Aspect Software, provider of fully-integrated customer interaction management, workforce optimization, and back-office solutions, announced it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Voxeo Corporation, provider of hosted and on-premise Interactive Voice Response (IVR) solutions and a leading platform provider for Communications Enabled Business Processes.
Once complete, the acquisition is expected to significantly enhance Aspect’s ability to support cloud, hybrid and premise-based deployments while adding a market-leading IVR and multi-channel self-service capability to the company’s solution portfolio.
“Today’s consumers are demanding more from the brands they interact with, taking more control over when, where and how they conduct that engagement and enterprises are responding by seeking out vendors who can help them address these changes in the market. The acquisition of Voxeo, the market leader in robust cloud, on-premise and hybrid self-service platforms, furthers Aspect’s continued commitment to provide innovative technology and solutions that support our customers’ efforts to transform and deliver remarkable customer experiences,” said Chris Koziol, president and general manager of the Interaction Management division at Aspect.
“We share Voxeo’s vision for the future of customer contact and are thrilled to expand and integrate our offerings to provide the kind of flexible solutions that deliver seamless service across proactive outbound, inbound, mobile and SMS channels,” he added.
As the only provider who offers hosted, private and hybrid cloud offerings, Voxeo will bring market-leading capabilities on a global scale to Aspect’s portfolio and will provide data center infrastructure and network operation center (NOC) capabilities that will help expand regional delivery of Aspect’s cloud solutions and SaaS hosting capabilities. Voxeo will also bring a highly skilled executive team and employee base that will offer Aspect’s customers and prospects high-value technical competencies and unique market understanding.
“By recognizing the industry’s appetite for flexible, hosted solutions early on, and developing a versatile and scalable technology platform to address the need, Voxeo has been able to achieve strong financial growth that has outpaced the broader market,” said Bob Ingalls, chief executive officer of Voxeo.
“However, we are coming across an increasing number of opportunities that require a broader call center solution. The relationship with Aspect promises to give us a dynamic partner to continue our success by offering our customers a market-dominating combination of Aspect’s innovative contact center solutions with Voxeo’s self-service and multi-channel platforms,” he added.
Both companies’ customer bases are expected to benefit from the collaboration. The collaboration will enable Aspect to begin serving small and medium size businesses through more flexible solution delivery options while current Voxeo customers will have interaction management, workforce optimization and robust IVR capabilities within a single, comprehensive customer contact solution. A cross-functional team is already at work on product integration in order to bring the joint capabilities to market within the third quarter.
“This is exciting news for our respective partner communities as well,” said Koziol. “We’ve been very focused on the continued expansion of our global channel presence and programmes and the depth and breadth of expertise offered by Voxeo’s partners is expected to further strengthen Aspect’s application development and partner community,” he added.
