This week Zoom took a big step in their effort to continue their growth post-pandemic by purchasing the company Five9 for $14.7 billion. Five9 is a Cloud Contact Center platform that, like Zoom, experienced good growth over the past year (32.3% revenue increase in 2020, and 45% in Q1 of 2021).  It’s likely that most of you reading this have used Zoom at one point or another in the past year, but now that we are moving forward and leaving the pandemic in our past (hopefully) Zoom needed to adapt. A lot of businesses are going back to in-person meetings and events which renders Zoom much less necessary for many of them. Their strategy then seems that they want to create a platform that blends Unified Communications and Cloud Contact Center functionalities to be more relevant in today’s communication landscape.

There is no doubt that there will be many advantages for both companies with this merger for their individual brands. In an interview with Frost & Sullivan, Elka Popova, VP of Connected Work said this about the deal: “Zoom now has a really well-rounded portfolio, especially with regard to the possibility to bundle (and potentially more tightly integrate) Zoom Phone with Five 9’s contact center solutions.  Zoom also gains access to the large standalone cloud contact center opportunity, independent of any bundling or integration with its own heritage solutions. Five9 will gain access to Zoom international operations and sales, whereas Zoom will leverage Five9 systems integrator partnerships. Zoom’s marketing machine will also help drive sales of all parts of the portfolio.”

Zoom also went after Five9 for their advanced AI capabilities that are going to be very sought in future Customer Experience Contact Centers. The integration with these services may prove to be difficult, but well worth it if done well.

Not to mention, if Zoom is able to integrate the two services into one platform, they will be able to capture a lot more market share and prove to be a big competitor to other UCaaS and CCaaS providers. That will remain to be seen though, as a well fleshed out, user-friendly platform is key these days and should not be rushed. Both companies have very strong brands which brings with it very high expectations which they must take into deep consideration. If Zoom can integrate Five9’s automation and AI technology (chatbots, self-service) capabilities, they will see massive success. However, that is easier said than done.

In the same interview with Frost & Sullivan Nancy Jamison, Industry Director said this: “There are great synergies between the two companies. This is great for Zoom, but from a contact center perspective even better for Five9. As a top-tier player in the enterprise contact center market, this solidly rounds out its ability to say it is a single source provider in the growing combined UCaaS and CCaaS market.”

 

 

SOURCE: https://www.frost.com/frost-perspectives/frost-sullivans-perspective-on-zooms-14-7-billion-five9-acquisition/