Interactive Intelligence and Spanlink Linked Together
At the Interactive Intelligence analyst conference in Indianapolis a couple of weeks ago, we had a chance to hear from the company about its strategy, direction, and products – especially Interaction Process Automation (IPA), about which we’ve written several articles (CBPA Workflow Management and How Do You Spell ROI). This analyst conference was different from most, in that it was an add-on to Interactive Intelligence’s partner conference, and the analysts and consultants were able to attend the sessions aimed at the channel partners. This provided us with great insights, as well as access to the company’s partners who were open with their opinions about Interactive Intelligence and its direction (extremely favorable). There were only a couple briefings dedicated to the analysts and consultants – a Q&A with Dr. Don Brown (who I described in a tweet as one of the company’s best assets), and a briefing with Interactive Intelligence’s newest partner – Spanlink. The two companies signed a nationwide reseller agreement, and Spanlink is now an "Elite Partner" for Interactive Intelligence. This provides benefits for both companies, and will help them expand their businesses, while providing end-to-end solutions and support to customers.
The Spanlink-Interactive Intelligence partnership is important for several reasons, but I found it particularly interesting because Spanlink has long been an important Cisco partner, and I was surprised to hear that the company was spreading its wings to work with other vendors. Spanlink is now diversifying its business and expanding its product portfolio by partnering with Interactive Intelligence. (note: Spanlink will continue to partner with Cisco in the contact center arena).
This partnership certainly makes sense for both companies – it gives Spanlink a bigger reach in the market beyond the Cisco world, enabling it to resell and deploy an entirely different product line, while leveraging its core competencies in the contact center and business process integration. Spanlink’s concentration with Cisco was at the “low end of the enterprise market,” while working with Interactive Intelligence will let the company participate in the mid-market, where Spanlink doesn’t have much of a presence today.
Interactive Intelligence noted that it needed a partner with a national footprint, and Spanlink fits the bill. Spanlink has a national/international deployment model, with a substantial customer base and deployments on five continents for US-based multinationals. They can help Interactive Intelligence move beyond specific geographies.
In addition, Spanlink has 21 years of experience working in the contact center arena, with “a rich history in transforming enterprise and contact center communications to deliver substantial business results.” As Interactive Intelligence moves into business process automation with its Interaction Process Automation solution, it will need partners that have experience in this area and can help deploy technology solutions that integrate with business processes. This is what Spanlink has been doing for over 20 years.
As “application integrators,” Spanlink is focused solely on systems integration, and does not do any product work (the product arm of the company was spun off as Calabrio -see Calabrio. Essentially, Spanlink sells, designs, deploys, and services contact center and business process integration solutions using its “time-tested integration methodology, called LifeSpan.” Spanlink offers a single point of contact and improved speed to market for customers and consultants for presale support, solution design deployment, and ongoing support; its Total Care support service provides high-touch support for customers, which includes 24x7x365 remote application monitoring and guaranteed service levels.
Spanlink’s business model has been as an OEM, partnering with companies like Cisco, Calabrio, Nuance, eGain, Microsoft, Tandberg, etc. Focusing on helping customers transform their businesses and business processes, Spanlink provides full life cycle services, including analysis and design in the presale process, custom application development (including IVR scripting, custom desktop/screen-pop integration, speech-enabled self service, customer satisfaction survey and courtesy call-callback modules, sound studio recording etc.), user training, support, and much more.
Interactive Intelligence can leverage Spanlink in a couple ways. Spanlink targets mid-market contact centers with under 250 agents, as well as multisite customers, which fits in well with Interactive Intelligence’s customer base. While this partnership is focused just on the contact center market, with Spanlink’s expertise in business process integration, we would expect the company to also help with IPA deals down the road. In fact, according to Eric LeBow, VP Business Transformation, Spanlink is in the planning stages to release a full suite of analysis, design, and implementation services to complement IPA.
To rehash from previous posts, Interactive Intelligence’s IPA is an end-to-end process automation solution, targeted at specific verticals, including insurance (especially health insurance), credit unions/banking, education, and collections. Focusing on automating business processes, IPA is a process automation platform for the customers’ operations, orchestrating processes across people, departments, and the existing core business applications. While the partnership deal was not made with IPA in mind, Interactive Intelligence can certainly leverage Spanlink’s application customization and business process competencies.
The two companies are already working on opportunities together, using a team selling approach. Spanlink is currently doing training and certification on Interactive Intelligence product, and has added a dedicated, end-to-end Interactive Intelligence practice for sales, delivery, and support. The practice includes certified sales people, systems engineers, deployment engineers, and support engineers. The deployment model will focus on joint sales opportunities for the two companies, while ensuring that there is no channel conflict between them.
Knowing that Spanlink was great at "filling the gaps" in Cisco's contact center offerings and developed products like the Cisco agent desktop, I wondered if it has plans to do the same for Interactive Intelligence. I was told that Spanlink’s review and training on the Interactive solutions hasn’t turned up any major gaps within their user interface and functionality that are related to the types of services and solutions for which Spanlink can provide “gap fillers,” but as Interactive moves up-market, Spanlink’s development team will be prepared to provide any additional solutions that may be useful to their mutual customers. The two companies are already working on some value-add solutions that they think will be well received by Interactive Intelligence customers. For example, in the Cisco world, Spanlink offers its SolutionWatch device and application monitoring solution, and is now laying the groundwork with Interactive Intelligence to implement SolutionWatch in their environment as well.
Not to overuse a cliché, but this seems to be a win-win for both Spanlink and Interactive Intelligence. Spanlink can expand its addressable market, while Interactive gains a partner to help bring its products and solutions to a global market, with end-to-end services that customers need.