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Acquisition

Ember rebrands to Davies Consulting

 960 640 Stuart O'Brien
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Ember Group has rebranded to Davies Consulting as part of its final integration step following Davies’ acquisition of the company in 2018.

Operating as Davies Consulting, the team will continue to deliver specialist customer experience (CX), Operational Consulting and Digital Transformation expertise for clients operating across a range of highly regulated and international markets.

Since the acquisition of Ember, Davies has increased its annual investments in innovation and digital transformation more than four-fold. Including in digital CX, analytics and automation capabilities that combine contact-centre expertise with cutting-edge CX technology and innovation capabilities.

The rebrand brings Davies’ consulting division closer to Davies’ internal technology and automation specialists, supporting the firm’s continued ambitious plans to accelerate growth and expand its service offering.

Globally, Davies has more than 4,000 colleagues, with operating centres across the UK, Ireland, Bermuda, the US and Canada. The business delivers professional services and technology solutions across the risk and insurance value chain, including excellence in claims, underwriting, distribution, regulation, customer experience, human capital, digital transformation & change management.

Mark Grocott, CEO – Consulting & Technology, said: “Our specialists in Ember have a great track record and incredible reputation for delivering significant value for our clients through deep domain expertise in customer experience, analytics, consulting & digital transformation. By rebranding to Davies we can become even more valuable to our clients, providing deeper solutions and staying relevant to their evolving needs inservice design and delivery.”

David Leedham, Managing Director of Consulting, added: “Rebranding to Davies has been a key element of our growth strategy and allows us to accelerate our ambitious plans to expand the breadth and depth of our services. I look forward to the next stage in our evolution as Davies Consulting where, with fresh investment and backing we will continue to increase the value we can bring to our clients.”

8X8 acquires Wavecell

 960 640 Stuart O'Brien
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8×8 has acquired privately-held Wavecell, a Singapore-based global Communications Platform-as-a-Service (CPaaS) provider, for approximately $125 million in cash and stock.

The acquisition provides 8×8 with an established technology platform and high-growth revenue business to pursue CPaaS globally and represents a natural expansion of 8×8’s cloud business from Unified Communications-as-a-Service (UCaaS), Contact Centre-as-a-Service (CCaaS), and Video into the CPaaS market. 

The acquisition expands 8×8’s presence into the rapidly growing Southeast Asian market, including Singapore, Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand, and Hong Kong, with a talented employee base and more than 500 enterprise customers, including Paidy, Tokopedia and Lalamove.

Wavecell also brings an R&D centre in Asia which allows 8×8 to further accelerate growth in product innovation and delivery.

By acquiring Wavecell, 8×8 says it:

  • Increases its addressable market to include CPaaS.
  • Enhances the only fully-owned end-to-end cloud communications platform.
  • Expands its global presence and coverage.

Founded in 2010, Wavecell offers a complete CPaaS solution including a cloud-first API platform with SMS, chat apps, video interaction and voice APIs that enable mission-critical enterprise applications such as Application-to-Person (A2P) messaging, omnichannel customer journeys and multi-factor authentication at scale.

“The market opportunity in CPaaS is growing rapidly, and this acquisition enables us to quickly provide these services to our customers around the world,” said Vik Verma, CEO of 8×8. “8×8 is now the only cloud provider that owns the full, global-scale, cloud-native technology stack offering voice, video, messaging, and contact centre delivered both as pre-packaged applications and as enterprise-class APIs. We’re excited to welcome the Wavecell employees to the 8×8 family. We now have a significant market presence in Asia and expect to continue to expand in the region and globally in order to meet evolving customer requirements.”

“With the acquisition of Wavecell, we can now offer customers enterprise-class APIs, bringing a CPaaS solution to our global communications platform,” said Dejan Deklich, Chief Product Officer of 8×8, Inc. “Customer demand for CPaaS is accelerating and now organisations can easily add real-time communication capabilities that include SMS, chat apps, voice and video to improve the experience for their end-customers. The integration of all the API’s and data into one CPaaS platform gives 8×8 customers unprecedented ability to engage with end users in true omni-channel fashion and understand the full customer journey.”

“We are delighted to become part of 8×8, one of the world’s leading cloud communications platforms. Now is the right time to leverage the global expansion of UCaaS, CCaaS and CPaaS services to better serve our customers’ growing demand for communication services and to continually drive greater innovation,” said Olivier Gerhardt, CEO and Co-Founder of Wavecell.

Aspect Software to be acquired by Vector Capital

 960 640 Stuart O'Brien
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Aspect Software has entered into a definitive merger agreement to be acquired by Vector Capital, a private equity firm specialising in transformational investments in established technology businesses.

Under the terms of the agreement, Vector Capital will invest more than $100 million of equity capital in Aspect’s business, which provides customer engagement, workforce optimisation, and self-service omni-channel solutions.

Aspect’s existing lenders will continue to support the company by providing Aspect with a new credit facility at closing.

The transaction is subject to standard and customary closing conditions including the receipt of regulatory approvals and is expected to close in the first quarter of 2019.

“We are excited to partner with Vector Capital as we continue to accelerate Aspect’s strategic transformation, execute on our growth plans and refine our go-forward strategy,” said Chris Koziol, Aspect’s President and Chief Executive Officer. “Vector Capital brings substantial operational and financial resources as well as a proven track record of helping enterprise software companies invest in new products, accelerate innovation, and build market leading businesses.”

“We are thrilled to partner with the team at Aspect Software, which has established, market-leading product offerings and an exceptional blue-chip customer base,” said Andy Fishman, a Managing Director at Vector Capital. “We believe Aspect is well positioned to capitalise on the tremendous opportunity in the growing Customer Engagement Centre market.”

“We have always been impressed by Aspect’s strong business and leadership team,” continued Sandy Gill, a Principal at Vector Capital. “We look forward to backing Aspect during its next stage of growth and helping the Company accelerate its development through both organic initiatives and strategic acquisitions.”

Jefferies LLC and DCS Advisory served as Aspect’s financial advisors. Aspect’s legal counsel was Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP. Vector Capital’s legal counsel was Paul Hastings LLP.

Kura

Kura becomes ‘largest independent outsourcer in the UK’

 960 640 Stuart O'Brien
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Kura has announced the acquisition of Parseq Limited’s contact centre division and Stellar UK Limited and in doing so says it has become the UK’s largest independent Outsourcer, employing around 3,000 people and with sales of £75m.

These deals follow quickly on the heels of the announcement of a Joint Venture with Trident Investments based in Durban, South Africa, which currently services clients in both the UK and Australia and will be called Kura South Africa. It employs around 100 people and will invest significantly in both people and technology.

In terms of the Parseq and Stellar deals, Kura has acquired 3 additional contact centres in Sunderland, Hellaby & Glasgow and now operates from a total of 7 locations across the UK – which together with its offshore location and in combination with its software business Inisoft will provide services and solutions to over 50 clients across many industry verticals.

Brian Bannatyne, Kura CEO, commented “We are delighted to welcome all of the people in the Parseq & Stellar businesses to Kura. We are working hard to deliver our Vision of being Unrivalled in Developing People and our new employees will have a big part to play in this.

“There will be many positive changes across the business in the months and years ahead to bring this Vision to life. With these acquisitions we have significantly increased our scale and capability whilst still retaining the close relationships, flexibility and innovation that our clients need. We will now be focused on integrating everyone into the Kura culture.”

Webhelp continues growth mission with Nordic expansion…

 800 450 Jack Wynn
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The leading global customer experience company, Webhelp, has confirmed that it has completed the acquisition of GoExcellent, an influential Nordic customer relationship management firm and the company will now be rebranded as Webhelp Nordic.

Following a period of strong growth in recent years under the leadership of CEO, Terje Andreassen, and a recorded turnover of $90 million in 2015, the arrangement brings a further nine centres and 1,700 employees across Finland, Norway, Sweden and Denmark to Webhelp, in addition to further expertise in the telecoms, media and technology sectors.

Co-founder of Webhelp, Frédéric Jousset, said: “I am delighted that this acquisition has been finalised today and that we can welcome Terje Andreassen and his wonderful team to Webhelp as Webhelp Nordic. Their expertise will enhance our ability to offer our clients a seamless, quality experience across a greater range of languages and countries in Europe. And as Webhelp Nordic, they will be able to call on the expertise and resources of Webhelp to ensure they can continue to develop and deliver even greater levels of service to their clients in the Nordic region.”

The acquisition is part of the company’s strategy to actively pursue geographical expansion and will allow Webhelp to offer its customers services in four new languages in the areas of customer experience where Webhelp is already widely recognised.

Genesys predicted to buy Avaya call centre business…

 800 450 Jack Wynn
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According to reports, the global omnichannel contact centre and customer experience solutions leader, Genesys, is in negotiations to acquire a call centre business that its peer, Avaya, is hoping to sell for an estimated $4 billion.

Although sources from both parties are yet to comment on the potential deal, the sale would see Avaya, considered to be one of the world’s biggest providers of telephony systems, discard a significant part of its business to cope with its debt pile; alleged to have grown to $6 billion.

If the deal does happen, it would come in light of a $900 million investment by buyout firm Hellman & Friedman LLC in Genesys last month.

Reports also suggest that Genesys is one of many companies and private equity firms that have contacted Avaya about the sale.