Not a good time to be an ALU shareholder as the company reported a loss for the first quarter of 2010. The stock price struggles to break $3/share. Revenues declined for most of its business segments:

Quarterly revenues decreased 9.8% year over year and decreased 18.1% sequentially to €3.247 billion. By operating segments, Networks saw a double-digit decline in revenue, partly attributable to a shortage of components in supply chain. This has been particularly true in wireless access and terrestrial optics. Applications revenue declined 6.3% year over year with enterprise solutions & Genesys relatively stable. Services segment was more resilient with a 3.1% year-over-year decrease supported by managed services and multivendor maintenance.

Even Genesys isn’t faring that well? “Relatively stable” as in “revenues will continue to decline as the same rate”? And a “3.1% year-over-year decrease” is considered resiliency? There doesn’t even seem to be a hint of sunshine in this quarterly report. What about getting customers to upgrade to the fancy new version, Genesys 8? What happened to the momentum of G-Force Chicago and G-Force Amsterdam? And the high profile partnerships with Lithium social media and InQuira knowledge management solutions?

I have a feeling that this year we’re going to find out whether the Genesys acquisition and the subsequent restructuring and reorganization were effective.

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• Alcatel-Lucent shares plunge after Q1 net loss (seattletimes.nwsource.com)

Yesterday CRM Magazine announced its 2010 CRM Service Awards winners. Genesys dominated the contact center awards (Contact Center Infrastructure and Interactive Voice Response) whereas RightNow Technologies took home most of the web-related categories (Web Self-Service, Web Interaction Management, and Contact Center Search).

Genesys WFM failed to win the Workforce Optimization Suite award — Verint Systems won — which must prove to be somewhat frustrating as Genesys WFM has been around for a while, but continues to lag behind leaders like Verint and NICE. Recently, workforce optimization has been a focus among companies in hopes of getting the most out of their resources. This is also a lucrative offering: according to a report by DMG Consulting the WFO market grew about 14% from 2007 to 2008:

The firm’s “2009 Quality Management/Liability Recording Market Share Report” shows that the WFO market grew by 14 percent, from about $2.4 billion in 2007 to about $2.7 billion in 2008.

The contact center market contributed to about half of this growth, the report finds. Revenues from WFO solutions for the contact center grew about 4.3 percent during 2008. Although this is only modest growth, the WFO market outperformed many other IT software markets, the report finds.

Although growth slowed in 2009 due to the economic downturn, especially hitting the financial sector hard, which were the companies that had been the biggest WFO buyers. Genesys would be wise to kick it up a notch in terms of enhancing its WFM package to better compete with Verint’s. Some may argue that Genesys ought to concentrate on its forte, contact center infrastructure and IVR, but it’s clear that the company also wants a piece of the WFO and CRM pie.

…which brings up to social CRM darling RightNow Technologies. It may rule the web-based services now, but its relationship with Genesys may soon evolve from a partnership to being a “coopetition.” Genesys has hooked up with RNT competitors InQuira and Lithium to invade the desktop social CRM space, and it is not shy about it as evident from a recent analysts conference.

The contact center battle between titans like Avaya, Cisco, and Genesys would be epic, but I believe it’s the desktop CRM war that deserves attention this year. It’ll be tricky for Genesys as it tries to balance all of its products and partnerships in order to maintain the lead, but don’t be surprised if it just decides to do it “Microsoft style” and buyout a company or two in this space just to promptly acquire the technologies and market share.

Here is the CRM Magazine press release:

NEW YORK–(BUSINESS WIRE)–CRM magazine, the leading publication in the customer relationship management industry, announced the winners of its 2010 CRM Service Awards here today, in conjunction with the magazine’s March 2010 issue.

Recognizing how the economic climate helped drive service as a significant differentiator, CRM magazine’s seventh annual CRM Service Awards honor the vendors, consultants, and end-user companies focused on high-quality customer experiences through the sophisticated integration of people, processes, and technologies.

Maintaining the eight-category breadth of last year’s awards, CRM nevertheless expanded the scope of the 2010 edition to include more companies. In each category, the magazine has again named a single Service Winner, denoting the year’s highest score relative to a peer group. Each category now also identifies three Service Leaders and at least one vendor deemed “One to Watch.”

Recipients were determined through an extensive three-month process and proprietary rating formula that involves industry analysts, financial and corporate information, product and functionality assessments, and scores reflecting customer satisfaction.

• Contact Center Infrastructure — Winner: Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories
  Leaders: Avaya; Cisco Systems; Interactive Intelligence
  Ones to Watch: LiveOps; Siemens Enterprise Communications
• Interactive Voice Response — Winner: Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories
  Leaders: Avaya; Intervoice (a unit of Convergys); Voxeo
  One to Watch: Cisco Systems
• Web Self-Service — Winner: RightNow Technologies
  Leaders: Consona; InQuira; nGenera
  One to Watch: Parature
• Web Interaction Management — Winner: RightNow Technologies
  Leaders: LivePerson; nGenera; Parature
  Ones to Watch: Helpstream; Kana Software
• Enterprise Feedback Management — Winner: Allegiance
  Leaders: Confirmit; RightNow Technologies; Verint Systems
  One to Watch: Vovici
• Contact Center Search — Winner: RightNow Technologies
  Leaders: Autonomy etalk; Coveo Solutions; InQuira
  Ones to Watch: Consona; Google
• Workforce Optimization Suite — Winner: Verint Systems
  Leaders: Aspect Software; Envision Telephony; Nice Systems
  One to Watch: Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories
• Outsourcing — Winner: Convergys
  Leaders: HP Enterprise Services; Sykes; Teleperformance
  Ones to Watch: Sitel; West

The magazine also named six Service Rising Stars for the year — the most ever:

• CallCopy, an emerging midmarket player among contact center vendors providing workforce optimization suites;
• Clickability, a provider of Web content management via software-as-a-service;
• ClickFox, a specialist in customer experience analytics;
• Communispace, which provides private online communities and participant analysis;
• LiveOps, a provider of outsourcing and workforce management solutions for work-at-home contact center agents; and
• Nexidia, one of the few companies making speech analytics relevant to the contact center.

Last, but certainly not least, the magazine named five customer implementations as winners of its CRM Service Elite Award — again, a record number:

• online retailer Drugstore.com, which took a dose of RightNow Technologies to get better at making its customers look good;
• network-solutions provider Enterasys Networks, which turned to Salesforce.com to create relationships as well as efficiencies;
• Infusionsoft, a provider of email marketing software for small businesses, which used an online environment designed by Helpstream to enable customers to provide their own community-based support;
• insurance giant New York Life, which used a Verint Systems deployment to give its contact center agents something to stick around for; and
• Southwest Airlines, which, thanks to Virtual Hold Technology, now offers passengers the choice to hang on or hang up.

“CRM magazine is pleased to see the steadfast devotion to service excellence demonstrated by the companies and individuals in the 2010 CRM Service Awards,” said David Myron, the magazine’s editorial director. “These award recipients are proving that organizations can streamline business processes, maximize profitability, and improve customer service interactions.”

The 2010 CRM Service Awards will be presented at the CRM Evolution 2010 Conference (http://www.CRMevolution2010.com) at the Marriott Marquis in New York later this year. An expanded version of the results have been published in the March 2010 issue of CRM magazine—available in print and in digital NXTBook format (http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/crmmedia/crm0310/index.php). The awards package was unveiled online on March 1, 2010, at http://www.destinationCRM.com.

About CRM magazine

CRM magazine is the leading publication of the customer relationship management industry, covering sales, marketing, customer service, and strategy. The magazine also administers and hosts the annual CRM Evolution conference. Each of these properties is designed to serve customer-centric business initiatives, and leaders who recognize CRM as a key strategy for creating enhanced customer value in any industry. For more information about the magazine, its editorial calendar, or CRM in general, please visit us on the Web at http://www.destinationCRM.com; at our blog, http://www.destinationCRMblog.com; or on Twitter at @CRM (http://twitter.com/CRM) and @destinationCRM (http://twitter.com/destinationCRM). The destinationCRM Web site (which is updated daily) and the monthly magazine are properties of CRM Media, a division of Information Today, Inc.

Contact:

CRM magazine
David White, 609-654-6266
dwhite@infotoday.com

Yesterday Genesys (owned by Alcatel-Lucent) held an analyst conference to present the latest and greatest about all things this #1 CTI software vendor has to offer. Thankfully, plenty of #staranalysts (seriously?) members were generous in tweeting the information onto the #GenesysAR stream to share with everyone. Yours truly, being a simple amateur n00b blogger, didn’t get to attend this fabulous event at the serene Rosewood Sand Hill in Menlo Park, CA. But who needs physical presence when virtual is the trend and telepresence is chic, right? Yet having been to a Genesys G-Force conference where attendees are constantly being fed in a luxurious venue, I sure miss this:

Well, I suppose there is always G-Force Chicago in April… At any rate, what’s an analyst conference without shout-outs, right? Is it like the MTV Music Awards show without the lame jokes, outrageous stunts, and questionable attire…?

All right, onto business. First, CEO and President of Alcatel-Lucent’s Application Software Group, Paul Segre, took the stage to ease concerns about the recent restructuring and reorganization. It’s all about leading:

While that may hold true, the last time I checked Wall Street Journal, companies restructure and reorganize to cut costs which often translates to reducing headcount. When I spoke to a couple of laid off Genesys employees last year, none of them mentioned anything about the leading part. Either management did not convey this top-down, or maybe it was just a reaction to the global economic meltdown? There’s really no shame in admitting that — everybody’s hurting these days. But luckily for my ex-Genesys friends, they have since found jobs with competitors. (Whatever happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas. Whoever gets laid off in telecom, stays in telecom. It’s true.)

Alcatel-Lucent is in the global telecom equipment business. In terms of its $8 billion market cap, it is dwarfed compared to its well-known competitors: Nokia ($52 billion), Motorola ($15 billion), Siemens ($79 billion), Cisco ($130 billion), and Ericsson ($32 billion). However, it did strike gold with the Genesys acquisition. It bought the #1 contact center software company with an established worldwide customer base, and leaves all the aforementioned competitors in the dust when comparing contact center sales. The strategy then, of course, is to tie ALU hardware sales to Genesys software:

It’s a no-brainer. Oh, I remember fondly of the (supposedly) first U.S. integration between an Alcatel-Lucent PBX and Genesys CTI. It was somewhere in sunny, humid south Florida during summer, and I was working with a senior Genesys consultant. At the time Genesys was already part of ALU, but amazingly the PBX shipped with an E1 telephony interface card so my poor PM had to authorize the purchase of a T1 adapter. To further our amusement, the PBX came with French manuals and the console was dotted with nothing but French. We all wished then we had paid more attention in high school French class…

But I digress. In order to align the sales resources between the parent and child companies, ALU had to obtain more control of Genesys. Not to say that Genesys was a runaway company, but it was the best and logical business decision. And when former President and CEO Wes Hayden left for Nuance (and now President of LiveOps), CTO Paul Segre was a good fit to lead Genesys because of his past history with Alcatel (VP and GM of Wireline Access business unit).

Much has improved in the ALU-Genesys technology integration. Just recently I was on such a project and it was a pleasant surprise. It wasn’t like fitting a square peg into a round hole anymore. Even the PBX technician swore by the ALU switch, “I enjoy working on it more than the Avaya,” he’d told me. That spoke volumes especially coming from a seasoned PBX tech. Definitely kudos to the ALU and Genesys engineers.

So what else does Genesys have in store for CTI fanatics? The elusive Genesys 8 makes an (updated?) appearance (hmmm, didn’t I see it last year at G-Force Orlando?):

Quite a combo meal indeed. What does this mean for implementations? Will the team have to deal with three different vendors? It’s already a major task just to get to Genesys Tech Support (upgrade, send logs, we’ll call you back), I’d hate to be on the field putting in Genesys 8 and having to work with engineers from Lithium and InQuira also. Even if it’s cool that tweets can get routed in G8. (Really nothing major considering emails and faxes can get routed already.)

Of course, the obligatory but nonetheless intriguing Apple iPad reference, note that Apple is a Genesys customer:

Sigh. Apple’s coolness factor has just gone down a notch. We all know the iPad isn’t for serious business — games, games, games!!! Okay, and ebooks! And by ebooks I mean comics! (Dilbert would look great on a contact center iPad.)

As I had posted before, Genesys is ready to pounce on Nortel customers. Nortel customers can probably negotiate a good deal now. Yet not sure how else to put in an ALU switch without rip and replace? ALU would want to sell the hardware.

Later there was an NDA segment which barred those in attendance to disclose juicy information. Wonder what it is? I’m thinking an embedded chip which can be injected under you skin that contains all your preferred IVR menu option trees. So whenever you pick up a phone to dial an IVR, just put the speaker near the chip (don’t embed it near your eye ’cause then you’d look like an idiot) and it will automagically navigate through the system to get you to an agent. In other words, the chip emits a DTFM tone of zero. #rumor #secretproduct

There’s a lot more information from these top industry analysts. Again, to follow the complete Twitter conversation, search for #GenesysAR. If you love to hate or hate to love Genesys, then you owe it to yourself.