International bookings of NICE CXone and its other cloud solutions increased by three times year-over-year (YoY) in Q1.
The vendor anticipated the cloud migration trend early, acquiring inContact for $940 million in 2016 and developing a cloud-native CCaaS solution that is surging in popularity.
Much of this is due to the migrations of existing on-premise customers, for which NICE has many. Yet, its cloud solutions are also drawing rave reviews, with NICE the only vendor to achieve “leader” status in the 2021 Gartner Magic Quadrants for CCaaS and workforce engagement management.
Of course, many other factors come into play, including its impressive global footprint, which ensures that the solution is available across every continent.
Building on this point during a recent earnings call, Barak Eilam, CEO of NICE, stated:
Since we have built the CXone from the ground up several years back, the ability to localize it both in terms of language [and] features that are needed for specific regulations in different countries is pretty easy for us.
In addition, Eilim credits the relationships NICE develops with local telcos, which allows the availability of both voice and some digital services. “We have a very clear playbook for that and it’s a very easy thing to do,” he added.
Perhaps the momentum of its international partner expansion program is also a critical factor, which includes carriers, affiliate partners, collaboration vendors, CRM providers, valuable sellers, and system integrators.
NICE also boasts an extensive ecosystem of DEVone partners building software for its fast-growing CXexchange marketplace, containing over 150 native tools and 400 APIs. These integrations connect CXone with various market-leading CRM, mobile apps, and AI solutions.
Despite these exciting innovations and surging bookings, earnings enhancements are perhaps a little lower than expected, with cloud revenues growing 28.1% (YoY).
However, the value that cloud customers bring is likely to increase over time, thanks to cloud software subscription models. As Eilam said:
We believe it will become more pronounced in revenue as soon those bookings convert into revenue in the cloud. I think you’re seeing already, this quarter, some healthy growth rates in some of our international markets, and we expect that to continue.
Testament to this growth, NICE annual cloud revenue surpassed $1 Billion in 2021.
Meanwhile the vendor also continues to innovate to keep ahead of the numerous other vendors entering the CCaaS space, including Microsoft, Google, and Zoom. Indeed, recently released new AI-driven self-service capabilities for CXone, which perhaps demonstrates its extensive expertise within the CX space.
