported). The only “dovetailing” between the Verint-Witness solutions is the call recording/quality monitoring solutions, which are now both represented in the new Impact 360.
As a result of last year’s merger, Verint has realized a 150 percent increase in support services and service resources. In addition, the company is undertaking a concerted effort share best practices across all departments for the purpose of building a stronger support/service organization.
The new Verint also has greater scale for R&D investment -- it has, in fact, seen a 200 percent increase in R&D resources. This not to mention the company’s sheer size, vast market reach and long-term profitability: Verint now has more than 5,000 customers worldwide, including about 75 of the Fortune 100 companies. It has 2,500 employees spread in offices all over the globe. It is now one of the top 30 tech firms in the U.S., in terms of revenue.
According to leading industry analysts, Verint is now the largest provider of WFO software.
“At this juncture, we want to thank customer service executives everywhere for making workforce optimization such an incredible success,” said Nancy Treaster, senior vice president and general manager, Verint Witness Actionable Solutions (the division of Verint Systems which includes Witness Systems). “Impact 360 has helped executives at organizations worldwide drive change across the enterprise by better understanding the voice of the customer, as well as leveraging analytics to uncover the root cause of customer dissatisfaction.”
For more information, visit
www.verint.com.
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