Mumbai: Alcatel-Lucent company Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories has announced its acquisition of Informiam LLC, a privately held company that has pioneered software that optimises customer service operations through real-time business performance management.

The move expands Genesys' portfolio of reporting and analytic software.

Genesys claims to be the only company that focuses 100 per cent on software to manage customer interactions over the phone, web and in e-mail. Genesys' software suite dynamically connects customers with the right resources – self-service or assisted-service – to fulfil customer requests, optimise customer care goals and efficiently use resources.

Genesys software manages over 100 million customer interactions a day for 4,000 companies and government agencies, in 80 countries.  The company is part of Alcatel-Lucent, which provides solutions that enable service providers, enterprises and governments worldwide, to deliver voice, data and video communication services to end-users.

Headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, Informiam has R&D staff based in Toronto, Canada and employs a total of 45 people.  

The acquisition extends Alcatel-Lucent's investment to grow its Enterprise Business.  Informiam is to become a business unit within Genesys, as part of the Enterprise Business Group.

The financial terms of this cash transaction are not being disclosed, and do not have a material financial impact on Alcatel-Lucent according to a press release by the company.
Informiam's product suite assists large enterprises to proactively manage their customer service operations. The software analyses operational data in real-time, and synthesises it into actionable information tailored to the role of the user, across organisation levels including agents, supervisors, and business managers. According the company, Informiam reduces issue identification time by up to 90 per cent, and enables the contact centre to achieve service levels without adding staff, thereby improving revenue by minimising business interruptions, and provides a unified view of all contact centre operations.

Genesys says it sees reporting and analytics as critical to supporting Dynamic Contact Centres, which are unified service centres that improve the strategic value of customer service operations, and automatically optimise operations. The challenge for most companies is how to balance a variety of needs to simultaneously improve the customer experience, increase agent productivity and satisfaction, and drive revenue.

"In customer service, most organisations understand the advantage of having better insights to manage their operations in real-time. However, these are complex environs where it is difficult to quickly identify problems and potential improvements, and take immediate action to sustain service levels. By adding Informiam, Genesys creates a unique set of solutions that deliver this insight and level of control," said Paul Segre, Genesys CEO.  

Informiam is an open system, and is compatible with a wide variety of contact centres. 

"The Informiam acquisition provides Genesys with a key technology that brings in real-time information across multiple channels to provide line of business managers and contact center agents with actionable insights," said Sheryl Kingstone, Yankee Group. "Organizations that are striving to improve customer loyalty and customer satisfaction find this is difficult to do without good Key Performance Indicators that measure effectiveness over efficiency.  Informiam will accelerate the Genesys ability to deliver on its Dynamic Contact Centre vision."

"We're excited to become part of Genesys, because we can join the benefits of our operational insights to a global industry with the leading provider of customer interaction management software," said Stuart Granger, COO of Informiam and the leader of the new business unit within Genesys.