Pegasystems today announced its acquisition of OpenSpan, a provider of robotic process automation (RPA) and workforce analytics software, bringing together robotics, analytics, and case management to enable more productive contact center employees. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
OpenSpan uses robotic automation to ease the burden on customer service representatives by automating routine desktop tasks. By providing insight into desktop activity and automating or eliminating repetitive, time-consuming tasks, OpenSpan frees agents to focus their energies on delivering exceptional customer experience while also helping to lower operational costs.
OpenSpan provides advanced robotic automation and workforce analytics capabilities that complement and enhance Pegasystems' customer relationship management application suite and business process management platform. This acquisition unifies robotics and workforce analytics with case management and real-time analytics.
Alan Trefler, founder and CEO of Pegasystems, said in a statement that the acquisition would help organizations "meet the new demands of digital customers":
"We've already seen the power of Pega and OpenSpan working together to help our clients with their digital transformation initiatives. We believe OpenSpan's cutting-edge robotics, workforce analytics, and process automation capabilities, combined with Pega's leading process and real-time analytics, supports an emerging era of intelligent automation working in concert with people to deliver a better customer experience."
Don Schuerman, chief technology officer and vice president of product marketing at Pegasystems, says the acquisition "is a key part of [Pegasystems'] ongoing CRM strategy."
OpenSpan, he adds, "is a clear fit for us. It aligns very well with our heritage of very smart business process automation and our CRM focus."
OpenSpan's software, which is used across more than 200,000 desktops worldwide, provides insight into, streamlines, and simplifies the agent desktop. With it, companies can do the following:
- Identify workflow inefficiencies: As a first step, businesses analyze their employee workflows to uncover hidden hot spots that disrupt customer experiences, such as needless and error-prone data rekeying across apps.
- Automate desktop processes: Agents can now operate all of their desktop applications in one process—moving data between applications where APIs don't exist.
- Reduce repetitive tasks: Robotic process automation enables some processes—from reviewing claim details to updating transaction systems—to be run unattended.
"The complexity of system environments today impacts companies' ability to deliver a seamless experience to their customers," says Schuerman, who notes that agents might, in some cases, have to navigate 20 or 30 different screens and applications in the course of a work day.
"Some of the robotic experiences that OpenSpan provides can accelerate processes for our clients, simplify the environment that agents live in, and simplify the experience for customers," he adds.
According to Schuerman, there were several companies that compete in the same space as OpenSpan, but many of them don’t have the wealth of contact center experience that OpenSpan does. "OpenSpan is in the sweet spot for cutting-edge technology," he says.
Eric Musser, CEO of OpenSpan, agrees. "Over the past 11 years, we've built a highly successful organization that has helped introduce the power of robotics and desktop intelligence to mainstream business," he said in a statement. "But this is just the tip of the iceberg of what analytics and robotics can really do. By integrating with Pegasystems' proven applications and platform, we believe we can advance robotic automation and desktop analytics in exciting new directions that will change the way businesses interact with their customers."
Schuerman expects to be able to introduce new products that combine the technologies of OpenSpan and Pegasystems in time for the company's PegaWorld user conference in June. The two companies have a long history of working together, and many of their products are already integrated as a result of previous partnerships, he adds.