NICE to Acquire Causata

NICE Systems today announced an agreement to acquire Causata, a provider of real-time big data analytics technology. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The acquisition will allow NICE to offer solutions that provide greater visibility into customer activities on the Web and apply the insights from that data in real time across other touch points, such as the contact center. NICE will also benefit from Causata's real-time Hadoop-based interaction repository, real-time decisioning, dynamic customer profiles, and Web personalization.

In announcing the deal, NICE said rolling Causata's Hadoop-based technologies into its Customer Engagement Analytics platform will generate new capabilities, including the following:

• Creation of dynamic customer profiles based on real-time analysis of current and past activities over multiple channels;
• Convergence of self-service digital channels, such as Web and mobile, with assisted-service channels to better manage the customer journey;
• Ability to provide contact center agents the complete context of an interaction, based on a customer’s activities prior to and during that interaction; and
• Improved real-time decisioning, using predictive analytics and machine learning, to guide employees to the next-best action.

"Many of our customers interact with consumers in a siloed environment, leading to a disconnect between different touch points, such as the company Web site, mobile app, stores, and contact centers. These organizations are looking for the ability to tie together Web-based and contact center interactions for better and more efficient customer service," said Zeevi Bregman, president and CEO of NICE, in a statement. "The acquisition of Causata is another important step in executing on our strategy to help organizations get closer to their customers by providing real-time solutions which address the entire customer journey across touch points."

"NICE shares our vision for applying advanced technologies to better understand the customer journey in order to address specific customer needs and preferences, as well as to act upon these insights to improve the customer experience and drive business success. Our deep and mutual product knowledge and culture of excellence are highly complementary," said Paul Wahl, CEO of Causata, in a statement. "We are proud of our accomplishments in the big data analytics domain and are excited to join a large company whose global market presence will enable us to extend the reach of our technologies."

Carter Lusher, chief IT analyst at Ovum, sees the Causata addition as a good fit for NICE, which he says needed to expand into other channels, especially the Web.

"In addition, NICE needs to broaden and deepen its big data and fast data capabilities to handle dramatically expanding volume and diversity of customer-related data," Lusher wrote in an email. "While NICE had been working on those major functions through organic R&D, the Causata acquisition dramatically reduces NICE’s time-to-market.”

Causata, Lusher added, "provides NICE with important technology, domain expertise, and legal intellectual property."

Lusher calls the deal "an important new differentiator for NICE."

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