MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., Sept. 8, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Based on its recent analysis of the cloud contact center applications industry, Frost & Sullivan recognizes Interactive Intelligence with the 2016 North American Growth Excellence Leadership Award. Since its inception in 1994, Interactive Intelligence's growth strategy has been fueled by innovation, industry firsts, and a pulse on customer needs and industry trends. A couple of fine examples of the company's entrepreneurship and farsightedness include the introduction of the first all-in-one suite of contact center solutions and a cloud-based alternative to its premise-based systems. With its launch of communication-as-a-service (CaaS) in 2009, Interactive Intelligence gained entry into the emerging cloud/hosted market and obtained a strong base for developing cloud expertise and market credibility.
Interactive Intelligence has added a series of firsts to its name in application design as well. For instance, the company was one of the first to market with real-time speech analytics, which could be administered as an application module within its suite rather than as an add-on application from a third party. In addition, the company was one of the first to realize that the applications within the contact center would benefit all areas of a business and designed Interaction Process Automation (IPA). IPA was an improvement on the communications-enabled business process (CEBP) applications, which were slowly being developed by competitors, as it covered more comprehensive business automation than only communications.
"Interactive's growth strategy has extended well beyond its product development roadmap," said Nancy Jamison, Frost & Sullivan Principal Analyst Digital Transformation. "At the time of its inception, the market was dominated by a few large call center vendors, the majority of which had entrenched installed bases of private branch exchanges (PBX). Marketing a new type of product—a suite of applications, including switching functionality rather than those developed over time as adjuncts—required considerable public relations and marketing expertise. Strong products, creative marketing campaigns, and favorable press coverage have helped propel market awareness of Interactive Intelligence."
In addition, Interactive Intelligence has demonstrated visionary innovation. When the company realized its current systems were inadequate to cope with the changes in the marketplace, it built from scratch the disruptively priced, full-featured contact center and business communications solution, PureCloud. This cloud platform not only integrates different applications, but has a more modern architecture with greater scalability and flexibility.
Interactive Intelligence's cloud applications are finding adoption across contact centers of all sizes. Significantly, the company has the advantage of being able to address the large untapped market of small- and medium-sized businesses with PureCloud given that this platform was initially targeted at this market.
"Interactive's financial highlight of 2015 was revenue of $390.9 million, which represents year-over-year growth of 15%," noted Jamison. "Its recurring revenues from sources such as cloud subscription revenue and support fees from on-premise licenses rose by 23% to $230.7 million and accounted for 59% of total revenues."
The company's cloud-based revenue grew by 62% to $97.9 million in 2015. In Q2 2016, its cloud sales soared as it signed 204 PureCloud customers during the quarter, which was up over 70% from Q1 2016. In addition, cloud subscription revenue was up by 43% year-over-year. At the end of Q2 2016, the company had over 300 PureCloud customers worldwide. Of note, 37 percent of PureCloud deals in Q2 2016 resulted from partners.
Overall, Interactive Intelligence has demonstrated an inspirational zeal for growth in the cloud contact center applications industry by fostering brand loyalty and carving out a unique, sustainable market position.
Each year, Frost & Sullivan bestows this award upon the company that demonstrates excellence in growth and customer value. The award recognizes the superiority of the product/service as well as the overall customer, purchase, ownership, and service experience offered, resulting in the recipient company seeing above-market growth and greater share of wallet. The award lauds the company's growth, diversification, and sustainability strategies.
Frost & Sullivan Best Practices awards recognize companies in a variety of regional and global markets for demonstrating outstanding achievement and superior performance in areas such as leadership, technological innovation, customer service, and strategic product development. Industry analysts compare market participants and measure performance through in-depth interviews, analysis, and extensive secondary research to identify best practices in the industry.
About Interactive Intelligence
Interactive Intelligence Group Inc. (Nasdaq: ININ) is a global leader of cloud services for customer engagement, communications and collaboration designed to help businesses worldwide improve service, increase productivity and reduce costs. Backed by a 20-plus year history of industry firsts, 150-plus pending patent applications, and more than 6,000 global customer deployments, Interactive offers customers fast return on investment, along with robust reliability, scalability and security. It's also the only company recognized by the top global industry analyst firm as a leader in both the cloud and on-premises customer engagement markets. The company is headquartered in Indianapolis, Indiana and has more than 2,000 employees worldwide. For more information, visit www.inin.com.
Interactive Intelligence is the owner of, and holds certain registrations for, the marks INTERACTIVE INTELLIGENCE, its associated LOGO, PURECLOUD and numerous other trademarks and service marks in the United States and various other jurisdictions around the world. All third-party trademarks mentioned in this document are the property of their respective owners.
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