NICE Launches Next Generation NICE IEX Workforce Management Solution to Optimize Customer Dynamics

RA'ANANA, Israel, May 3 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- NICE Systems Ltd. (Nasdaq: NICE), a leading global provider of advanced solutions that enable enterprises and security organizations to extract Insight from Interactions, transactions and surveillance to drive business performance, reduce risk and ensure safety, today introduced its next generation workforce management solution.  NICE IEX Workforce Management Release 4, part of the NICE SmartCenter suite, delivering multi-dimensional visibility, multi-channel adherence, an open architecture, and expanded multiple language support, along with a new rich client and new personalization features.  The new solution empowers enterprises to optimize Customer Dynamics by driving increased effectiveness and efficiency of contact centers and back office enterprise operations. NICE IEX Workforce Management solution will be showcased at Interactions '10, the annual NICE Customer Conference, taking place in Dallas, on May 3-6, 2010.

Today's contact centers are under pressure to operate more efficiently and provide superior customer service, while facing a growing number of interactions across multiple communication channels.  The new release of the NICE IEX Workforce Management solution helps companies overcome these challenges by optimizing staff scheduling, ensuring that the right agent is ready to interact with the customer at the right time, regardless of the channel. It also improves schedule adherence, "time off" management, shift bidding, schedule trading, and other agent-related processes.

"NICE has moved its industry-leading Workforce Management solution a huge leap forward with Release 4," said Keith Dawson, Principal Analyst, Information & Communication Technologies, at leading analyst firm Frost & Sullivan.  "The new multi-channel adherence capabilities of Release 4 will help workforce managers to handle the diverse work in contact centers much more effectively.  The new open architecture will please the IT departments and give them flexibility in selecting the architecture that fits their standards."

"Texans Credit Union is committed to improving member service and satisfaction, and we have been very pleased with the improvements we've seen in forecasting, schedule adherence, schedule management, and the increase in overall contact center efficiencies, as a result of our implementation of the new version of the NICE IEX Workforce Management solution," said Anne Marcom, Vice President, Member Services at Texans Credit Union.  "We were looking for a solution that would be very easy to learn, intuitive, and would also support our needs for managing a complex call center environment.  The system is feature rich and provides us with the capabilities that we need to effectively manage our workforce, which is key to delivering a positive customer experience, while making our business more productive and efficient."

New capabilities of NICE IEX Workforce Management include:

• Multi-dimensional Visibility: to provide flexibility to aggregate all key workforce management data for viewing, analyzing and editing across multiple business dimensions. For example, forecasts and schedules can be aggregated by site, a line of business within a site, a line of business across sites, and for the entire enterprise, providing a more complete and accurate understanding of how changing customer behaviors impact contact center staffing.
• Multi-channel Adherence: to provide visibility into whether agents are doing their scheduled tasks across channels of communications, particularly in today's contact centers where many agents are expected to handle chat, emails, faxes, voice mails, etc., in addition to calls.  
• Open Architecture: to provide extended database options, a new rich client user interface, a new reporting engine that delivers advanced reports that can be scheduled and easily exported to other formats, and a new range of hardware architecture options to lower the overall total cost of ownership and enhance scalability and reliability.
• Expanded Multiple Language Support: to provide localization support for Chinese, Japanese and Russian on top of English, Spanish, French, German and Brazilian Portuguese product-wide, and in addition to the localization of the agent and supervisor portal in eight more languages.
• Personalized Ease of Use: to provide personalized views and workflow-based navigation make the solution easier to use and significantly improves productivity.

"Optimizing Customer Dynamics cannot be accomplished without managing the contact center workforce effectively," said Debbie May, president of the NICE IEX Workforce Management Group.  "The new version of our Workforce Management solution enables our customers to run a more effective and efficient contact center, by better managing the complexities of a multi-channel, multi-skill and multi-site workforce. The expanded language support also allows companies in new geographical markets to reap the benefits of NICE IEX Workforce Management."

For more information about Interactions '10, go to: http://www.nice.com/summit/interactions2010/index.php/.

About Texans Credit Union

Texans Credit Union is a Texas-based, member-owned, not-for-profit financial cooperative with branches throughout North Texas, Austin and Houston. Texans provides financial products and services to almost 140,000 members and has assets of $1.5 billion. Visit the Texans website at www.texanscu.org for more information.

About NICE SmartCenter

NICE SmartCenter is the premier solution suite for helping companies optimize Customer Dynamics, with unique capabilities for capturing, analyzing and impacting customer interactions across multiple channels.  NICE SmartCenter includes pre-packaged business solutions that address specific business issues, powered by best-in-class functional components spanning call recording, quality management, workforce management, cross-channel interaction analytics, including speech analytics, real-time guidance, and  performance management. The business solutions capture, analyze and impact customer interactions in real time, across a variety of channels, from audio, email and chat to social media and text messaging.  The solutions include nine packaged offerings: Customer Churn Reduction, Sales Effectiveness, Customer Experience, Marketing Effectiveness, Collections Optimization, Quality Optimization, First Contact Resolution Optimization, Average Handle Time Optimization, and Compliance Management.  These solutions can be deployed on premise, in a hosted model, or via a managed service, and can be implemented stand-alone or fully integrated with customer relationship management and business intelligence solutions.

About NICE

NICE Systems (Nasdaq: NICE) is the leading provider of Insight from Interactions solutions and value-added services, powered by the convergence of advanced analytics of unstructured multimedia content and transactional data – from telephony, web, email, radio, video, and other data sources.  NICE's solutions address the needs of the enterprise and security markets, enabling organizations to operate in an insightful and proactive manner, and take immediate action to improve business and operational performance and ensure safety and security. NICE has over 24,000 customers in more than 150 countries, including more than 80 of the Fortune 100 companies. More information is available at http://www.nice.com.

Trademark Note: 360 degrees View, Alpha, ACTIMIZE, Actimize logo, Customer Feedback, Dispatcher Assessment, Encorder, eNiceLink, Executive Connect, Executive Insight, FAST, FAST alpha Blue, FAST alpha Silver, FAST Video Security, Freedom, Freedom Connect, IEX, Interaction Capture Unit, Insight from Interactions, Investigator, Last Message Replay, Mirra, My Universe, NICE, NICE logo, NICE Analyzer, NiceCall, NiceCall Focus, NiceCLS, NICE Inform, NICE Learning, NiceLog, NICE Perform, NiceScreen, NICE SmartCenter, NICE Storage Center, NiceTrack, NiceUniverse, NiceUniverse Compact, NiceVision, NiceVision Alto, NiceVision Analytics, NiceVision ControlCenter, NiceVision Digital, NiceVision Harmony, NiceVision Mobile, NiceVision Net, NiceVision NVSAT, NiceVision Pro, Performix, Playback Organizer, Renaissance, Scenario Replay, ScreenSense, Tienna, TotalNet, TotalView, Universe, Wordnet are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of NICE Systems Ltd. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

This press release contains forward-looking statements as that term is defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such forward-looking statements, including the statements by Ms May, are based on the current expectations of the management of NICE-Systems Ltd. (the Company) only, and are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause the actual results or performance of the Company to differ materially from those described herein, including but not limited to the impact of the global economic environment on the Company's customer base (particularly financial services firms) and the resulting uncertainties; changes in technology and market requirements; decline in demand for the Company's products; inability to timely develop and introduce new technologies, products and applications; difficulties or delays in absorbing and integrating acquired operations, products, technologies and personnel; loss of market share; pressure on pricing resulting from competition; and inability to maintain certain marketing and distribution arrangements. For a more detailed description of the risk factors and uncertainties affecting the company, refer to the Company's reports filed from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including the Company's Annual Report on Form 20-F.   The forward-looking statements contained in this press release are made as of the date of this press release, and the Company undertakes no obligation to update or revise them, except as required by law.

SOURCE NICE Systems Ltd.