Frost & Sullivan Recognizes InterCall for Robust Strategies and Sustained Growth in the Conferencing Market

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., March 22 /PRNewswire/ -- Based on its recent analysis of the conferencing services market, Frost & Sullivan recognizes InterCall, Inc. with the 2009 North American Frost & Sullivan Award for Growth Excellence of the Year. The award is in recognition of InterCall's exceptional performance in a year of severe challenges, demonstrating that it has the organizational prowess to ride out the challenging economy, and enormous agility in addressing strategic market shifts and changes in end-user preferences. Internally, InterCall has been focusing on cost control, revving up expertise, and increasing overall profitability without compromising product or service quality.

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"A comprehensive product portfolio built through a combination of innovation and acquisitions, strong technology, global footprint, a vast pool of high-value multi-national clients, and powerful marketing and sales strategies have helped InterCall become the largest provider of conferencing services globally," says Frost & Sullivan Industry Analyst Subha Rama. "The company has consistently proven its ability to compete with incumbent service providers in a number of global markets and extend its leadership position in the conferencing services industry."

Over time, InterCall has expanded its capabilities and strengthened its portfolio of best-in-class, converged conferencing and communication services through a series of acquisitions. Besides ConferenceCall.com (2003), ECI Conference Call Services (2004), Sprint Conferencing (2005), and Raindance (2006), which helped the company bring conferencing solutions to the market far more quickly than it could have through in-house development, InterCall acquired Genesys Conferencing in 2008. This global multimedia collaboration service provider gave InterCall access to Genesys' flagship product, Genesys Meeting Center, and enhanced its global footprint. Other recent acquisitions have included Corvent (2009) and web event and streaming media provider Stream57 (2010).

"InterCall has shown a successful trajectory of merging various product lines from its several acquisitions," notes Rama. "As an outcome of the Genesys acquisition, InterCall recently launched InterCall Unified Meeting, around which it plans to build its unified communications strategy. The Genesys acquisition also gives InterCall access to a strong Global 2000 enterprise user base and a large footprint in the European markets."

InterCall has several partnerships with leading collaboration vendors in the industry to offer their solutions on a hosted platform. These include strategic alliances with Microsoft, Cisco, IBM and, more recently, Adobe, to deliver 'unified meetings.'  InterCall's goal is to offer enterprises the widest possible suite of services so that they can combine and customize the ones that are most relevant to their business needs.

"Spiraling demand and declining prices have made service differentiation a strong imperative for conferencing service providers (CSPs) to remain profitable," explains Rama. "Audio, video and Web conferencing, combined with voice and unified messaging, presence and other collaboration tools are examples of value-added applications that service providers such as InterCall now offer."

Apart from these, InterCall has also been offering productivity measurement tools to its enterprise customers, strongly linking them to service level agreements and price. This has helped the company retain large accounts when the entire industry was facing customer retention issues.

InterCall continues to focus on enhancing customer value by investing in services that will truly improve their communication experience. In 2008, it launched Global Network Access, a first-of-its-kind solution that addresses some of the common issues in international conferencing. Global Network Access offers local dial-in numbers and a decentralized bridging infrastructure that significantly improves call quality. The service comes with the highest levels of quality of service (QoS) assurances, guaranteeing consistent superior performance.

Another important factor behind the growth of InterCall is its consistent focus on building a strong channel network. The company today services over 75,000 organizations and more than 1.5 million unique conference leaders. It continues to grow the number of partners, supplementing its indirect channel with its own internal sales consultants and Web presence. It is constantly rethinking the ways in which it can sell its conferencing services through each one of its partners.

Frost & Sullivan believes that these strategies will ensure InterCall's consistent growth, market leadership and overall excellence in a highly competitive market, making it the deserving recipient of the 2009 Frost & Sullivan North American Conferencing Services Growth Excellence of the Year Award. Each year, Frost & Sullivan presents this award to the company that has demonstrated excellence in implementing and sustaining growth within shipments, revenues and profitability.

Frost & Sullivan's Best Practices Awards recognize companies in a variety of regional and global markets for demonstrating outstanding achievement and superior performance in areas such as leadership, technological innovation, customer service, and strategic product development. Industry analysts compare market participants and measure performance through in-depth interviews, analysis, and extensive secondary research in order to identify best practices in the industry.

About InterCall, Inc.

InterCall, a subsidiary of West Corporation, is the largest service provider in the world specializing in conference communications. Founded in 1991, InterCall helps people and companies be more productive by providing advanced audio, event, Web and video conferencing solutions that are easy-to-use and save them time and money. Along with a team of over 500 Meeting Consultants, the company employs more than 1,500 operators, customer service representatives, call supervisors, accounting, marketing and IT professionals. InterCall's strong U.S. presence, which includes four call centers and 26 sales offices, is bolstered by a global reach that extends to Canada, Mexico, Latin America, the Caribbean, the United Kingdom, Ireland, France, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, China, India, Hong Kong, Singapore and Japan. For more information, please visit www.intercall.com.

About Frost & Sullivan

Frost & Sullivan, the Growth Partnership Company, enables clients to accelerate growth and achieve best-in-class positions in growth, innovation and leadership. The company's Growth Partnership Service provides the CEO and the CEO's Growth Team with disciplined research and best-practice models to drive the generation, evaluation, and implementation of powerful growth strategies. Frost & Sullivan leverages over 45 years of experience in partnering with Global 1000 companies, emerging businesses and the investment community from 40 offices on six continents. To join our Growth Partnership, please visit http://www.awards.frost.com.

SOURCE Frost & Sullivan