Two weeks ago, NICE appointed Scott Russell as its new CEO.
Russell will take the CEO mantle from January 1, 2025, when current CEO Barak Eilam steps aside.
The move brings fresh perspectives and talents into the CCaaS space, where execs typically bounce around between market stalwarts.
Indeed, Russell comes across from SAP, where he has spent 14 years honing those perspectives and talents, most recently serving as Global Chief Revenue Officer and a member of the company’s Executive Board. He has also worked at IBM and PWC. Yet, that experience at SAP is most significant.
Why? Well, for starters, NICE’s detractors may question his vision for the CX space. After all, SAP has a somewhat chequered past in piecing its CX story together.
Yet, while that is a valid point, SAP also has a history of doing one thing very well: going into its deep install base and selling more clouds, analytics, and the rest of its broad ecosystem.
To unlock its next phase of growth, that’s something that NICE will want to get even better at.
The Next Phase of Growth for NICE
Upon his appointment, Russell pledged to lead NICE into its next growth phase.
To do that, Zeus Kerravala, Principal Analyst at ZK Research, believes that NICE should pivot further and become a “platform company”.
A platform company empowers third-party tech providers to build on top of their platform to extenuate its value. They then host those innovations within a vibrant ecosystem that goes beyond run-of-the-mill integrations.
SAP is one of the world’s leading platform companies, with an excellent history of leveraging this model to inspire growth. Russell will know all about this, and Kerravala suggests he may dust off that playbook, put it in the hands of NICE’s c-suite, and attempt to build growth in a similar vein.
“When you think of all software companies, whether software-based or on-prem, when they get “BIG” – and I’m talking $10BN+ in annual revenue big – they make the pivot to platform,” he said.
“I can’t think of one software company that became that big by just being a vertically integrated product.
NICE… I think is going to have to become more platform-led, build out a bigger ecosystem, and work with many more third parties. The good news: SAP was one of the most successful companies at doing that.
The SAP blueprint could work well at NICE, as it is already shrewd in selling several other products – alongside CXone – when replacing an on-premise contact center.
That includes workforce engagement management (WEM), risk management software, robotic process automation tools, etc., much of which is home-grown.
But, Kerravala sees an opportunity for Russell & Co. to also sell third-party solutions – and Simon Harrison, Founder & CEO of Actionary, wholeheartedly agrees.
“I think the ecosystem piece is such a big deal,” he summarized. “Whenever I talk to anyone in the SAP team, they’re passionate about the completeness of the solution – the ITSM, the ESM, and how it connects to the entirety of the challenges businesses are trying to solve. Russell will bring a lot of that forethought with him.”
Another Opportunity for the Incoming CEO
After enjoying another successful quarter of 14 percent year-over-year (YoY) revenue growth, NICE continues to outperform a slowing CCaaS market.
Yet, despite the CCaaS deceleration, two-thirds of contact centers remain on-premise, according to Gartner estimates, as of November 2023.
As such, the opportunity to reinvigorate the market is there, and NICE’s ability to provide a broader ecosystem will help many on-premise operations feel more secure in switching to CCaaS.
However, platform depth isn’t enough. NICE’s migration support will become increasingly crucial so businesses do not need third-party system integrators and IT support to succeed in their transformations.
Over the past five years, SAP has had to confront this challenge as it has pushed more of its customers to the cloud.
Harrison believes that Russell can take the learnings from this journey, apply them to CCaaS, and help build confidence in the on-premise market to make the switch. He said:
The customer thinks they have a decision to make: will it be too hard to try and move to a pure cloud platform, or will we go for it? In recent chats, the conversation at SAP is all about how can we minimize that process, so it takes two years, not five.
Interestingly, NICE’s chief market rival – Genesys – scored highly for its migration experience in the latest Gartner Magic Quadrant for CCaaS.
Moreover, with its new Salesforce and ServiceNow co-innovation partnerships, Genesys is thinking more about becoming a platform company and where CCaaS fits within the broader CX ecosystem, too.
By appointing Scott Russell, NICE is perhaps signaling it’s ready to make similar moves – and possibly take them even further.
The quotes from Kerravala and Harrison come from an episode of CX Today’s Big News Show, where they – alongside other prominent CX analysts – also discuss the recent Salesforce and Five9 acquisitions. The episode will drop later this week.
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