NICE to Acquire Merced Systems

NICE Systems today announced plans to acquire Merced Systems, a provider of service and sales performance management solutions for about $150 million. Additionally, NICE will pay Merced up to $20 million in cash subject to Merced meeting certain performance targets. The deal is expected to close in the middle of the first quarter of 2012. 

Merced's flagship solutions, available in on-premises, software-as-a-service, and hosted models, include Merced Service Performance Management, which provides performance analytics and dashboards, service coaching, incentive management and real-time reporting for enterprise service personnel. They also include Merced Sales Performance Management with incentive and quota management, performance analytics and dashboards, sales development and coaching, and other analytics solutions. 

Merced's customers span multiple verticals, such as telecommunications, financial services, and healthcare and includes Bell Canada, British Gas, Co-Op Bank, Coca-Cola, Dell, Delta Airlines, Dish Networks, Kaiser Permanente, Liberty Mutual, O2, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon.

Integrating Merced and NICE capabilities creates a closed-loop Performance Management solution. Adding capabilities such as real-time interaction analytics and real-time customer feedback to traditional data sources will deliver more accurate performance measurement and insights. These insights will then be fed into other NICE solutions, such as coaching and the unique real-time agent guidance to enable organizations to ensure ongoing improvement in agent performance and customer centric processes. 

"The acquisition of Merced constitutes an important and strategic addition to our offering of enterprise-wide customer interaction solutions," said Zeevi Bregman, president and CEO of NICE, in a statement. "Expanding our portfolio with the market-leading performance management solutions will enable both NICE and Merced customers to enjoy an enhanced offering with rich functionality. Furthermore, leveraging Merced's products and market leadership in branches and retail stores, together with our customer feedback and real-time analytics, will enable us to extend the benefits we provide at these customer touch points." 

Matt Glickman, CEO of Merced said, "We are proud to join the leading provider of customer interaction solutions. Through this combination, our leading performance management solutions will now be available to NICE's broad base of customers. We already have customers enjoying the benefits of the integration of our solutions with some of NICE's solutions. We look forward to joining forces with NICE and believe that our unique closed-loop offering will deliver strategic value to enterprises globally."

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