Published on the 01/04/2014 | Written by Newsdesk
Contact centre technology supplier Interactive Intelligence has grown its Australian and New Zealand revenues by an astonishing 66 percent in the last year, with 88 percent of its sales now for cloud-based solutions, as its push into the enterprise sector pays off …
The Australian and New Zealand arm of Interactive Intelligence has far outstripped the growth of its parent over the last 12 months. While internationally the company achieved very robust 34 percent revenue growth, in ANZ revenues surged 66 percent according to Brendan Maree, the company’s vice president for ANZ and Japan.
This year could prove even stronger following a major push into the Brisbane market and the opening of an office in Perth. Maree said that in the last month the company had signed two deals in Western Australia worth $3.3 million.
It has however walked away from two opportunities with the NSW and Queensland State Governments because of the ways the contracts were being structured according to Maree. He said that by comparison Victoria and local Governments had proved much easier to deal with.
Interactive Intelligence was founded in 1994 and provides solutions for contact centres, unified communications and business process automation services. In 2013 the company won the Frost & Sullivan award for the leading Australian contact centre application of the year.
A push into larger businesses and strong demand for cloud services is driving the growth according to Maree. Although 37 percent of A/NZ revenues came from cloud sales in 2012, that rose to 88 percent last year.
The A/NZ rate of cloud adoption is even faster than that in the US where last year 50 percent of Interactive’s sales were for cloud-based solutions.
Joe Staples, chief marketing officer for the company, who is in Australia this week said that although the economic downturn had been a spark for cloud uptake the average cloud-based contract being signed by the company was now larger than its on-premises software deals.
Interactive Intelligence currently hosts its cloud-based offerings out of a network of 11 data centres – two of which are in Australia. However Staples alluded to the future possibility of leveraging global cloud infrastructure from the likes of Amazon Web Services to deliver its solutions. “The costs for us would go way down…stay tuned,” he said this week.
Local users include Auckland Transport, Fisher & Paykel, VicRoads, Medibank and the Wine Quarter, which manages brands such as Cellarmaster Wines, Dan Murphy’s and NZ Wine Society.
The Wine Quarter’s head of IT Cameron Brawn said that an on-premise solution had been deployed when the system was implemented three and a half years ago, though he said if a solution were selected today it would probably be cloud-based.
He said that since the system had supported the company’s growth from a 120 seat contact centre to 450 seats, that it now serviced “substantially more clients with fewer agents,” and that the rate of customer churn had declined.
