nice award write up

2017 North American Contact Centers Product

Line Strategy Leadership Award

BEST PRACTICES RESEARCH

© Frost & Sullivan 2017 2 “We Accelerate Growth”

Contents

Background and Company Performance ........................................................................ 3

Industry Challenges .............................................................................................. 3

Product Line Strength and Customer Impact ............................................................ 3

Conclusion........................................................................................................... 8

Significance of Product Line Strategy ............................................................................ 9

Understanding Product Line Strategy Leadership ............................................................ 9

Key Benchmarking Criteria .................................................................................. 10

Product Line Strength ......................................................................................... 10

Customer Impact ............................................................................................... 10

The Intersection between 360-Degree Research and Best Practices Awards ..................... 11

Research Methodology ........................................................................................ 11

Best Practices Recognition: 10 Steps to Researching, Identifying, and Recognizing Best Practices ................................................................................................................. 12

About Frost & Sullivan .............................................................................................. 13



Background and Company Performance

Industry Challenges

The contact center industry has gone through rapid expansion and transformation in the

past decade. Drivers and disruptors in the market have been many. Most significant of

these have been:

The addition of new channels of customer interaction (social, mobile, chat)

The meteoric rise of cloud as a deployment methodology

The addition of a range of new market entrants, from new cloud providers, to start-

up companies in customer contact adjunct markets, such as gamification

The beginnings of digital transformation of customer contact

Vast industry consolidation

Enhanced application functionality to support omni-channel customer experience

strategies

Burgeoning demand for contact center analytics capabilities

Wildly changing customer preferences for customer service that include proactive

customer contact and advanced self-service capabilities.

To stay abreast of these changes has posed quite a challenge for contact center providers.

It requires a long term growth strategy that strikes a balance between holding down costs

in stagnant economies and funding market expansion and new development. This has not

been easy, particularly as it means successfully weighing the decision to build, buy or

partner to get there.

Product Line Strength and Customer Impact

NICE, a global leader in customer interaction solutions provides a breadth of offerings

across customer contact. In addition to customer interaction, the company has two other

business units with robust intellectual property assets that are often used to fuel the

greater functionality of the company’s contact center offerings. ACTIMIZE, provides

financial crime, risk, and compliance solutions; and Security, provides visibility and

insights supporting emergency communications, command and control, incident

reconstruction, and others.

Breadth

NICE has an enviable portfolio of customer contact solutions. Together they provide real-

time interaction management, advanced analytics, and employee engagement tools to



help customers improve and differentiate their Customer Experience. NICE also has one of

the broadest intellectual property portfolios in the industry with 135 issued US patents, 50

patents issued in other countries, and over 72 patent applications pending in the United

States.

NICE customer interaction solutions include:

Workforce Optimization (WFO) is a suite of analytics and management solutions to

enable enterprises to better manage the back office and contact center. These include:

Performance Management

Workforce Management

Quality Management

Interaction Analytics

Back Office Performance

Robotic Process Automation

Interaction Optimization is a set of tools for optimizing customer interactions, and

includes:

Real-Time Authentication

Real-Time Process Optimization

Real-Time Activity Monitoring

Real-Time Speech Analytics

Call Volume Reduction

Sales Optimization

Incentive Compensation Management

Customer Retention

Real-Time Web Engagement

Contact Center Compliance Solutions

Contact Center Compliance Recording

Complaint Management



Customer Journey Solutions provide real-time data capture and analytics from all

customer touchpoints, including the Web, call center, retail outlets, email, chat, and social

media to create a single view of a customer’s journey and include:

• Customer Journey Optimization

• Real-Time Personalization

• Call Volume Optimization

• IVR Optimization

• Total Voice of the Customer

• NICE Interaction Analytics

• Real-time Customer Feedback

Scalability

NICE’s product line addresses the needs of customers of all size and degree of complexity.

These solutions range from the most complete and feature-rich enterprise offerings, to

cost-efficient, easy to use packages for the SMB market. However, it hasn’t always been

this way. The company got its start developing best of breed capabilities within call

recording, quality monitoring and analytics. It developed deep expertise within those

segments, as well as in specific vertical markets. For instance, it created specialized pre-

packaged applications to solve specific challenges, such as compliance solutions which

address issues within highly regulated industries including finance and telemarketing.

In the past, this high degree of functionality often came at a premium price. However,

part of the recent success of its product line strategy has been in reducing complexity and

cost to address all areas of the market not just enterprise.

The company’s two most recent announcements showcase this with affordable, intuitive,

easy to use solutions. The first is EvolveWFM, a completely redesigned workforce

management solution for small to mid-sized companies. EvolveWFM addresses the needs

for high functionality with reduced costs and minimal IT support. It provides sophisticated

tools for automated scheduling, forecasting, and real-time adherence at an affordable

price point, which enables companies traditionally mired in managing through

spreadsheets, far greater functionality without a big investment. The product is delivered

in the cloud to provide companies with continuous delivery and flexibility. It also is

designed for minimal training, easy configuration, and management.

The second is NPM Essentials, a performance management solution that is also feature-

rich and affordable. NPM Essentials comes pre-configured and pre-integrated for reduced

cost and simplicity, yet provides a robust set of performance management features,



including root cause analysis, advanced closed-loop coaching, a best practices library for

coaching action plans, goals management, quality management for the front and back

offices, and virtual collaborative communities for employee engagement.

Technology Leverage

The hallmark of NICE’s product line strategy is its keen vision as to what the company

needs to provide customers with the best of what is available today, with an eye on future

needs. Its success can be seen in the balance NICE has struck between acquisition and

internal development.

NICE has a long history of company acquisitions that have enabled it to bring products to

market earlier than the competition, and add functionality and value to existing products.

For instance, in 2010 when the industry was just looking at real-time analytics, NICE

acquired eGlue to gain more functionality in this arena. In 2011, when the concept of

Voice of the Customer (VoC) was just gaining a foothold in the contact center market,

NICE acquired Fizzback, adding VoC capabilities to its portfolio. Again, NICE addressed the

need to leverage the emerging area of Big Data when it acquired Causata in 2013. The

company’s latest acquisition, in the Spring of 2016, is probably the biggest as far as

acquiring new technology to further the product stack. In May, NICE acquired one of the

market leaders in the cloud contact center space with inContact, bringing it a complete set

of cloud contact center products.

Another strong suit is that NICE doesn’t just acquire technology to deploy as is, but

weaves it into its existing product lines. For instance, in January 2016, NICE acquired aC2,

a WFM solutions provider to add more capabilities to its WFO offerings. Because of the

strength of the technology, it became the basis for the WFM rewrite that became

EvolveWFM, and core pieces are being integrated across NICE’s other WFM offers.

Finally, NICE is also adept and utilizing the assets from its other business units to enhance

existing solutions and create new ones. For instance, it has one of the most complete set

of fraud detection, risk management and compliance suites on the market in its ACTIMIZE

and SECURITY business units. Utilizing components, such as Real-Time Authentication

(RTA), has enabled NICE to also develop suites of fraud reduction, security and

compliance solutions within customer contact.

Customer Purchase Experience

As one of the earliest suppliers of contact center analytics and management solutions,

customers enjoy the breadth and depth of experience that NICE has accrued across its

organization. The company has also take care to ensure its products incorporate industry

standards, which enhance customization by partners or customers. It also has deep

integrations with a wide array of third-party suppliers, to take care of customer needs.



From pre-sales to professional services, NICE maintains personnel spread throughout its

global hubs, supplemented by field support and on-site personnel. Each region has its

local focal point, but the governance and infrastructure is global.

Customer Ownership Experience

Customers have come to expect continuous innovation and best of breed offerings from

NICE. They know that NICE remains at the forefront of innovation, developing products to

address unmet needs of customers, and innovating in ways customers have not even

thought of yet.

Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is a good example. RPA consists of virtual agents –

robots that work in the background to complete tasks without human intervention. They

can complete any number of tasks from claims processing to scheduling work orders and

delivery. These robots operate on a virtual server and pull tasks from a work queue.

Robots can work on back office or contact center. Work can be initiated on the

agent/worker desktop and completed by the robot or vice versa. Work can be initiated by

an Intelligent Virtual Assistant, an agent, or initiated by interactive analytics that trigger a

workflow. All robot work can be checked by agents and workers. While they can only do

one task at a time, they can handle an infinite number, prioritized, scheduled, or first in,

first out. Robots are also subject to the same performance metrics as live agents.

The breadth of NICE’s offerings also allow it to combine assets to create some unique and

powerful solutions within customer contact. Voice of the Customer provides an excellent

illustration of this. One of the pioneers in the industry for creating VoC applications, NICE

has taken this vision a step farther than most of the industry in looking at omnichannel

VoC interactions. This provides a complete picture of customer sentiment in that a

customer engaging with a business in person, over the phone and on the web, may

experience very different interactions, and provide very different feedback on each.

However, interactions looked at as a whole, across a multi-instance time period, gives a

much more complete picture of customer engagement.

Closed loop coaching provides another example. Rather than manually determining the

need for coaching, then providing the coaching and hoping the agent does better, NICE

couples coaching with a workflow engine that engages both the agent and supervisor from

start to finish. The supervisor gets an alert, can verify if it’s for a recurring problem that

requires attention, and then schedule coaching. When a coaching session is initiated, both

parties receive information about what is going to happen during the coaching. They are

prompted with further information during the session, mutually agree on action items at

the end, and then the system creates work flow tasks for completion with reminders. This

is backed with a best practices library that provides examples, such as a call to listen to,

for coaching and training. To close the loop, when the agent’s next coaching session

occurs, up pops the items that are still open, and if items aren’t complete, they can focus

on those rather than start on a new issue.



Brand Equity

In October 2016 NICE celebrated its 40th anniversary with the ringing of the NASDAQ bell.

A well-known global brand, NICE serves 80% of the Fortune 100 companies, and serves

more than 25,000 organizations in the enterprise and security industries in more than 150

countries.

With its contact center heritage squarely in agent performance optimization, NICE has

consistently been in the top five for market share within the segments of quality

monitoring, call recording and analytics for many years. This market leadership position is

being further bolstered by the brand equity that comes along with the acquisition of

inContact. Founded in 1997, inContact is one of the original cloud contact center providers

and a market leader within this space. Together NICE’s brand awareness will only get

stronger.

Conclusion

NICE has rapidly adapted to the changing needs of customers and responded with strong

product solutions across customer contact. Because of its strong overall performance,

innovative product development and well executed acquisition strategy, NICE is

recognized with Frost & Sullivan’s 2017 Product Line Strategy Award.



Significance of Product Line Strategy

Ultimately, growth in any organization depends upon customers purchasing from your

company, and then making the decision to return time and again. A full, comprehensive

product line that addresses numerous customer needs and preferences is therefore a

critical ingredient to any company’s long-term retention efforts. To achieve these dual

goals (customer value and product line strength), an organization must be best-in-class in

three key areas: understanding demand, nurturing the brand, and differentiating from the

competition.

Understanding Product Line Strategy Leadership

As discussed above, driving demand, brand strength, and competitive differentiation all

play a critical role in delivering unique value to customers. This three-fold focus, however,

must ideally be complemented by an equally rigorous focus on building a superior and

comprehensive product line.



Key Benchmarking Criteria

For the Product Line Strategy Leadership Award, Frost & Sullivan analysts independently

evaluated two key factors—Product Line Strength and Customer Impact—according to the

criteria identified below.

Product Line Strength

Criterion 1: Breadth

Requirement: Product line addresses the full range of customer needs and applications

Criterion 2: Scalability

Requirement: Product line offers products at a variety of price points and functionality

levels

Criterion 3: Technology Leverage

Requirement: Demonstrated commitment to incorporating leading edge technologies into

product offerings, for greater product performance and value

Criterion 4: Features

Requirement: Products offer a comprehensive suite of features to serve customers at

multiple levels of functionality, ease of use and applications

Criterion 5: Supply Chain Reliability

Requirement: There is sufficient control over the supply chain to ensure availability of key

components and thereby the availability of products in the product line

Customer Impact

Criterion 1: Price/Performance Value

Requirement: Products or services offer the best value for the price, compared to similar

offerings in the market

Criterion 2: Customer Purchase Experience

Requirement: Customers feel like they are buying the most optimal solution that

addresses both their unique needs and their unique constraints

Criterion 3: Customer Ownership Experience

Requirement: Customers are proud to own the company’s product or service, and have a

positive experience throughout the life of the product or service

Criterion 4: Customer Service Experience

Requirement: Customer service is accessible, fast, stress-free, and of high quality

Criterion 5: Brand Equity

Requirement: Customers have a positive view of the brand and exhibit high brand loyalty



The Intersection between 360-Degree Research and Best

Practices Awards

Research Methodology

Frost & Sullivan’s 360-degree research

methodology represents the analytical

rigor of our research process. It offers a

360-degree-view of industry challenges,

trends, and issues by integrating all 7 of

Frost & Sullivan's research methodologies.

Too often, companies make important

growth decisions based on a narrow

understanding of their environment,

leading to errors of both omission and

commission. Successful growth strategies

are founded on a thorough understanding

of market, technical, economic, financial,

customer, best practices, and demographic

analyses. The integration of these research

disciplines into the 360-degree research

methodology provides an evaluation

platform for benchmarking industry players and for identifying those performing at best-

in-class levels.

360-DEGREE RESEARCH: SEEING ORDER IN

THE CHAOS



Best Practices Recognition: 10 Steps to Researching,

Identifying, and Recognizing Best Practices

Frost & Sullivan Awards follow a 10-step process to evaluate Award candidates and assess

their fit with select best practice criteria. The reputation and integrity of the Awards are

based on close adherence to this process.

STEP OBJECTIVE KEY ACTIVITIES OUTPUT

1 Monitor, target, and screen

Identify award recipient candidates from around the globe

Conduct in-depth industry research

Identify emerging sectors Scan multiple geographies

Pipeline of candidates who potentially meet all best-practice criteria

2 Perform 360-degree research

Perform comprehensive, 360-degree research on all candidates in the pipeline

Interview thought leaders and industry practitioners

Assess candidates’ fit with best-practice criteria

Rank all candidates

Matrix positioning all candidates’ performance relative to one another

3

Invite thought leadership in best practices

Perform in-depth examination of all candidates

Confirm best-practice criteria Examine eligibility of all

candidates Identify any information gaps

Detailed profiles of all ranked candidates

4

Initiate research director review

Conduct an unbiased evaluation of all candidate profiles

Brainstorm ranking options Invite multiple perspectives

on candidates’ performance Update candidate profiles

Final prioritization of all eligible candidates and companion best-practice positioning paper

5

Assemble panel of industry experts

Present findings to an expert panel of industry thought leaders

Share findings Strengthen cases for

candidate eligibility Prioritize candidates

Refined list of prioritized award candidates

6

Conduct global industry review

Build consensus on award candidates’ eligibility

Hold global team meeting to review all candidates

Pressure-test fit with criteria Confirm inclusion of all

eligible candidates

Final list of eligible award candidates, representing success stories worldwide

7 Perform quality check

Develop official award consideration materials

Perform final performance benchmarking activities

Write nominations Perform quality review

High-quality, accurate, and creative presentation of nominees’ successes

8

Reconnect with panel of industry experts

Finalize the selection of the best-practice award recipient

Review analysis with panel Build consensus Select winner

Decision on which company performs best against all best-practice criteria

9 Communicate recognition

Inform award recipient of award recognition

Present award to the CEO Inspire the organization for

continued success Celebrate the recipient’s

performance

Announcement of award and plan for how recipient can use the award to enhance the brand

10 Take strategic action

Upon licensing, company may share award news with stakeholders and customers

Coordinate media outreach Design a marketing plan Assess award’s role in future

strategic planning

Widespread awareness of recipient’s award status among investors, media personnel, and employees



About Frost & Sullivan

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http://www.frost.com.

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nice award write up

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