Contact Center Solutions Featured Article

Interactive Intelligence Signs Letter of Intent to Acquire OrgSpan

April 21, 2014

Customer experience solutions provider Interactive Intelligence has been both an innovator and aggressive in expanding its portfolio of cloud-based customer capabilities. The company has announced another step in providing its customers comprehensive next generation capabilities with the signing of a letter of intent to acquire OrgSpan Inc., a privately held company that offers cloud-based enterprise social communications solutions.


The deal, subject to the negotiation of definitive documentation approval by the Interactive Intelligence audit committee and board, and the satisfaction of customary conditions, is expected to close within 30 days.

"OrgSpan develops socially relevant communications products that our customers have found valuable and unique," said Bill Gildea, Interactive Intelligence senior vice president of corporate development. "These social customer service components, together with the core cloud architecture that OrgSpan has developed, are important to the foundation of our cloud offerings moving forward.

"Additionally, this acquisition will streamline our development efforts and give us the benefit of OrgSpan's numerous patent filings and access to its customer and prospect base," concluded Gildea.

OrgSpan has some unique capabilities including its OrgSpan Select, which enables customers to search and view agent social profiles by multiple criteria. This creates a new and more effective way of connecting customers and contact center agents. It makes the process of assuring when a customer is seeking help they get the right person to resolve their issues. OrgSpan also offers OrgSpan Connect, a unified company directory of OrgSpan Connect users that includes information-rich personal profiles designed to improve employee collaboration.

Interactive Intelligence will continue to sell and support OrgSpan Select and OrgSpan Connect on a standalone basis and as add-on applications to its cloud and on-premises IP business communications solutions. And, Interactive Intelligence will incorporate OrgSpan products into its future cloud offerings.

OrgSpan customers will continue to use the same sales, support and service channels until further notice. Interactive Intelligence plans to integrate OrgSpan’s 40 employees into its organization across multiple department lines. In addition, OrgSpan employees will remain at their current location in Durham, NC. Interactive Intelligence expects all integration activities to be completed this calendar year and does not expect the transaction to have a material impact on revenues and other financial results in 2014.

"We want our customers to know that they will continue to get the same high-quality service and support they've come to expect," said Jeff Swartz, co-founder and president of OrgSpan. "In fact, we anticipate even greater responsiveness with the additional resources this acquisition provides, plus our customers will get easier access to Interactive's broad range of contact center, unified communications, and business process automation solutions."

As previously disclosed, the independent audit committee of Interactive Intelligence has been re-assessing for some time the relationship between Interactive Intelligence and OrgSpan, which is majority-owned by Dr. Donald E. Brown, Interactive Intelligence founder and CEO.  Interactive Intelligence will provide additional information when the definitive agreement is completed and approved by all parties.

In an age where improving the customer experience has become a top, if not the top, priority of businesses of all sizes around the world, giving customers the ability to connect first and fast with all of the resources required to answer questions and resolve problems has become paramount. OrgSpan’s ground-breaking use of social media to enable customers to reach the appropriate resources leverages the cloud and social in ways that are designed specifically to enhance the quality of interactions. In fact, these capabilities will be on display at Interactive Intelligence’s global conference INTERACTIONS 2014 being held in Indianapolis, June 2-5.


Edited by Rory J. Thompson



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