NICE has confirmed that its Board of Directors has named Scott Russell as the company’s new Chief Executive Officer.
Russell will take up his new position on January 1, 2025, when he will succeed Barak Eilam.
Having spent over 14 years at SAP, most recently as Global Chief Revenue Officer of the company’s Executive Board, Russell joins NICE with significant experience in the customer service and enterprise software sector.
As Global Chief Revenue Officer, he was responsible for overseeing customer success, global sales, partnerships, and customer engagement, managing $31 billion in revenue and driving the shift to cloud services.
He also served as Chairman of SAP North America and various SAP business units and on the Qualtrics Board of Directors.
In discussing the announcement, David Kostman, Chairman of the Board of Directors at NICE, stated that he was “thrilled to welcome Scott as the new CEO of NICE.
His extensive enterprise software experience in adjacent markets and leadership at global scale will be instrumental as he leads NICE through its next phase of growth.
“I am confident that Scott’s background, personality, energy, and drive, will take NICE to new heights as we continue to execute on our platform strategy leveraging cloud, digital and AI.”
Russell also seemed excited about getting started in his new position:
“I am honored to take on the role of CEO at such an exciting time for NICE. We have an incredible opportunity ahead of us as NICE continues to lead the digital and AI transformation and provides a unique platform for growth in the coming years.
“I am highly impressed by the culture of the company, the innovative product portfolio, and its strong global presence and leadership position.”
Big Shoes to Fill
NICE’s plans to install a new CEO were originally revealed back in May when it was announced that Eilam would be stepping down after more than 10 years at the helm.
Filling Eilam’s clown-sized shoes will be no mean feat. Under his leadership, NICE has transformed from a company focused primarily on workforce optimization (WFO) software to a leader in the CCaaS industry.
Chief among Eilam’s successes has been the NICE CXone, which emerged from the 2016 acquisition of inContact that he spearheaded. The solution has gone on to become one of only two CCaaS platforms with over one million users.
This acquisition is widely viewed as one of the most successful in CX history, significantly boosting NICE’s core offerings and market value.
When Eilam took over in 2014, NICE’s market cap was $2.37 billion; it has since surged to $14.38 billion.
Additionally, NICE has consistently topped industry analyst reports, including the Gartner Magic Quadrant and Forrester Wave, and has expanded its influence in robotic process automation (RPA) and fraud management, all while maintaining its leadership in WFO.
Eilam’s tenure and legacy were praised as “transformative” by Kostman, who said:
I want to take this opportunity to again express our gratitude to Barak for the transformative years of NICE under his leadership, propelling the company to undisputed leadership across its markets.
“I am also very pleased that Barak agreed to continue as CEO until the end of the year and that he will be working with Scott on an orderly transition into 2025.”
Number Crunching
In a busy day for the company, it also posted its Q2 earnings, with impressive performances for cloud revenue and cash flow.
NICE experienced 14 percent year-over-year revenue growth, due in part to the “industry-leading” Cloud department, which jumped by 26 percent to $481.7 million.
Operating Cash Flow on the other hand, hit $169.7 million, a 160 percent year-over-year increase.
Other notable highlights include a 22 percent rise in Operating Income and a 34 percent increase in Diluted EPS.
“We are pleased to conclude the first half of 2024 with strong Q2 results across the board,” said Eilam.
The growing adoption of our extensive and innovative portfolio of AI solutions fueled an all-time record quarter for CXone bookings.
More NICE News
Last week, NICE Actimize added ‘SURVEIL-X Behaviour’ to its SURVEIL-X suite, in order to enhance its AI-driven employee monitoring capabilities.
This tool offers organizations a comprehensive view of employee behavior, helping to assess conduct and uncover the causes behind potentially harmful actions.
In addition to monitoring communications, sales, and conflicts of interest, SURVEIL-X Behaviour provides financial services companies with deeper insights into employee behavior.
The solution alerts managers to issues like missed compliance training or excessive customer complaints, enabling proactive responses such as additional training, policy updates, investigations, or increased supervision.
Elsewhere, earlier this month, NICE and AT&T announced that they were teaming up to enhance emergency communications centers with integrated solutions.
The collaboration will see NICE introduce a unified incident capture and data analytics tool for AT&T’s NextGen 9-1-1 (NG911) systems.
NICE’s new tool aims to meet evolving needs by capturing and analyzing data to provide valuable insights.
The solution will integrate with NICE Inform Elite, a public safety recording platform, and is designed for NG911 environments.
It will capture multimedia interactions between the public, emergency centers, and first responders, offering modular upgrades and analysis capabilities for evidence recording and incident reconstruction.
