Merced's flagship solutions, available in on-premise, SaaS and hosted models, include Merced Service Performance Management, which provides performance analytics and dashboards, service coaching, incentive management and real-time reporting for enterprise service personnel. They also include Merced Sales Performance Management with incentive and quota management, performance analytics and dashboards, sales development and coaching, and other analytics solutions.

Merced's solutions have been selected by leading companies worldwide to improve productivity, boost revenue, and increase customer satisfaction. Customers span multiple verticals such as telecommunications, financial services, and healthcare. The MERCED customer list includes, among others, Bell Canada , British Gas, Co-Op Bank, Coca Cola, Dell, Delta Airlines, Dish Networks, Kaiser Permanente, Liberty Mutual, O2, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon.

Integrating Merced and NICE capabilities creates a closed-loop Performance Management solution. Adding capabilities such as real-time interaction analytics and real-time customer feedback to traditional data sources will deliver more accurate performance measurement and insights. These insights will then be fed into other NICE solutions such as coaching and the unique real-time agent guidance to enable organizations to ensure ongoing improvement in agent performance and customer centric processes.

Zeevi Bregman, President and CEO of NICE said, "The acquisition of Merced constitutes an important and strategic addition to our offering of enterprise-wide customer interaction solutions. Expanding our portfolio with the market leading performance management solutions will enable both NICE and Merced customers to enjoy an enhanced offering with rich functionality. Furthermore, leveraging Merced's products and market leadership in branches and retail stores, together with our customer feedback and real-time analytics, will enable us to extend the benefits we provide at these customer touch points."

Mr. Bregman continued, "We are looking forward to welcoming the Merced team of experts who bring with them extensive domain expertise. We expect a rapid and smooth integration that will yield many benefits for our customers."

Matt Glickman , CEO of Merced said, "We are proud to join the leading provider of customer interaction solutions. Through this combination, our leading performance management solutions will now be available to NICE's broad base of customers. We already have customers enjoying the benefits of the integration of our solutions with some of NICE's solutions. We look forward to joining forces with NICE and believe that our unique closed-loop offering will deliver strategic value to enterprises globally."

Under the terms of the agreement, NICE will acquire Merced for a total consideration of approximately $150 million , net of cash acquired. Additionally, NICE will pay Merced up to $20 million in cash subject to Merced meeting certain performance targets. Subject to certain conditions and satisfaction of terms, the transaction is scheduled to close by the middle of the first quarter of 2012.

The company expects Merced to add approximately $55 million to 2012 Non-GAAP revenues with a greater portion of the revenues to occur in the fourth quarter, and to add approximately $0.10 per share to fully diluted 2012 Non-GAAP EPS. NICE expects the acquisition to be $0.02 - $0.03 dilutive to fully diluted Non-GAAP EPS for the first quarter of 2012.