NICE Secures Multiple $10MN+ CCaaS Megadeals

The vendor credits its "financial stability" as a significant draw for new customers

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NICE Secures Multiple $10MN+ CCaaS Megadeals
Contact CentreWFOLatest News

Published: February 24, 2023

Charlie Mitchell

Despite the challenging economic climate, NICE continued its double-digit growth in Q4, thanks – in part – to three CCaaS megadeals.

Following a similar announcement last quarter, the continuous steam of such deals helped the vendor cross the $2BN mark in total revenues last year.

The first of the Q4 wins is with one of the largest banks in Latin America, which leveraged CXone across its various operations – replacing on-premise tech from three legacy vendors.

Barak Eilam, CEO of NICE, believes this deal showcases its enterprise deployment expertise.

During the earnings call, he stated:

We are highly recognized by this customer for our success with large enterprise implementations, our extensive digital and self-service capabilities, and the ability to deliver their future needs on a single, scalable platform.

The second megadeal is with a prominent Canadian insurance company. Eilam revealed that the business chose NICE due to the “completeness and native functionality” of the digital and self-service features within CXone.

As such, the insurer could converge its contact center systems and expand its digital footprint with a single vendor alone.

Finally, the third deal is with a well-established U.S.-based cellular company. Similar to the first, it is a displacement of multiple legacy providers.

However, in this case, the business chose NICE for its market leadership and – perhaps most interestingly – its financial stability, according to Eilam.

Financial Stability as a Differentiator for NICE

NICE has many notable differentiators in the CCaaS space. For instance, it is the only prominent CCaaS player to also have market-leading RPA capabilities – as the Gartner Magic Quadrant suggests.

Moreover, it can compete with Verint and Calabrio at the forefront of the workforce optimization (WFO) space with its native capabilities.

Yet, Eilam sees another significant differentiator in its healthy balance book – and, as the final eight-digit win suggests, this is likely to be the case. He stated:

NICE is the only vendor in the CX market that is extremely profitable, investing heavily in R&D, and at the same time, has a net cash position of more than $1BN.

“Our strong financial position gives us great flexibility to innovate and acquire to further fuel growth while continuing to drive increased profitability.”

These comments suggest that many businesses are paying closer attention to the finances of the vendors they work with, which is perhaps unsurprising given the financial troubles of Avaya.

Trouble at Another Mystery Legacy Vendor?

When asked to comment on the competitive CCaaS landscape during the earnings call, Eilam noted that NICE’s market share is growing through legacy displacements.

Yet, Eilam also highlighted that this is not only due to Avaya’s troubles. Indeed, he hinted that another legacy vendor is struggling to balance the books. He said:

The CX market has a pretty unique competitive landscape right now. It’s divided between Avaya and another large player out there that are really struggling to basically service debt.

“We know for a fact that the management team are spending the majority of their time focusing on cash flow and how to service debt with a very, very high interest rate.”

The second vendor seems likely to be Genesys, as one of the three stalwart legacy contact center vendors, alongside Cisco and Avaya.

It’s unlikely to be Cisco, as the vendor just published positive Q4 earnings results, highlighting growth in the contact center business.

Eilam later referenced Genesys directly when discussing the WFO space. He stated: “[There] is a significant realization of partners, of the legacy incumbent or on-premise vendors – like Verint and Genesys – that’s realizing they need to go with different vendors that have also a strong financial viability, and they come to us.”

Interestingly, Five9 also noted a rise in recent business from Genesys legacy displacements – largely since the vendor culled its Multicloud CX platform.

Indeed, during an earnings call on Wednesday, Mike Burkland, CEO of Five9, discussed the on-premise vendors it displaces most often. He stated:

It was two…. [then] we were seeing more Genesys become part of those three. One and two being Avaya and Cisco, with Genesys a distant third. Those are becoming neck and neck now between all three.

Unfortunately, as Genesys is a private company, talk of its finances is mostly speculation. It does usually release details about it results in March, yet it is under no obligation to  give hard data.

With that said, in an October interview discussing the move Genesys made to ditch its Multicloud CX offering, prominent enterprise communications analyst Zeus Kerravala revealed:

I had heard that company, Genesys, had been burning through a ton of money, and they needed to rein in some costs somewhere.

However, Genesys will – hopefully – now be able to channel its resources into its one remaining CCaaS solution and better manage its costs.

After all, numerous analyst reports still tag Genesys – alongside NICE – as a CCaaS leader. Meanwhile, it has a deep legacy base. As such, it can win significant business by migrating these to the cloud, if it ensures that competitors  – like NICE and Five9 – don’t lure them in first.

 

 

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