Businessmodel of NICE

Customer Segments

NICE Systems has a mass market business model, with no significant differentiation between customer groups. The company targets its offerings at firms across all industries and sizes.

Value Proposition

NICE Systems offers three primary value propositions:  convenience, performance, and brand/status.

The company offers convenience by making life simpler for customers. Its solution offers real-time analytics, enabling clients to receive insights about both structured and unstructured data instantaneously. It also provides a consolidated, holistic view across clients’ operations.

The company demonstrates strong performance through tangible results. Specific examples of positive outcomes for its clients include the following:

• Health services provider Optum implemented NICE Interaction Analytics across five business units, enabling it to identify almost $700,000 in FTE cost reduction potential for two clients
• Telecommunications firm Telus used NICE Performance Management solutions to reduce agent performance data collection, resulting in $400,000 in annual savings
• Credit card firm TSYS used NICE’s solutions to improve contact center operational efficiency, resulting in a 7% reduction in call volume and annual savings of $317,000
• Mobile network operator Everything Everywhere used NICE’s Transformation Program to increase agent performance by 12 percentage points and Net Promoter Score by 27 points

• The Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) used NICE Sales Performance Management to achieve faster payments for sales reps, reduce time-to-pay to two weeks, and enhance payment accuracy The company has established a strong brand due to its success. It has more than 25,000 customers, including over 85 members of the Fortune 100. These firms include Sprint, Barclays, American Airlines, and Citi. It employs over 3,500 workers in over 150 countries. Lastly, the company has won a number of awards, including the following:

• Recognition as one of the “Top 10 Most Innovative Companies in Money” by Fast Company
• The Best Compliance Technology Award by The Trade
• Recognition as the Financial Crime Risk Management Category Winner in the RiskTech100
• The WSL Award for Most Innovative Use of Technology by Institutional Trading
• Recognition as a “Leading Vendor” in Celent’s Market Surveillance Vendor Report ### Channels

NICE Systems’ main channel is its direct sales team. The company promotes its offering through its website, social media pages and participation in webinars, roadshows, and conferences.

Customer Relationships

NICE Systems’ customer relationship is primarily of a personal assistance nature. The company assists customers in the following ways:

Support Services – The company offers 24x7 phone and e-mail customer service. It also provides flexible service-level agreements (SLAs) that enable clients to choose the specific levels of support they need (e.g., short response times and long coverage hours for mission-critical operations).

Education Services – The company offers training services to provide customers with the needed skills and knowledge to operate NICE solutions.

Consulting Services – The company provides value-added services that leverage its solutions for the improvement of daily business operations. The services are provided by consultants with industry expertise and significant experience in implementing solutions for clients.

Despite this orientation, there is a self-service component. The company maintains a Customer Support Portal through which clients can start and track online Service Requests, view recent Service Requests, and create tailored quick links. Its website also provides white papers and eBooks.

Key Activities

NICE Systems’ business model entails designing and developing its software-based solutions for customers.

Key Partners

NICE Systems’ key partners are the suppliers that provide it with the equipment and materials it needs to develop its products.

It also relies on subcontractors to manufacture a small portion of its products that have hardware components. Lastly, it forms the following types of partnerships:

Business Partners – NICE works with firms to help them sell and support its solutions.

Development Partners – NICE works with software and hardware vendors to help them develop and deliver NICE-based solutions. It provides them with support throughout the product development cycle, in areas ranging from design, testing, and certification to marketing and sales.

Technology Partners – NICE works with tech firms to integrate their solutions into its products in order to provide enhanced offerings and capabilities to its customers. Specific partners include Alcatel Lucent, Avaya, Cisco, Citrix, EMC, Flextronics, Genesys, HP, Microsoft, and Motorla.

Global Alliances – NICE works with a network of market leaders to jointly provide turnkey solutions to customers in areas such as consulting. Specific partners include IBM, Amdocs, and Cisco.

The company operates a portal called “ExtraNICE” that partners can use to obtain product information, technical documentation, sales/marketing tools, and training information.

Key Resources

NICE Systems’ main resources are its human resources, who include the engineers, scientists, research/development professionals, and thought leaders that design and develop its solutions. They also include the consultants that provide advice and the customer service employees that provide support.

The company relies heavily on its intellectual property, with 135 U.S. patents and 50 patents issued in other countries, and over 72 patent applications pending in the U.S. and other countries.

Cost Structure

NICE Systems has a value-driven structure, aiming to provide a premium proposition through significant personal service and frequent service enhancements.

Its biggest cost driver is cost of revenues, a variable expense. Other major drivers are in the areas of sales/marketing, administration, and research/development, all fixed costs.

Revenue Streams

NICE Systems has two revenue streams: revenues it generates from sales of its products and revenues it generates from sales of its services.