May 2, 2012, Atlanta, GA – OpenSpan, Inc., OpenSpan, Inc., a provider of innovative user process analytics, optimization and automation solutions, today announced another record quarter. OpenSpan reached record revenues and income results for the second quarter in a row, beating the previous records set in Q4 2011. The company saw increases in revenues and back-to-back quarters of positive net income. The quarterly success resulted in another new record for trailing 12-month revenues since April 1, 2011. From a licensing perspective, OpenSpan more than doubled its year-over-year software revenue in Q1.

OpenSpan CEO Eric Musser called attention to new and expanding relationships with leaders in the telecommunications industry as a key contributor to the company’s continuing success. OpenSpan already counts among its customers two of the five largest telecommunications firms in the Fortune 500, and three of the top MSOs in the Forbes Global 2000. “Leading telecom companies in three different countries made significant investments in OpenSpan Desktop Automation and Desktop Analytics in the first quarter, and we anticipate continued growth in our telco customer base as this dynamic industry continues to adapt to change.” Musser said. “We’re seeing similar success in financial services, insurance and other industries where regulatory and technological change demand a focus on efficiency, productivity and a superior customer experience in the contact center or at the retail counter.”

In response to growing interest in its Desktop Automation and Analytics technology, OpenSpan invested heavily in research and development in the first quarter, expanding its product development organization by 41 percent. OpenSpan Chief Technology Officer Damon Lockwood cites the company’s relationships with telecom companies as a valued source of input that is driving plans for future innovations in Desktop Automation and Analytics. “We’re working closely with our telecom industry customers to measure and optimize how business users interact with the software on their desktop, to make OpenSpan continuous process improvement a strategic technology for managing the customer experience,” Lockwood said. “We’re expanding our research and development organization to build automation and analytics technology that becomes a key competitive weapon–not only in telecom, but across all industries we serve.”

April 24, 2012, Atlanta, GA - OpenSpan, Inc., a provider of innovative user process analytics, optimization and automation solutions, has announced the availability of version 5.2 of its Desktop Automation and Desktop Analytics technology. The latest OpenSpan Server release also features significant enhancements in support of automation and analytics deployments. Version 5.2 improves scalability and performance to streamline deployment and management for OpenSpan’s growing number of global customers with large implementations spanning multiple geographies. The new release also includes several architectural changes that add flexibility and responsiveness to the platform.

OpenSpan technology is used in contact center, retail and back-office environments worldwide where process efficiency, worker productivity and customer experience management have strategic impact on revenue generation, profitability and customer loyalty. A Lean Six Sigma assessment of OpenSpan customer deployments in 2011 documented an overall productivity improvement of 21 percent, resulting in an estimated $1.6 billion in cost savings. OpenSpan implementations impacted over 8 billion agent tasks in contact centers and 790 million worker tasks in back-office environments last year.

“Our customers regularly extend their deployments to larger and larger groups of users, in an effort to expand the productivity and efficiency gains they experience with OpenSpan solutions,” said Eric Musser, CEO of OpenSpan. “We will continue to work to scale our architecture to meet growing customer needs.”

OpenSpan Chief Technology Officer Damon Lockwood characterizes the new release as setting the stage for significant additions to functionality now in development. “This update refactors our server architecture to offer an unmatched ability to handle bursts of user activity and to reinforce system redundancy and fault tolerance,” Lockwood said. “Version 5.2 also provides underpinning to support our vision for new capabilities that will further cement our leadership in Desktop Automation and Analytics technology.”

Among the changes in the new release are:

• A new application server database architecture to support server-based user management, runtime deployment, authentication and security token services.
• A scalable database infrastructure to support massively parallel event collection to analyze the desktop activity of very large groups of end-users.
• Faster object matching performance for Web applications, for more seamless desktop integration and automation.
• A new user event collection Web service that can be scaled independently of other Web services.

Version 5.2 is available for OpenSpan customers who are current on maintenance at no charge.

How does your company use analytical tools and processes to empower your contact center with the actionable insights needed to serve customers?  Effective use of contact center analytics programs helps organizations improve the effectiveness and timeliness of customer engagement activities via the contact center.  Would you like to learn how Best-in-Class companies integrate analytical tools within their contact center programs, resulting in improvements in key measures such as first call resolution rates, revenue per call and customer satisfaction? If so, please take 20 minutes and participate in a new research survey by the Aberdeen Group.

The research, titled “Analytics in the Contact Center: Empowering Agents with On-Time and Relevant Data,” will produce a valuable benchmark report that will reveal how Best-in-Class companies integrate analytical tools and processes in the call center. The final report will provide a guideline on how your organization can accomplish performance improvements through effective implementation and use of analytics within your contact center. By participating in this brief survey, you will receive complimentary access to the research content upon publishing after August 1st, 2012!

OpenSpan is supporting  Senior Research Associate Omer Minkara‘s efforts to benchmark this important topic. Individual responses will be kept strictly confidential and data will only be used in aggregate.  Your participation in this research effort is greatly appreciated.  Take the 20 minute survey now.

Guy Tweedale Named Managing Director of European Headquarters in London

Increasing pipeline activity, expanding commitments from existing customers and on-going partner success led OpenSpan to expand its London office, according to CEO Eric Musser. “We’ve made significant inroads into many Global 2000 organizations with extensive international operations. OpenSpan is committed to continue to scale our organization to meet the global demand for our technology,” Musser said. “We’re pleased to have Guy Tweedale to direct our growth in Europe, where we are already leveraging his track record of success building and leading multi-cultural teams.”

Guy Tweedale

Tweedale brings more than 25 years of technology sales and marketing expertise to OpenSpan. His previous experience includes significant contributions to strategic direction, market expansion, revenue growth, partnership development and customer services for several international software companies. Tweedale has worked in a number of technology industry segments and product lines, including infrastructure monitoring systems, composite application development services, CRM applications, workflow and process diagramming tools, and other business software solutions.

Prior to joining OpenSpan, Tweedale was interim managing director and CEO of Azeti Monitoring Solutions. He has also served as senior vice president, EMEA for Jacada, VP of Northern Europe for Saratoga Systems and VP of EMEA for Extensity.

OpenSpan’s international footprint currently includes customers in 48 countries, contributing an average 40 percent to the company’s annual software revenue. Among the company’s marquis customers are several of the world’s largest financial services firms, including three of the “Big Four” banking operations in the United Kingdom. Other OpenSpan customers found on the Forbes Global 2000 list are three of the largest telecommunications and cable providers, and two of the top five healthcare organizations OpenSpan sells direct, via resellers and through OEM relationships.

What’s the real-world impact of OpenSpan’s user process improvement technology?  Our Lean Six Sigma black belts did the analysis, and the results of our process improvement assessments are outlined in our new infographic.  The outcome is clear:  OpenSpan customers see very real and very dramatic improvements in their operations thanks to their process improvement and process automation projects.

(Click graphic to enlarge.)

OpenSpan is growing, and what better way to expand our team than to hire a few heroes!  We’ll be at the Hiring Our Heroes/RecruitMilitary Veteran Opportunity Expo tomorrow, February 9, 2012, to talk to military veterans and their families about career opportunities at OpenSpan’s Atlanta headquarters. The job/opportunity expo for military veterans has been officially designated a U.S. Chamber of Commerce Hiring Our Heroes Event. RecruitMilitary, a military-to-civilian recruiting firm, will produce the free event, being held from 11:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. at Turner Field, home of the Atlanta Braves.

RecruitMilitary is inviting veterans who already have civilian work experience, men and women who are transitioning from active duty to civilian life, members of the National Guard and reserves, military spouses, and other military family members. Hiring Our Heroes events are part of a nationwide initiative by the U.S. Chamber to increase the hiring of veterans. The initiative will help Corporate America respond to a challenge issued on August 5, 2011, by President Barack Obama. For veterans outside the Atlanta area, there are numerous events in other cities as well, which you can find on the Recruit Military Website.

Of course, you don’t have to be a veteran, or attend the Hiring our Heroes event in Atlanta, to explore career opportunities with OpenSpan.  Just visit our careers page on our Website for more information on our current openings.

The Process Excellence Network (PEX Network) makes some salient points on the impact of process in a new video posted last week. Using statistics about changes in the global economy, the video brings home that point that, in the end, it’s all about service. The business process should serve the customer, making the customer experience more efficient and less frustrating. Customers don’t care if a call center’s applications aren’t integrated. They just get tired of repeating their phone number over and over again, just so an agent can work their way through different applications to find the information they need to answer a question, fulfill a request or solve a problem.

We who focus on process efficiency all day can easily get caught up in an internal view. We employ six sigma and other process excellence techniques to remove the time and cost from business processes, with a laser focus on how things can work better for the company. The PEX Network has reminded us to look outside our office windows and refocus on those we ultimately service. It’s important to always remember, as Henry Ford said, it is the customer who pays the bills.

 Estimates Indicate Successful Customer Deployments that Resulted in an Aggregated $1.6 Billion in Cost Savings and an Individual Average Productivity Improvement of 21 Percent in 2011

OpenSpan has released the results of business process improvement assessments of the company’s customer base, which indicates an estimated overall improvement in efficiency that saved customers an aggregated $1.6 billion across 1.1 billion processes in 2011.  On average, OpenSpan deployments give customers an estimated 21 percent improvement in productivity. Some customers experience productivity improvements as high as 44 percent in more complex, heterogeneous environments. Estimates of the impact of OpenSpan technology deployments are customer-validated and are based on formal process improvement assessments conducted by OpenSpan’s Lean Six Sigma process consulting team.

Increased efficiencies in OpenSpan customers’ call center implementations resulted in an estimated average productivity gain of 19 percent.  Customer back-office process improvement projects resulted in an increase in productivity estimated at 29 percent.  OpenSpan customers who deploy solutions in the back-office achieve significantly higher improvements due to the history of efficiency initiatives in front-office vs. back-office scenarios, according to OpenSpan CEO Eric Musser.

“For example, in contact center environments, our assessments indicate that OpenSpan technology saved our customers as much as a dollar on every call handled,” Musser said.  “Contact centers are among the most tightly-managed work environments in the world, where a few seconds on a call can quickly add up to a significant impact on the bottom line.  Our assessments show that OpenSpan solutions make a real difference in our customers’ ability to perform in terms of customer service improvement, reductions in average cost per call and the ability to drive increases in net promoter scores.

“Many corporations are just now applying the same rigor to the back-office that has driven efficiencies in the call center,” Musser continued.  “There’s more fertile ground for finding and eliminating waste in terms of manual, redundant and error-prone tasks in the back office.  As a result, our customers see real value in the form of exponential returns on investment, and previously untapped opportunities to improve their operations and better serve their customers.”

Additional results of OpenSpan’s customer success assessment indicate:

• Over 1 billion calls impacted by OpenSpan technology
• Individual worker tasks processed of over 8 billion in contact centers and almost 790 million in back offices worldwide.