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Twilio - Acquisition of Ytica Signals More Assertive Approach to Expansion in the Contact Center Market

Twilio took a significant step forward in its quest to become a leading player in the contact center infrastructure market with the recent acquisition of Ytica, a specialist in customizable contact center reporting, speech analytics and workforce optimization software.

Over the past few years, Czech-Republic based Ytica had become an increasingly valued Twilio partner. As the relationship evolved, it became apparent to Twilio’s management that Ytica had what they saw as the most robust cloud architecture for WFO as well as a similar perspective on the value of customization. One of the other reasons that Ytica was a strong fit for Twilio is that it is an enterprise-grade solution which is built for scale. Since Flex is a platform designed for the world’s largest contact centers, Ytica’s ability to handle the level of volume Flex aims to support makes it even more valuable.

Delivering a higher level of WFO functionality is an important element of Twilio’s competitive strategy. “Workforce optimization is critical to every enterprise’s contact center and when executed effectively, can be a differentiator for savvy companies,” said Patrick Kolencherry, Senior Product Marketing Manager for Twilio Flex. “By providing key insights into a business’ customer interactions, WFO has the potential to inform strategy for every function of the organization. Twilio now provides this opportunity to our customers and partners via Flex WFO, powered by Ytica. We will also offer Ytica as a stand-alone product for those who want to integrate WFO into existing solutions.”

Kolencherry also noted that while Ytica is already available to Flex customers through the existing partnership, the integration will tighten as the Ytica team joins Twilio. For example, the Ytica functionality (real-time feedback, etc.) will become native to the Flex experience as opposed to a separate view in the interface.

The acquisition is well aligned with Twilio's ambitions to improve its standing in the contact center market and create a competitive advantage over existing call center infrastructure giants that deploy on-premise call center hardware and software traditional legacy vendors such as Cisco, Avaya, and Genesys. “Enterprise customers looking for a robust contact center solution that works out of the box will find that with Flex,” noted the Twilio spokesperson.  “On the other hand, those that are looking to build a custom solution from the ground up or personalize their existing solution by adding additional capabilities will still able to do that with Twilio’s APIs. And in addition, they will now also have Ytica as one of those building blocks.” Ytica's platform will still be offered as a standalone product to other contact center SaaS vendors.

Twilio is taking a conservative approach in forecasting the financial impact of the Ytica acquisition. They have not updated guidance for 2018 and at this point are not sharing any projections on performance for 2019. Already an international company, Twilio has now opened its 17^th global office in Prague. Twilio plans to invest heavily in this location, growing headcount with a specific focus on hiring for the Flex team.