Significant US Contract Win

Eckoh plc (AIM:ECK), the global provider of secure payment products and customer contact solutions, today announces it has secured a three-year contract to provide Coral (the contact centre agent desktop product), to a US Fortune 100 telecommunications company. This is a significant extension to an existing client relationship.

Eckoh has an exclusive contract to sell Coral, and over the last two years the telecommunications company, who is one of Eckoh’s largest clients, has deployed the market-leading desktop into parts of its contact centre estate, as well as other Eckoh services. This new contract represents the next phase of their process to implement Coral, and their commitment to three years of support suggests Coral is their long-term desktop of choice. As previously highlighted, the timing of Coral contracts is difficult to predict as the sales cycle is extremely protracted as the clients are typically very large organisations for which this is a long-term decision.

The agent desktop is the interface through which a contact centre advisor interacts with the end customer, using a variety of engagement channels. Coral is differentiated by its ability to support multiple CTIs (‘Computer Telephony Integration’) and CRMs (‘Customer Relationship Management’), allowing large contact centre estates that have differing technology to provide a standardised approach and common interface. It is proven to work at scale with live deployments of over 20,000 agents and was the first desktop to be delivered over a browser using secure HTML5 technology, enabling large organisations to implement quickly and roll out new features almost instantaneously.

The contract is worth a minimum of $3.8m to Eckoh, comprising $2.1m in licences and $1.7m for maintenance and support over the three-year period. The support element relates partly to the new licences and partly to the existing licences, which will now be charged at a reduced rate due to the increased volume. As Coral is the only product that Eckoh actively sells that is not its own technology, the revenue from both licences and support is subject to a revenue share with the company who developed the solution. We would expect all the licence revenue to be recognised in this year’s income statement, of which approximately half will be paid on to Coral. We expect our levels of Coral support revenue for this year to be largely unchanged.

Nik Philpot, Chief Executive Officer, commented:

“We are extremely pleased to have secured this important and valuable Coral contract from one of Eckoh’s longstanding and most significant clients. Following a highly successful initial deployment they have selected Coral as the desktop of choice for their contact centre operation. Because of Coral’s unique features, we have always believed that it would be adopted by some of the very largest organisations globally, and this contract confirms the benefits that Coral delivers.

Eckoh’s US operation is targeting the largest enterprises across our entire range of solutions, and then actively cross selling into those clients. This contract is another illustration of that strategy proving to be highly effective.”