(art/sa) News on Another Teleservices Company
"ICT subsidiary gives company flexibility"
Peter Key Staff Writer
LANGHORNE -- Timothy F. Kowalski joined ICT Group Inc.
in 1997, when the company was just a teleservices firm.
Today, the Internet figures prominently in ICT Group's
plans. So prominently, in fact, that earlier this year,
ICT Group created a subsidiary to provide
customer service to companies that do businesses over
the Internet and named Kowalski to run it.
"We really believe, on a go-forward basis, it is going to
be one of the major drivers of the company," Kowalski said.
The subsidiary is called iCT ConnectedTouch.com LLC.
ICT Group created it in the middle of February and
named Kowalski its president about six weeks
later. Kowalski had been ICT Group's chief information
officer and vice president of systems and technology
since joining the firm and its chief e-commerce
officer since December of last year.
Since he helped formulate ICT Group's Internet strategy
and equip the firm with the technology to make it possible,
Kowalski was a logical choice to run iCT
ConnectedTouch.com. Despite the new title, he will
pretty much continue what he's been doing.
That, plus the fact that ICT Group had pretty much
rolled out its Internet-targeted offerings prior to
launching iCT ConnectedTouch.com, raises the question
of whether creating the subsidiary was necessary.
Not surprisingly, Kowalski said it was. ICT Group did so,
he said, "to bring the appropriate focus of the entire
company to bear on providing Internet services."
In a statement the day the subsidiary was launched,
ICT Group Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
John J. Brennan said it will enable the company "to
quickly and cost-effectively capitalize on the substantial
growth opportunity presented by the increasing demand
for consistent, personalized support for
e-commerce sales and service."
Services offered by iCT ConnectedTouch.com include
e-mail management, which entails, in part, generating
automated responses to e-mail when appropriate
and routing e-mails to the people best-equipped to
handle them; customer support for Web users provided
by ICT Group employees who can chat and talk
over the Internet with the people they are working with;
and customer-relationship management, which uses software
to track customer interactions so that
marketing efforts can be better customized for their targets.
That's all pretty much par for the course in teleservices.
What ICT Group considers to be one of its biggest
differentiators in the Internet customer-service field
is a service it began offering in March called HostedTouch.com.
This effectively takes the software used to provide all
ICT Group's Internet customer services and makes it available over the Internet to others that want to
use it. As a result, it gives companies that want
help handling their Internet customer service three
options: they can hire ICT Group to do it; they can
have their own people do it with ICT Group's technology;
or they can do some aspects of it with ICT Group's
technology and have ICT Group handle others.
Stephen DeLucia, an analyst who follows ICT Group for
Sidoti & Co., said the company is "one of the first
traditional call-center companies to offer the
(Internet-related) services on a hosted basis."
By doing that, DeLucia said, ICT Group gives its customers
more flexibility. For example, they can use their own
people and ICT Group's technology to service Internet
customers when their business is normal and add ICT Group
people during exceptionally busy times.
Another twist in ICT Group's approach to Internet
services is that it plans to offer them overseas.
"In Europe ... the Internet is rapidly coming up to speed,"
Kowalski said. "It's not quite where it's at in acceptance
in the United States, but it's not quite as far behind as
it used to be and we're solidly positioned to support the
European market as well."
Like other teleservices firms, ICT Group is aiming its
Internet-related services at all companies that do
business over the Internet, regardless of whether they're
Internet companies or not. For example, ICT Group had
been providing Bell Atlantic Corp. with sales and
service support, but recently also began providing
it with e-mail management and Internet sales support, too.
Kowalski said ICT Group expects Internet-related services
to provide 10 percent of its revenue this year and much
more in 2001. The company posted revenue of $153.1 million
last year and its first-quarter revenue of $41.3 million
was up 12 percent from a year ago.
ICT Group earned a record $4.75 million, or 39 cents per
share, last year. Its net income in the first quarter
was up 20 percent from a year ago to $1.21
million or 8 cents per share.
Despite those results, the company's stock price has
been falling much of the year. It hit its 52-week
high of $15.63 on Dec. 23, fell to $4.50 April 17
and is now around $6.50.
Still, DeLucia has a buy rating on ICT Group stock, in
part because of the company's Internet efforts.
"I think they've got a good strategy," he said. |
