Verint is the vendor many enterprises turn to when their contact center is missing one or two enterprise-grade solutions.
Its workforce engagement management (WEM) suite is particularly widely utilized, comprising workforce management (WFM), quality assurance (QA), and learning management tools.
However, Verint also has a global customer base for its self-service, knowledge management, conversational analytics, voice of the customer (VoC), and fraud management solutions.
In supplying such solutions to enterprises for decades, Verint has racked up an impressive install base, featuring 85 Fortune 100 companies.
Yet, its share price hasn’t grown with its install base. Indeed, 20 years ago, its stock was worth approximately $18. Now, it sits at $20.
That price has sunk in recent years, reflecting the long-term threat Verint faces, with the barrier to entry dropping across its portfolio and CCaaS vendors boosting their in-house offerings.
Still, broader competitive solutions are typically much less mature than what Verint provides. But they’ll improve with time.
Zeus Kerravala, Principal Analyst at ZK Research, warned of this when addressing recent rumors of an attempted takeover by private equity firm Thoma Bravo. He said:
A private equity takeover would make sense, because this company really needs to reinvent itself before it’s too late. And you can’t easily do that as a publicly traded company.
In fairness to Verint, it has attempted reinvention with the 2023 launch of its Open CCaaS platform.
The open platform encourages buyers to architect their core contact center workflows before selecting the best-placed contact center provider.
However, while that approach may have merit, buyers typically decide on their CCaaS solution first and then consider how to serve those customers. Verint is still very much stuck on the second half of that equation.
In other words, it’s often the afterthought. Despite its messaging of becoming a broader CX automation company, Verint’s heritage shackles it.
“The challenge Verint has faced with its Open CCaaS offering is that, in other companies’ ecosystems, they’ve been used successfully,” said Kerravala during a conversation on his YouTube Channel. “But with Open CCaaS, they’ve tried to make themselves the center of the ecosystem and build one around their own platform.
The problem is, their core product is rarely the decision-making point. They’re better off being part of someone else’s ecosystem, unless they choose to build or acquire their own CCaaS solution… To me, this has all the hallmarks of a private equity takeover.
The merger of Verint and another CCaaS vendor under the private equity banner would be major news for the contact center space. With industry speculation around Five9, that’s one potential candidate for Thoma Bravo to consider, if it’s indeed considering a takeover.
Yet, even without a more direct CCaaS play, a Verint takeover would reverberate across the contact center market.
The Industry-Wide Implications of a Verint Takeover
Verint doesn’t just offer one or two enterprise solutions, but nine or ten that are widely utilized worldwide.
As such, the architectures of many of the world’s largest customer service operations have Verint baked in.
If a private equity firm takes over and attempts to shift its portfolio, pricing, or partner strategy, many businesses will need to rethink much of their contact center infrastructure.
That’s beyond just those organizations working with Verint directly. After all, many customer experience providers have built solutions based on Verint modules. Some may also integrate with the vendor in the backend, without contact center leaders knowing.
As such, leaders should keep an eye on a possible Verint takeover. Yet, so should broader industry observers.
Indeed, a Verint with backing, as Kerravala suggested, could chase market consolidation opportunities and force its way deeper into the CCaaS picture. With its significant enterprise footprint and expansive services, that may represent a real threat to many market stalwarts.
