A Big Week for Workforce Optimization (WFO) Software

The past week saw two significant announcements in the world of WFO. Historically, use of WFO has been the domain of large organizations. In financial services for example, Celent estimates that 80% of top tier banks use WFO (those with assets of US$50b or more) while less than 500 US FIs employ WFO (about 3%). Said another way, the compelling WFO opportunity in financial services is to usher in adoption by midsize and small FIs. This objective has been aided by software as a service (SaaS) and managed services options that most WFO vendors now offer. One announcement in the past week was the acquisition of GMT Corporation by Verint Systems. Among large banks, Verint and GMT were the market share leaders. The combined entity will give Verint a dominant market share leadership – among large banks. Down market, other vendors – particularly FMSI and Kronos have market share leadership. And down market is where the WFO growth opportunity lies in financial services. That leads to the other big news in WFO this week – the announcement of a cooperative marketing agreement between Kronos and Fiserv. The two companies will integrate Kronos’ Workforce Central suite with Fiserv core systems, beginning with Signature. The two will then cooperatively sell the pre-integrated solution to the prodigious installed base of Fiserv core banking clients. Both announcements are big news in a space occupied by relatively few solution providers. For both Kronos and Verint, the announcements signal a growing interest in financial services – a sector underserved by WFO. Good news indeed. Other WFO providers and the remaining core banking vendors should take note.