Last checked at 24 Oct 2016 07:00
For Immediate Release | 24 October 2016 |
Eckoh plc
("Eckoh" or the "Company")
US Contract Wins
Eckoh (AIM: ECK), the global provider of secure payment products and customer contact solutions, is pleased to announce that it has recently secured three significant contracts in the US worth over $2.5m in total over the next three years.
Two of the contracts are for Eckoh's secure payments solution charged on a Software as a Service ("SaaS") basis. This reflects the shift in the Company's US pipeline to focus on a SaaS style pricing model, highlighted in the trading update on 2 September, which over time will offer Eckoh greater revenue visibility, longer-term client relationships and higher overall gross margins.
The first contract is a two-year agreement with one of the largest manufacturers and suppliers of nutritional supplements in the US. The contract represents an important milestone as it is the first time that Eckoh has sold a hosted secure payments solution in the US market. The second contract is a three-year deal with a Fortune 500 corporation in the financial services sector. Notably, the client is a long-standing customer of PSS who Eckoh acquired in November 2015, and the contract represents the first success in cross-selling Eckoh's secure payments solutions into the extensive PSS customer base. Both contracts are expected to go live by Spring 2017 and will begin to generate recurring revenue in the new financial year.
The third contract win is a three-year agreement with one of the largest US telecommunications providers. Eckoh will provide its market leading browser-based agent desktop 'Coral' to over 3,000 contact centre agents in a brand new facility opening at the end of 2016. Coral acts as an aggregator for any underlying technology on which the contact centre may be operating. It simplifies the agent's operating screen reducing call handling time, and provides the enterprise with total scalability, a futureproof environment and allows new features to be implemented seamlessly and instantly.
Nik Philpot, Chief Executive Officer of Eckoh, commented:
"It is exciting to see the contract momentum in the US market building and for Eckoh to be increasingly securing contracts of greater value and with brand leaders in their fields. In addition, the move to a SaaS style price model will over time build a base of recurring revenue in the US comparable to the UK operation and we would expect this to underpin the growing value of the Company in future years.
Our trading performance at the end of the first half of the year has been strong and we remain confident that the revised market expectations for this financial year will be achieved."
This announcement contains inside information.
For more information, please contact:
Eckoh plc
Nik Philpot, Chief Executive Officer Tel: 01442 458 300
Adam Moloney, Group Finance Director
www.eckoh.com
Buchanan
Sophie McNulty, Stephanie Watson Tel: 020 7466 5000
www.buchanan.uk.com
N+1 Singer (Nomad & Joint Broker)
Shaun Dobson, Lauren Kettle Tel: 020 7496 3000
www.n1singer.com
Berenberg (Joint Broker)
Ben Wright, Chris Bowman, Amritha Murali Tel: 020 3207 7800
www.berenberg.de/en
About Eckoh plc
Eckoh is a global provider of secure payment products and customer contact solutions, supporting an international client base from its offices in the UK, US and Australia.
Our Haloh Suite of secure payments products, which can be hosted in the Cloud or deployed on the client's site, removes sensitive personal and payment data from contact centres and IT environments. The products offer merchants a simple and effective way to reduce the risk of fraud, secure sensitive data and become compliant with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards ("PCI DSS") and wider data security regulations. Eckoh has been a PCI DSS Level One accredited Service Provider since 2010, processing over $1 billion in card payments annually.
Eckoh's customer contact solutions enable enquiries and transactions to be performed on whatever device the customer chooses, allowing organisations to increase efficiency, lower operational costs and provide a true omni-channel experience. We also assist organisations in transforming the way that they engage with their customers by providing support and transition services as they implement our innovative customer contact solutions.
Our large portfolio of clients come from a broad range of vertical markets and includes government departments, telecoms providers, retailers, utility providers and financial services organisations.
About Coral
Coral Active is an Australian based technology company. In 2011 PSS worked with Coral to help them develop a brand new agent desktop, which was subsequently implemented at a large telecommunications company in Australia across 25,000 contact centre agents and continues to be used today.
The agent desktop is the screen that the contact centre agent uses as an interface to engage with an inbound customer enquiry. This could range from taking a call, responding to an email or engaging in a web chat. Many contact centre operations have multiple screens that the agent has to use. By using Coral these can be consolidated into a single desktop view which reduces the handling time for the agent, probably the most critical KPI in any contact centre operation.
Because the desktop is browser based using HTML5, it is secure and easy to implement and maintain, as uniquely it does not require any software to be installed on the agent's desktop. It also acts as an aggregator for the underlying contact centre infrastructure, integrating with leading suppliers such as Genesys, Cisco, Aspect and Avaya.
PSS had a worldwide exclusive contract in place to sell the Coral product when Eckoh bought the company in Nov 2015. A new agreement was put in place in January 2016.