The News: NICE’s acquisition of LiveVox has closed this week. LiveVox has some of the world’s largest enterprises as customers, and the resulting combination results in an interaction-centered customer experience (CX) platform. More information on this acquisition can be found on the NICE website.
NICE Closes on Its Acquisition of LiveVox
Analyst Take: The NICE-LiveVox acquisition moved forward this week, closing right before the year end. The deal was previously announced in October 2023 and in the original timeframe of the transaction, the acquisition was not expected to close until the first half of 2024.
Combination Brings Complementary Strengths
The two companies will combine complementary strengths and customer bases. NICE’s CXone, a cloud-native CX platform, offers advanced digital engagement capabilities, and its AI-powered Enlighten brings the power of AI across the customer journey, assisting operations, agents, and customers.
LiveVox offers omnichannel cloud contact center solutions and has more than two decades of CX-focused expertise. Its solutions power billions of omnichannel interactions each year via its proactive outreach portfolio.
Together, the companies can offer a unified platform that brings together all types of interactions including voice and digital, attended and unattended, inbound and outbound, all while harnessing widespread conversational AI capabilities.
Financial Details of the Acquisition
- As the agreement was finalized prior to year-end, the complete financial impact of the transaction will occur in 2024, contributing an expected $142 million to NICE’s total revenue for 2024. According to the companies, this transaction is expected to be cash flow positive and accretive to NICE’s operating income, operating margin, and non-generally accepted accounting principles (non-GAAP) earnings per share (EPS) in 2024.
Busy Year-End for NICE
The past few months have been busy ones for NICE. Its 2023 CXone Fall Release saw new capabilities in AI and automation including:
- Fully automated auto-summary abilities that are fully native and can support both voice and digital interactions
- The ability to connect consumers with agents in a more personalized way and based on sentiment
- Microsoft Azure as a storage option (in addition to the Amazon Web Services [AWS] storage option)
- A new workforce engagement management feature, True to Interval (TTI), that can accurately forecast and schedule, taking into account asynchronous and periodic interactions
The company also announced deployments with Europcar Mobility Group and Club Med and its CX solutions were also selected by Oodle Car Finance, Limango, and Mazda Motor Europe.
It is been a busy year in the contact center segment, and I will spend more time digging into that in early 2024. It was definitely a rush of announcements, feature additions, and enhancements, usually with AI in the mix, as well as interesting merger and acquisition (M&A) activity. NICE was already well positioned with its offerings this year, and this acquisition will help to build on those abilities, particularly in that outbound area where LiveVox has excelled.
Disclosure: The Futurum Group is a research and advisory firm that engages or has engaged in research, analysis, and advisory services with many technology companies, including those mentioned in this article. The author does not hold any equity positions with any company mentioned in this article.
Analysis and opinions expressed herein are specific to the analyst individually and data and other information that might have been provided for validation, not those of The Futurum Group as a whole.
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Author Information
As a detail-oriented researcher, Sherril is expert at discovering, gathering and compiling industry and market data to create clear, actionable market and competitive intelligence. With deep experience in market analysis and segmentation she is a consummate collaborator with strong communication skills adept at supporting and forming relationships with cross-functional teams in all levels of organizations.
She brings more than 20 years of experience in technology research and marketing; prior to her current role, she was a Research Analyst at Omdia, authoring market and ecosystem reports on Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, and User Interface technologies. Sherril was previously Manager of Market Research at Intrado Life and Safety, providing competitive analysis and intelligence, business development support, and analyst relations.
Sherril holds a Master of Business Administration in Marketing from University of Colorado, Boulder and a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from Rutgers University.
