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LivePerson

When nobody answers Rob LoCascio’s question leads to the foundation of an international conglomerate.

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LivePerson is a company established in the internet and computer software sector in 1995. Robert LoCascio (famous as Rob LoCascio) founded the company to redefine conversation among people with the help of AI (Artificial Intelligence). The company’s headquarters are based in New York City and it is currently working in a remote mode so there are no other offices worldwide. LivePerson is a publicly-traded company and it has customers all across the world. LivePerson has two main products, namely, The Conversational Cloud and LP Insights.

About The Company

The main goal of LivePerson is to make the life of normal people and various brands much easier with the help of conservational AI. More than 20 years after the company’s establishment, LivePerson started offering its AI-based product. The main idea behind this conversational AI was to offer customers the technology to create AI-powered chatbots. This would help the brand answer various questions of the consumers thus taking pressure off the human service staff.

LivePerson has more than 18,000 active clients spread across the world and some of them include HSBC, Orange, and GM Financial. In 2020, LivePerson made it into the Fast Company’s World’s Most Innovative Companies list. It was Robert LoCascio who successfully invented the live chat technology for websites back in 1995.

Idea Behind LivePerson

The idea to build LivePerson and provide people with conversational AI struck Rob’s mind when he first started using the internet. Well, he had a query about a product and he dropped a question on its website. He noticed that nobody answered his question so he had to go the conventional way of dialing the number and waiting for the person on the other side to respond. After this experience, he thought that although the main idea behind the internet was to connect people in reality he had a sore experience. Rob proceeded with the idea and built an international conglomerate, LivePerson.

LivePerson
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Acquisitions

LivePerson has a big list of acquisitions and started in 2000. LivePerson’s first acquisition was HumanClick, a company that offered real-time customer service applications. In July 2006 it acquired Proficient Systems followed by Kasamba Inc in 2007. It acquired a web analytics and optimization platform called NuConomy in 2010. After a couple of years, in 2012, LivePerson acquired three companies in the same year. They are Amadesa (a web marketing company), Look.io (mobile chat provider), and Engage Pty Ltd (cloud-based customer contact solutions). In 2014, LivePerson acquired NextGraph, Synchronite, and Contact At Once. LivePerson’s latest acquisitions are Tenfold, a customer experience integration platform, and VoiceBase, a voice analytics platform.

Success Of LivePerson

After establishing the company in 1995, Rob took the company public in 2000. It was one of the last companies that became public before the dot-com bubble burst. It took almost ten years for the company to rebound and they survived the most difficult times. In 2011, the company was named Fortune’s 100 Fastest Growing Companies and Forbes 25 Fastest-Growing Tech Companies. Currently, the company is focusing to scale its voice AI innovation and that is why it acquired Tenfold and VoiceBase. In November 2021, the company was named to Inc’s first annual Best-led companies list.

About Rob LoCascio – Founder and CEO

Rob LoCascio, both founder and current CEO of LivePerson is one of the longest-standing founding CEOs in the tech industry. It was Rob who more than two decades ago made this innovative invention that helps initiate an authentic conversation between a company and its customers. He opened the door of massive opportunities for brands so that they can provide quality customer support. Apart from being a famous entrepreneur, Rob is also a philanthropist.

Rob completed his education at Loyola University Maryland and started working for Elders IXL. But, the company laid off employees after six months and Rob lost his job. After losing that job he was determined to open his business and never work for someone else. In 1991, Rob founded Sybarite Media Inc but it was shut down in 1995, the very year he founded LivePerson.

Nuance

Microsoft makes $20 billion bets on Nuance a company pioneering speech AI

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On 12th April 2021, Microsoft and Nuance made the announcement of their joint venture as the former company is acquiring the AI firm for $56.00 per share. This implies that Microsoft paid $19.7 billion in an all-cash transaction which is inclusive of Nuance’s net debt. Nuance is a very trusted company when it comes to healthcare and enterprise AI. The current CEO of Nuance will retain his position and will be working under Scott Guthrie, executive vice president of Cloud & AI in Microsoft. Microsoft is aiming to close the deal this year.

What is Nuance?

Nuance is a famous company currently pioneering in conversational AI and cloud-based ambient clinical intelligence for healthcare providers. Healthcare is a very crucial and sensitive sector as it deals with the human body and mind and not just equipment. So, providing quality AI-based solutions to the healthcare sector is a difficult task that Nuance has been conquering. Some of the products of Nuance are Dragon Ambient eXperience, Dragon Medical One, and PowerScribe One. All these products are leading clinical speech recognition software that is built on Microsoft Azure. 

Nuance
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Nuance builds its products to work with the core healthcare systems like long-standing relationships with Electronic Health Records (EHRs). This helps to reduce the burden of clinical documentation so that the healthcare workers provide better service to the patients. Nuance’s products are in high demand as it is used by 77 percent of the total hospitals in the US. Apart from the healthcare unit, Nuance also builds AI-based solutions for Interactive Voice Response (IVR), virtual assistant, biometric system, etc.

Why did Microsoft acquire Nuance?

Microsoft has been providing unique cloud offerings to a very diverse customer base. The company has significantly invested and partnered with companies that open new scopes for Microsoft in new areas. One of the new sectors Microsoft is offering is healthcare as the company introduced Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare last year. This new product by Microsoft addresses the needs of the healthcare industry as it is transforming very fast. The acquisition makes it clear that Microsoft is planning to offer better solutions in the healthcare industry with the help of AI.

The company announced a partnership with Nuance back in 2019 which turned out to be very successful. This time both the companies together are planning to augment Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare with Nuance’s solution. Also, Nuance’s expertise and relationship with EHR system providers will be advantageous for Microsoft as it will empower healthcare workers in an improved way. Microsoft is planning to do this by harnessing the power of ambient clinical intelligence and other cloud services of the company.

Moreover, the acquisition of Nuance will double the total addressable market of Microsoft in the healthcare space which in the figure is approximately $500 billion. Both the companies will also strongly commit to data privacy, security, and compliance. Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft has said that Nuance provides the AI layer in the solutions it provides to the healthcare sector and it is significantly pioneering the real-world application of enterprise AI.

Harnessing the Power of AI

Currently, AI is the most important and widely used technology that is useful in any sector especially healthcare. Microsoft with Nuance is planning to provide advanced AI solutions to the healthcare sector and medical professionals so that they can make better decisions and more meaningful connections. Since Nuance also provides advanced AI-based solutions in other fields, in the future this will come together with Microsoft’s Cloud including Azure, Teams, and Dynamics 365. 

Over the past few years, demand for conversational AI solutions in the healthcare space has significantly increased and Nuance is responding to those needs effectively. But, the room for growth of Nuance is much broader and so is the demand for products it is making. With the help of Microsoft, Nuance can scale globally and try to offer more affordable solutions to people across the world. Microsoft is the right platform through which Nuance will be able to channel its expertise more effectively while Microsoft expands its market at the same time. The deal with Nuance is a very strategic decision that will make Microsoft a very eminent company providing healthcare solutions to the world.