Sinch’s recent spate of blockbuster acquisitions feeds into the prevailing trend for omnichannel solutions, according to CEO Oscar Werner.
So far this year, Sinch has acquired Inteliquent and MessageMedia for over $1bn, MessengerPeople for €54m, and Pathwire for almost $2bn. It also received a $1bn cash injection in March to assist its inorganic growth strategy.
Werner told UC Today that these strategic acquisitions were made based on the trend of customers wanting to engage with enterprises through their own preferred method of communication.
“We are at the stage where the vast majority of communications between consumers and enterprises are single channels,” he stated.
“But we are also in a trend which is just gaining traction rapidly and very powerfully which is omnichannel communication. Enterprises see that and consumers are demanding it.”
Werner acknowledged that though the demand for omnichannel solutions is still low it is gathering pace quickly, and the individual segments that make up omnichannel are robust.
“The text messaging market alone is around $20bn, and the voice market is $50bn – these are humongous markets on their own,” he noted.
“When you're [integrating those markets] it’s going to take time; I think it will take 20 years before everything is integrated – that's the scale. We're talking about huge scale businesses. It’s going to take a long time, but the trend is there, and it is extremely powerful”
Partners will play an “important” role in delivering Sinch’s expanded portfolio to customers, Werner stated, adding that it intends to partner with the big cloud platforms and systems integrators.
I want the enterprise to combine the value of all of this to get the ultimate value – that's absolutely crucial,” he stated.
“We need to be extremely partner-oriented to reach every single enterprise on the planet because there is no other way [a company can do that].”
