RA'ANANA, Israel, August 7, 2013 /PRNewswire/ --
NICE Systems (NASDAQ: NICE) today announced that it has
entered an agreement to acquire Causata, a provider of real-time
Big Data analytics technology.
The acquisition will allow NICE to offer solutions which provide
greater visibility into a customer's activities on the Web and
apply the insights from that data in real time, across other touch
points such as the contact center. Organizations will be better
positioned to enhance the customer experience, increase revenues,
and achieve greater operational efficiency. These solutions are
further augmented by Causata's Web-based predictive analytics and
machine learning technologies, which, when applied to terabytes of
information, allow organizations to improve real-time decisioning
and guidance. NICE will benefit from Causata's real-time
Hadoop-based interaction repository, real-time decisioning, dynamic
customer profiles, and Web personalization.
"One of the biggest challenges enterprises face today is the
difficulty breaking barriers between the Web and assisted-service
channels, such as the contact center," said Keith Dawson, principal analyst at Ovum. "In
order to truly understand the customer journey and get the most
value from that understanding, companies must know what their
customers are doing on the Web, as they do it. The key is to then
share that insight with the sales, services, and marketing
organizations, so that they can act in real time to deliver
outstanding, personalized customer service and realize more sales
opportunities."
The integration of Causata's Hadoop-based technologies into
NICE's Customer Engagement Analytics platform generates new
capabilities, including:
- Creation of dynamic customer profiles based on real-time
analysis of current and past activities over multiple channels
- Convergence of self-service digital channels, such as Web and
mobile, with assisted-service channels to better manage the
customer journey
- Ability to provide contact center agents the complete context
of an interaction, based on a customer's activities prior to and
during that interaction
- Improved real-time decisioning, using predictive analytics and
machine learning, to guide employees to the next best action
According to the NICE 2012 Consumer Survey, consumers use, on
average, six different channels for interacting with their service
providers. Oftentimes, people who are in touch with a company's
contact center are concurrently browsing their website. In such
cases, organizations will be able to use the new combined offering
to leverage up-to-the-second information about a customer's Web
interaction and route the customer to the agent best suited to
handle the call. In addition, the organization can identify sales
opportunities in real time, select the offer that the customer is
most likely to purchase based on their dynamic personal profile and
real-time Web behavior, and guide the agent to the successful
completion of the sale.
"Many of our customers interact with consumers in a siloed
environment, leading to a disconnect between different touch points
such as the company website, mobile app, stores and contact
centers. These organizations are looking for the ability to tie
together Web-based and contact center interactions for better and
more efficient customer service," said Zeevi Bregman, President and
CEO of NICE. "The acquisition of Causata is another important step
in executing on our strategy to help organizations get closer to
their customers by providing real-time solutions which address the
entire customer journey across touch points."
"NICE shares our vision for applying advanced technologies to
better understand the customer journey in order to address specific
customer needs and preferences, as well as to act upon these
insights to improve the customer experience and drive business
success. Our deep and mutual product knowledge and culture of
excellence are highly complementary," said Paul Wahl, CEO of Causata. "We are proud of our
accomplishments in the Big Data analytics domain and are excited to
join a large company whose global market presence will enable us to
extend the reach of our technologies."
The acquisition is expected to close in a few days. The company
expects the acquisition to be slightly dilutive to third quarter
2013 earnings per share, but have no impact on fourth quarter and
full year 2013 earnings per share.
About NICE Systems
NICE Systems (NASDAQ: NICE) is the worldwide leading provider of
software solutions that enable organizations to take the next best
action in order to improve customer experience and business
results, ensure compliance, fight financial crime, and safeguard
people and assets. NICE's solutions empower organizations to
capture, analyze, and apply, in real time, insights from both
structured and unstructured Big Data. This data comes from multiple
sources, including phone calls, mobile apps, emails, chat, social
media, video, and transactions. NICE solutions are used by over
25,000 organizations in more than 150 countries, including over 80
of the Fortune 100 companies. http://www.nice.com.
About Causata
Causata is a leading provider of Customer Experience Management
(CXM) software. Built on an HBase big data architecture, the
company's predictive analytics and real-time omni-channel offer
management applications enable B2C companies to create meaningful
customer experiences through data. Its industry-specific
applications help companies increase cross-selling and customer
acquisition while reducing churn. Founded in 2009 and funded by
Accel Partners, Causata's headquarters are in San Mateo, California with a development
office in London,
England. http://www.causata.com
Trademark Note: NICE and the NICE logo are trademarks or
registered trademarks of NICE Systems. All other marks are
trademarks of their respective owners. For a full list of NICE
Systems' marks, please see:
http://www.nice.com/nice-trademarks.
Forward-Looking
Statements
This press release contains
forward-looking statements as that term is defined in the Private
Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such forward-looking
statements including the statements by Messer Bregman, are based on the current
expectations of the management of NICE-Systems Ltd. (the Company)
only, and are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties that
could cause the actual results or performance of the Company to
differ materially from those described herein, including but not
limited to the impact of the global economic environment on the
Company's customer base (particularly financial services firms) and
the resulting uncertainties; changes in technology and market
requirements; decline in demand for the Company's products;
inability to timely develop and introduce new technologies,
products and applications; difficulties or delays in absorbing and
integrating acquired operations, products, technologies and
personnel; loss of market share; pressure on pricing resulting from
competition; and inability to maintain certain marketing and
distribution arrangements. For a more detailed description of the
risk factors and uncertainties affecting the company, refer to the
Company's reports filed from time to time with the Securities and
Exchange Commission, including the Company's Annual Report on Form
20-F. The forward-looking statements contained in this press
release are made as of the date of this press release, and the
Company undertakes no obligation to update or revise them, except
as required by law.
Corporate Media Contact
Erik Snider, +1-877-245-7448,
erik.snider@nice.com
Investors
Marty Cohen, +1-212-574-3635,
ir@nice.com, ET
SOURCE NICE Systems Ltd.