Enterprise software company Pegasystems said Tuesday it has made a move into robotic automation software by acquiring OpenSpan for as much as $52.3 million.
OpenSpan uses robotic automation to boost the productivity of customer service representatives by automating routine desktop tasks. The software runs on more than 200,000 desktops at financial services, insurance, telecommunications, and retail organizations.
With the acquisition, Pegasystems said it would be able to enhance its own customer relationship management (CRM) software suite and business process management (BPM) platform.
“We believe OpenSpan’s cutting-edge robotics, workforce analytics, and process automation capabilities, combined with Pegasystems’ leading process and real-time analytics, supports an emerging era of intelligent automation working in concert with people to deliver a better customer experience,” Pegasystems’ founder and CEO Alan Trefler said in a news release.
The company said CSRs have to “navigate a hodgepodge of disconnected desktop applications while they try to engage with customers. Distracted CSRs waste time toggling between dozens of different apps to input or review customer data, which frustrates both the customer and the CSR.”
Open Span allows “CSRs to focus their full attention on the customer,” Pegasystems said.
According to Computer Weekly, Pegasystems specializes in BPM software, a niche application that is rapidly turning mainstream. “The company may not have the high public profile of suppliers such as Microsoft or Oracle, but it numbers some of the world’s biggest companies among its clients.”
Last month, Pegasystems reported non-GAAP profit of 74 cents per share on revenue of $683 million for fiscal 2015. Trefler has said he expects full-year 2016 earnings to be 95 cents per share and revenue about $780 million.
“By integrating with Pegasystems’ proven applications and platform, we believe we can advance robotic automation and desktop analytics in exciting new directions that will change the way businesses interact with their customers,” OpenSpan CEO Eric Musser said.