Convergys adds two BSS companies to portfolio

Convergys entered one new market and extended its reach into another this week with the acquisitions of Encore Receivable Management and WhisperWire, a provider of sales effectiveness software.

The acquisition of Olathe, Kans.-based Encore puts Convergys into the accounts receivable market, which it has eyed for a long time. “When we decide to enter into a new market, it most often occurs with the acquisition of a key asset that jump starts us. Encore gives us the opportunity to move strongly in to the collections marketplace,” said Keith Wolters, Senior Director, IMG Marketing at Convergys.

Convergys will pay up to $68 million depending on future performance. The financial terms of the WhisperWire acquisition were not disclosed.

WhisperWire is an Austin, Texas-based start-up (founded in 2000) that sells automated sales effectiveness tools to wireline telecom companies. Its largest public account is with SBC. (For more on the company, see the Telephony article “ Rediscovering the art of the sale.”)

WhisperWire’s PowerSeller software will add a “lead-to-order” component to the “order-to-cash” capabilities of its Infinys billing solution, giving Convergys a solution that can help carriers automate the sales and provisioning process.

“Our plan is to integrate WhisperWire’s lead-to-order product with ours in order to take to market for the first time a lead-to-cash solution that automates the entire process from the time leads are captured until they are actually billed,” Wolters said.

PowerSeller is focused on the communications market and provides telecom sales people with contextual, solution-specific information such as selling tips, competitive information, configuration, pricing and promotional material at the point of sale. The product currently addresses the wireline space; however, with the help of Convergys, WhisperWire will begin to develop products for the wireless market as well.

“WhisperWire gains significant credibility in their product by having a company like Convergys acquire and integrate them into our flagship solution,” Wolters said. “They also get a funding source to expand their product into other markets as well as internationally, which is our intent.”

Convergys will sell PowerSeller separately, but said the real value is in integrating it with its Infinys product. Wolters said no date has been set for the release of an integrated product, but that he doesn’t see it as a huge integration effort. “We have already done a proof-of-concept using application interfaces that exist within each solution and it went incredibly well,” he said.

All employees, including WhisperWire CEO Michael Heflin, have become Convergys employees. Final decisions about operational structure have not been disclosed. “Our goal as always is to maintain as much as possible the entrepreneurial spirit of smaller companies, because they got to where they are with that entrepreneurial spirit,” Wolters said.