Genesys completed its acquisition of homegrown competitor Interactive Intelligence in December, and the global customer experience software leader showed its appreciation for the community by bringing its signature international user conference to Indianapolis in May — CX17.

Among the big news coming out of the four-day, jam-packed event, Genesys announced G-NINE, an innovation framework for the company’s leading omnichannel platform to help companies of all sizes deliver “magnificent customer experiences every time.” Also of note, Genesys celebrated its position in the latest Gartner Magic Quadrant report — highest placement overall for “ability to execute” — marking the ninth consecutive year for Genesys in the top-right leader quadrant.

“As our first customer conference since Genesys closed the acquisition of Interactive Intelligence, CX17 brings together the best of our Genesys G-Force with the Interactions events,” said Tom Eggemeier, president of Genesys. “We’re excited to introduce our customers, partners, and the industry to the expanded Genesys product portfolio that empowers organizations of all sizes and types, anywhere in the world, to connect with customers and employees across any channel, every day.”

TechPoint’s Director of Communications Sara Croft sat down with Genesys President Tom Eggemeier during the CX17 user conference and talked about everything from his personal background with Midwestern roots to Genesys’ plans for hiring in Indy and the importance of women in tech and employee engagement.

A few highlights from the interview:

“We’ve really been impressed with the state of Indiana. From Governor Holcomb to Mayor Hogsett here in the city of Indianapolis-Marion County, they are really committed to public/private partnerships. I really can tell you, we are in 50 states in the country and Indiana is one of the most progressive states and really thinking about public partnerships with the private industry. And thinking about how education really intersects with companies.”

“We’ve respected Interactive Intelligence for a long time, from a Genesys perspective. Gartner has something called Magic Quadrant and there were four companies in the magic Quadrant; Genesys, Interactive, AVI, and Cisco, and quite frankly, we kept losing to Interactive Intelligence in the market segments, so we really think it’s because of the great innovation of the team at Interactive Intelligence.”

“They [Interactive Intelligence] really built products and solutions that served in the market segments really effectively and had this all-in-one concept through PureConnect, and they had a PureCloud concept for a multi-tenant SaaS solution, and we kept losing to them. We thought they had a lot of great employees and great intellectual property, so we thought, ‘Hey, we have the power of two of the four companies in the Magic Quadrant (leaders quadrant) and we would be even more powerful together.'”

“We really think that women provide a phenomenal expertise in STEM, and not only that but our teams that have both women and men are more successful than teams that are just men or just women. So we think a diverse workplace, we really value that as a company. The diverse workplace is important.

“On a personal note, I have a 14 year old daughter that is really strong-willed and I want to make sure that she has as many opportunities in the world as I have and other people. So there’s also a personal agenda here from me that it’s really important that women in tech continues to grow because it’s still too small a percentage compared to the workforce as a whole. So I think we’ve got a responsibility to Genesys, but I also have a responsibility as father to make sure that women have great place in technology.”