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This week global systems integrator Infosys announced a partnership with contact center solution provider Genesys. The two companies have entered a five-year agreement that will enable both companies to use their strengths to help joint customers provide superior customer experience via the contact center.
As part of the agreement, Infosys will market and sell Genesys contact center solutions, much like other systems integrator partners. What’s unique about this relationship, though, is that Infosys will support R&D, operate and provide technical customer support for the Genesys PureConnect private cloud solution while Genesys will continue to market and sell the product.
Genesys makes bold moves with its multi-cloud portfolio
This is certainly a bold move for Genesys as PureConnect accounts for about 20% to 25% of its overall revenue. Given the size of the business as a part of revenue, one might wonder why Genesys would turn the operations over to an SI partner. This is a matter of focus; the company has talked extensively about becoming a SaaS vendor, but it’s had to dance the line between public and private cloud. With its multi-cloud announcement a few weeks ago, the company has signaled to customers the choice is theirs.
While the installed base of PureConnect remains a top priority to Genesys, it can direct more energy to its SaaS product, Genesys Cloud, and that’s important to the company and to its customers.
This announcement is well timed as customers are being aggressive with migrating away from their legacy, on-premises solutions because of the work from home trend induced by COVID-19. This isn’t just a temporary shift, either. The 2020 ZK Research Work From Home Study found that pre-pandemic businesses had an average of 22% working remotely. Respondents are estimating that post-pandemic, the number of people working remotely will be about 42%, nearly double what it was. Customers of Genesys PureConnect, both on-prem and cloud, should see faster innovation with the same level of reliability and security as Genesys and Infosys.
For Genesys, the goal is to create a strategic partnership with a system integrator that can resell its portfolio and support its PureConnect customer base while generating savings by transferring the operational aspects of running PureConnect. The account relationships will remain in place.
This is everything from the account executives, pre-sales engineers, channel managers, business consultants, customer success individuals, technical account managers and other people involved with the account. This means no loss of service to the customer and no change in relationship.
Partnership will improve the customer experience
Also, product support should see little to no impact for PureConnect customers as Customer Care will function exactly as it did before. While Infosys will manage operations and product support for PureConnect, this will be transparent to customers. I talked with Genesys about this in a pre-briefing and the company’s goal is to create zero disruption in service or experience. One proof point of this is that the Genesys Service Level Targets remain unchanged.
Despite the change in operational responsibility, Genesys is committed to continuing to deliver innovation into the PureConnect platform. Earlier this year, the company delivered a wide range of customer requested enhancements to PureConnect. Genesys has an aggressive roadmap of new features coming in the second half as well, as PureConnect customers will see new capabilities, including the release of its own Workforce Engagement Management (WEM) service.
Genesys Cloud and Engage customers benefit as well
Customers of Genesys Cloud and Engage (Genesys’ multi-cloud solution) will benefit as well. The partnership should bring new features and functions to PureConnect that can be incorporated across the other products. As a systems integrator, Infosys has deep expertise in digital transformation, as they typically lead the sales process with it and can bring a broad ecosystem of its own partners to complement the ones Genesys has. Both organizations are laser-focused on delivering a world-class customer experience for CX, so they are well aligned.
While this announcement revolves around the operational aspects of PureConnect, any time an alliance is struck between two organizations with customers goals that are well aligned, there is an opportunity to create a “1+1 = 3” scenario. Genesys will free up some resources, allowing them to move forward with public cloud. Infosys will bring its own innovation in, and that will make all of the Genesys products better.
Zeus Kerravala is an eWEEK regular contributor and the founder and principal analyst with ZK Research. He spent 10 years at Yankee Group and prior to that held a number of corporate IT positions.