Telecom industry veteran Wes Hayden has been named president of Nuance Communications’ Enterprise Division, the company announced today. The former president and CEO of Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories will be responsible for managing strategy operations, marketing, professional services and engineering for Nuance’s Enterprise products and solutions. He will report to Nuance Chairman and CEO Paul Ricci.
In addition to his prior role as president and CEO of Genesys Telecommunications, a subsidiary of Alcatel-Lucent, Hayden has also held executive roles at Informix, Sun Microsystems, Digital Equipment Corporation and Applied Data Research.
Paul Ricci, chairman and CEO of Nuance, said Hayden “is widely respected as an executive with solid enterprise-oriented solution skills and ability to foster strong customer relationships. With this appointment, we add additional strength to our leadership team and enter 2008 with a keen focus on aggressive growth and satisfying demand for Nuance solutions around the world.”
Hayden joins Nuance just as the company is shifting its emphasis from point technologies to integrated enterprise solutions that utilize speech and are targeted at specific markets. Having led the transformation of Genesys into a broader application and solution provider for the call center industry, he has a wealth of experience to on which to draw from in relation to this new endeavor.
“Nuance created a talent ensemble and solutions portfolio that has the potential to serve the world’s consumers,” Hayden said in a press release. “Nuance’s vision for speech in the enterprise is more exciting today than ever before and is embodied in the myriad breakthroughs it has recently brought to customers and partners. I am honored to lead this organization, eager to work directly with our customers and partners, embrace Nuance’s global agenda and lead the team to a dynamic, promising future.”
Hayden holds a master’s degree from the Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University and a bachelor’s degree from the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana. He currently serves on the board of trustees for the Glenkirk Foundation in Northbrook, Illinois and on the board of directors of the International Women’s Democracy Center (IWDC) in Washington, DC.
As per his contract, Hayden has the option to purchase 100,000 shares of the company’s common stock, with an exercise price equal to the fair market value of the common stock on the date of grant. He also received awards of restricted stock in the amount of 415,000 shares. The stock options and 315,000 of the restricted shares are subject to time-based vesting, with opportunities to accelerate the vesting of 300,000 restricted shares based on the achievement of performance targets. The remaining 100,000 shares of restricted stock are subject to performance-based vesting. The vesting of all stock options and shares of restricted stock is subject to Hayden’s continued employment with Nuance.
Nuance made news on ContactCenterSolutions two weeks ago when the company
announced that Telenor, Norway’s telecom provider, had implemented the Nuance’s speech solutions to improve customer service. Thanks to Nuance’s industry leading speech recognition software, Telenor’s customers will be able to describe what they need in their own words and be directed straight to their destination, rather than having to go through a complicated menu directory.
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Patrick Barnard is Associate Editor for Customer Interaction Solutions magazine and Assignment Editor for ContactCenterSolutions. To see more of his articles, please visit Patrick Barnard’s columnist page.