The 2015 Speech Industry Star Performers: NICE Systems
NICE Systems Grows Its Speech Analytics Portfolio
NICE Systems puts its money where its speech solutions are. From helping customer representatives handle snarling customers to analyzing frantic verbal exchanges on 911 calls, NICE has covered a lot of ground in the past 12 months.
In 2014, NICE shook up its executive management team and appointed Barak Eilam as CEO. Under Eilam's leadership, NICE spent nearly $150 million in research and development, according to industry expert Sheila McGee Smith of McGee-Smith Analytics.
That investment has paid off—in speech analytics in general, and in speech analytics as part of a workforce optimization management (WFO) solution. DMG Consulting named NICE and Verint as the top players in the WFO market during fiscal 2014, saying that they accounted for "60 percent to 80 percent of most segments of this market."
Analytics has become the company's bread and butter, and NICE has been growing its portfolio to meet growing demand driven in large part by multichannel use.
Pointing out the value of analytics, the company said that with the use of NICE Interaction Analytics, eBay Enterprise enabled a single client to save $2.4 million over a 21-month period.
In mid-June, NICE launched NICE Complaints Management for the contact center, which assists agents through the use of three different types of analytics: advanced speech, text, and desktop. The combination automatically finds gripes—either obvious or inferred—from multichannel interactions and can curtail escalations.
NICE also expanded its fraud management portfolio and in March added real-time integrated voice quality check capabilities to its financial services recording product. The solution helps financial institutions adhere to compliance regulations by analyzing recorded calls. With the addition of NICE's technical quality check, companies are alerted to calls that aren't properly recording speech, enabling both real-time fixes and retroactive reviews.
In June, the company released NICE Audio Analytics. Aimed at the public safety sector, the solution processes audio snippets from a variety of communications—such as 911 calls and body cameras worn by police—to aid in investigations as well as to ensure compliance and quality. By identifying and categorizing audio by key words and phrases in a recording, the solution can quickly zero in on queries.
"With more and more digital media to analyze, now including video and audio from body-worn cameras, public safety and security operations will increasingly turn to analytics to gain valuable situational awareness and identify critical evidence," stated Chris Wooten, executive vice president at NICE Security Group.