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Avaya Acquires KnoahSoft, Adds In-House WFOAvaya Acquires KnoahSoft, Adds In-House WFO

Companies increasingly want workforce optimization integrated into their contact centers, as evidence in this latest industry acquisition.

Sheila McGee-Smith

April 15, 2015

1 Min Read
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Companies increasingly want workforce optimization integrated into their contact centers, as evidence in this latest industry acquisition.

In May 2014 No Jitter post, I wrote: "The holy grail of a fully-integrated cloud contact center suite continues to drive acquisition activity." At the time, inContact had just announced its intention to purchase Uptivity, a workforce optimization (WFO) company. Today the statement applies to Avaya.

As first reported via the Indian press covering an Avaya partner event, Avaya has acquired KnoahSoft, a WFO company.

This acquisition is similar to the inContact deal in some ways, but has other interesting characteristics as well. Of note:

Contact center infrastructure and WFO from a single suite is about more than one-stop shopping for customers. It is about single sign-on for agents into what today are often multiple systems. It is about supervisor reporting that can drill down to actual recordings for an understanding of underlying causes. Ultimately, it is about routing interactions based on real-time agent performance attributes, obviously best delivered when the WFO application and routing engine are part of a single solution.

About the Author

Sheila McGee-Smith

Sheila McGee-Smith, who founded McGee-Smith Analytics in 2001, is a leading communications industry analyst and strategic consultant focused on the contact center and enterprise communications markets. She has a proven track record of accomplishment in new product development, competitive assessment, market research, and sales strategies for communications solutions and services.

McGee-Smith Analytics works with companies ranging in size from the Fortune 100 to start-ups, examining the competitive environment for communications products and services. Sheila's expertise includes product assessment, sales force training, and content creation for white papers, eBooks, and webinars. Her professional accomplishments include authoring multi-client market research studies in the areas of contact centers, enterprise telephony, data networking, and the wireless market. She is a frequent speaker at industry conferences, user group and sales meetings, as well as an oft-quoted authority on news and trends in the communications market.

Sheila has spent 30 years in the communications industry, including 12 years as an industry analyst with The Pelorus Group. Early in her career, she held sales management, market research and product management positions at AT&T, Timeplex, and Dun & Bradstreet. Sheila serves as the Contact Center Track Chair for Enterprise Connect.