Five9 Signs Its “Largest Deal Ever”, AI Bookings Rise By 15x

Five9 has signed its “largest deal ever” with a Fortune 50 company and prominent US bank, which serves 70MN customers worldwide.

The win will generate over $50MN in annual recurring revenue (ARR) for Five9 over “several years”.

Delighted to share the news during an earnings call, Mike Burkland, CEO of Five9, said:

We’re thrilled to add this win to our previously announced megadeals such as the parcel delivery company, the healthcare conglomerate, and the global healthcare insurance company.

“As a result of this win, enterprises and the financial services industry are taking notice, and they’re already pulling us into large financial services opportunities.

“As a reminder, our market success is not just due to our award-winning platform, but also because of our people and our partners.”

The bank had spent several years looking for a provider with a global footprint to deliver an innovative, secure, and scalable CCaaS solution.

As that search continued, it persisted with a complex patchwork of legacy platforms, which features systems it acquired directly alongside those picked up through merger and acquisition (M&A).

To move off that environment, the bank will leverage Five9’s Aceyus platform to centralize and normalize data from across this myriad of systems.

In addition, it will leverage Five9’s full omnichannel offering, intelligent virtual agents (IVAs), and workforce engagement management (WEM) suite powered by Verint.

Lastly, the bank will utilize many integrations to over two dozen CRM platforms – including Salesforce and ServiceNow.

How Five9 Secured the Megadeal

As hinted, Five9’s Aceyus solution and tight partnerships with other CX ecosystem players proved significant draws for the Fortune 50 organization.

Yet, Dan Burkland, President and CRO of Five9, also credited Five9’s fixation on delivering business outcomes – alongside its hands-on sales approach.

“They really wanted to understand how would we help them deliver business outcomes… and you have to demonstrate that,” he said. “You can’t just put up slides and talk about what you’ve done before or what you’re going to do for them.

So, we had dozens of people, technical folks from the bank, that spent several consecutive days here on multiple occasions to really understand that.

The CRO also tipped his cap to Five9’s professional services team and how they helped build trust beyond in the vendor’s people, partners, and – of course – tech.

Finally, he highlighted the role of AI, with the bank wanting to utilize different AI engines across CX use cases. Five9’s vendor-agnostic approach allows them to do precisely that.

The 15x Growth in AI & Automation Bookings

“Our AI strategy is simple,” said CEO Mike Burkland when reflecting on its role in the megadeal.

“We combine the power of the industry’s leading engines with contextual data unique to each of our customers.” That is evident in Five9’s new Click-and-Customize GenAI Studio.

“We have always believed it’s optimal to leverage the best engines in the industry,” he continued. “The arrival of generative AI has further validated that strategy. Because of this, we believe we have established a significant lead in this market.

Nothing speaks to the success of our strategy more than numbers. For example, our AI and automation ARR bookings grew 15X year-over-year in the first quarter.

That AI momentum helped Five9 secure a “record” bookings quarter, with Burkland also crediting partner and channel momentum that “has never been better.”

Further Takeaways from Five9’s Q1 Earnings Call

Overall, Five9 enjoyed another successful quarter in Q1, with revenues reaching $247MN, which represents a 13 percent year-over-year (YoY) growth.

In doing so, the CCaaS stalwart smashed past its guidance by three percentage points.

Of course, the megadeal and surge in AI bookings helped, but Mike Burkland also credited blossoming relationships with CRM leader Salesforce and BT.

Discussing the former, he said:

We have become the first and only CCaaS partner of Salesforce to reach summit status. This is a major step forward for our partnership and it gives us early access to releases and APIs so that we can stay at the forefront with Salesforce.

“It’s a big deal. It’s a really big deal. It’s a big deal to them. It’s a big deal to us.”

Meanwhile, regarding BT, the CEO praised the progress of its go-to-market reciprocal arrangement, in which the telecom provider resells Five9 solutions and the CCaaS provider resells BT connectivity.

“This is not only proving itself in the UK and Ireland markets but also in other parts of the world where they have been instrumental in helping introduce and secure Five9 business,” Burkland said.

Elsewhere, Five9 tightened its telephony integration with Zendesk to tackle the typical data management challenges contact centers have with third-party voice.