Its exciting news to see Oracle announce its intention to acquire InQuira. We have been waiting for this news for a long time. The reasons are multifold:
- Today’s contact center ecosystem is complex, and comprised of multiple vendors who provide the critical software components. Read my blog post on what these critical software components are. Customers are looking for a simpler technology ecosystem to manage from both a systems perspective and a contractual perspective.
- Suite solutions, available from unified communications (UC), CRM, and workforce optimization (WFO) vendors, are evolving and include comprehensive feature sets. These vendors have either built these capabilities out or acquired them via M&A activity. And we expect more M&A to happen.
Now to focus on knowledge:
- Knowledge, accessible via web self-service or agent UIs, is a critical customer service component for industries fielding repetitive questions about policies, procedures, products, and solutions.
- However, knowledge is most powerful when it’s delivered in a personalized, proactive way, contextualized to the customer’s persona and the issue at hand. This means that knowledge management solutions are much more powerful when deeply integrated with CRM systems.
- CRM vendors understand the power of good knowledge, given the number of acquisitions (for example, salesforce.com + Instranet, KNOVA being folded into Consona, Kaidera + Servigistics) in this space and the lack of standalone knowledge management vendors.
- InQuira was the last remaining enterprise-grade KM-only vendor left. InQuira has had partnerships with CRM vendors Oracle and SAP and UC vendor Genesys. It was only a matter of time before InQuira was picked up by one of these players.
We are excited about this acquisition and look forward to Oracle working on deeply marrying their CRM and knowledge management capabilities into a best-of-breed solution.
