Since the beginning of the 21st century, West Corporation has been good two or three acquisitions each year, focusing on enhanced communications services, including audioconferencing, intelligent “alerts” and E911 (enhanced emergency calling). With VoiceXML platforms from HollyConnects and Tuvox safely ensconced in the corporate infrastructure, West has purchased Twenty-First Century Communications (TFCC) a company with a long history of providing high-volume emergency alert and inbound call management systems for utilities, government, public safety and corporate applications.
West has partnered with TFCC for roughly fifteen years and the companies are well acquainted with one another. West will position TFCC’s services as part of its Unified Communications segment, where the foundational acquisitions include Intercall (for conferencing), West Notifications Group (which is tightly knit with multi-modal alert company Televox) and SKT Business Communications Solutions, which was acquired in August 2010 to provide the professional services and project management skills that make it possible to knit together cloud-based solutions with enterprise IT infrastructure.
The acquisition signals that West Corp. is well-aware that outbound alerts, in all their modalities are one of the largest opportunities among so-called Communications-Enabled Business Processes (CEBPs). TFCC’s niche, of high-volume call handling and notification is a near-perfect application for hosted services because they provide an automated, resource “on-call” for times when spikes in call traffic occur by definition. Providers of such services customarily charged a fixed monthly fee for keeping guaranteeing call-handling capacity during times of emergency and these charges make for a nice annuity for service providers.
Dating back to its acquisition of CenterPost Communications (which customized notification services to suit the whims of United Airlines customers and passengers), West learned that the ability to customize intelligent alerts is both a differentiator and a source of professional services revenues. The acquisition of TFCC positions West to garner the full spectrum of revenues: Non-recurring professional services, annuity and activity-based while leveraging both home-grown and acquired assets, clients and experience.
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