Max: 00:03 Welcome to the tech in 20 minutes podcast, where you will meet new tech vendors and learn how they can help your business. At Clark Sys, we believe tech should make your life better. Searching Google is a waste of time, and the right vendor is often one you haven’t heard of before. Hi. I’m Max Clark, and I’m talking with Meredith Karam, who is the VP of Global Distribution for Intrado.
Max: 00:22 Meredith, thanks for joining.
Speaker 2: 00:23 Thanks for inviting me, Max. I appreciate it.
Max: 00:26 So, Meredith, what does Intrado do?
Speaker 2: 00:28 We are a technology enablement company focused on mission critical communications. That is everything that we do is all around mission critical communications. And we have 4 segments of growth when you double click into the Entrado portfolio to see what’s under the hood. And so we have enterprise collaboration, we have digital media, life and safety, and then health and wellness. And if we start first with enterprise collaboration, it’s all about being a video first communication collaboration company.
Speaker 2: 01:04 UCaaS Hosted Voice, it’s about enabling remote work to keep teams engaged, to keep teams productive. We support business continuity to ensure that teams remain connected, but also collaborative. And we focus, our work to deliver business outcomes and to make sure that everybody’s communicating the way that they wanna communicate. We have unparalleled partnerships with Cisco and Microsoft. We also have our own proprietary solutions as well that allow us to go down market, up market.
Speaker 2: 01:40 We can stay within North America. We also can can expand globally as too.
Max: 01:45 And then you have you said digital, life and safety, and health and wellness.
Speaker 2: 01:50 So if we start with digital media, this is really all about enabling companies to take events virtually. So if you think about investor earnings day, we work with those officers of firms so that they can communicate stakeholder value, and we have conversations with them on how to maximize that stakeholder value coupled with working, with their public relations teams on how can they influence the media and build trust in their brand. And then also internally, we work with their communications teams to strategize on how can we use our virtual events platform to fuel motivation and culture.
Max: 02:33 So in the life and safety world, Intrado is literally powering e 911 communications between other service providers and the 911 dispatch centers. Is that I mean, is that correct?
Speaker 2: 02:46 Yeah. It’s actually really powerful. We actually in in our life and safety portfolio, we keep people connected with everyone that they need to be connected to from a critical alert perspective. And so when you think about the call routing technology and how do first responders know where to go when an enterprise customer dials 911, that’s us behind the scenes, making sure that the calls are getting answered and that the answering points have the location data they need and to get the emergency dispatch done.
Max: 03:26 So, I mean, when you say mission critical, I mean, this is I mean, seriously mission critical in a sense of people dial 911, they’re having an emergency, they need to get to a dispatch, they need emergency services to respond. I mean, this isn’t about just an enterprise being able to communicate internally or externally. This is life critical communications that you support.
Speaker 2: 03:46 It’s about saving lives, and there’s nothing more important than that. You’re absolutely right.
Max: 03:50 For people that don’t know, what is Carrie’s Law, and what does it mean for an enterprise?
Speaker 2: 03:56 Carrie’s Law is a legislative work that came out a couple of years ago in response to a woman who died in a hotel room, and her children were in the room. She needed help, and they were trying to dial 911. Well, we all know in grade school that when you’re in when you’re in a when in a hotel, you gotta dial 9 to get an outside line, but in grade school, no one tells you to dial 9 first. Or to get a hold of a 911 responder, you have to dial a 9 to get an outside line. And so the children there trying to save their mom was trying to get 911 and couldn’t get an outside line because they weren’t aware of of that 9, that that first digit they had to dial to get an outside line.
Speaker 2: 04:45 And so Carrie’s law is all about making sure that you don’t have to dial that 9 at first to get an outside line. And what’s really great about it is that with the technology routing that we provide, the first responders know exactly where to go. So it’s about enhancing that location data and going beyond an address so they know what hotel room you’re in or if you’re in a school, what building in the school you’re in, what floor you’re on, where in that building, north, south, east, west. It tells them exactly where to go to help keep community safe and to respond the right way.
Max: 05:24 And so Intrado is enabling Kari’s Law not just for your service provider customers that need to be able to comply and integrate with the PSAP system, but also for enterprises that need to support and extend their operations to speed response time for emergency, you know, personnel to actually reach people.
Speaker 2: 05:45 You’re absolutely right.
Max: 05:46 So, you know, when we go back and we say, okay, obviously, mission critical, you’re powering e 911, that would mean that Intrado is is probably suited excellently to provide amazing service and quality when you look at collaboration, video, and UCaaS, and voice, and and chat because you have this, I mean, very critical infrastructure underlying all of that. So when we talk about when we look at enterprises evaluating and thinking about, you know, what do we wanna do, and do we wanna be a Cisco, or do we wanna be a Microsoft shop? How do you help them with those transitions and that migration and understanding, you know, where they should actually fit and how you facilitate that?
Speaker 2: 06:23 Yeah. So and you you hit it spot on that we are uniquely positioned to enable organizations throughout the journey, and that’s what we focus on in our needs assessment with customers and with partners is having that conversation around where they are in their journey so that we can then knit together whether it’s, you know, Cisco or Microsoft or our proprietary. And we’ve actually been taking out or and making about about the power of and because it’s really about Cisco and Microsoft integrating together into customers’ environments. And so with the portfolio that we have and with the expertise that we have, we can pivot whichever direction a customer needs to go, but it all starts with having the right conversation. And so right now, especially with the pandemic going on, customers are coming to us saying, how can we think outside the building now?
Speaker 2: 07:19 Or, hey, Intrado, with all the different backgrounds of our employees, what do you suggest for us to work harmoniously together? And, you know, what do we need to understand about this growth in the new reality? And there’s this whole aspect of social selling and and how can we have relationships with customers? How does that change in the new world order? And so with our hosted voice portfolio, we can achieve anything and everything a customer wants to achieve on their own time schedule.
Speaker 2: 07:50 And that’s what’s really, really important as a phased approach.
Max: 07:54 Alright. And so that’s an interesting conversation topic because, you know, COVID and the reaction to it became very rushed of, okay, we have to immediately change our operations and what do we do. But you’re talking a little bit more about a strategic long term plan of, okay, now we are altering the way our business and our employees are gonna communicate with each other and collaborate internally and externally and with customers, and and where does this fit now in the world?
Speaker 2: 08:20 Yeah. So I think you’re right. At first, everyone was just grabbing, like, whatever they could, you know, for survival mode is what it was. And now we’ve gone into, like, phase 2 and 3, which is, okay, how do I dig into my larger ecosystem and talk about full integration? And then the next part is, okay, who needs to work from home and how do we enable them to work from home?
Speaker 2: 08:46 And so for for our from our perspective, the way we work has forever changed. And work is no longer where you go. It’s what you do. And we make remote work work is what we say. And we’ve seen, like, some megatrends around this, and there are some other things that’ll follow, but I’ve never ever seen business continuity become more of a strategic imperative than where we are right now.
Max: 09:17 Something Something else you said earlier that I really liked was not Cisco or Microsoft, it was Cisco and Microsoft. And this is a dialogue that I know a lot of enterprises are having as they’re evaluating their communications portfolio. Are we Cisco HCS and Webex collaboration teams? Are we Microsoft Office 365 and direct routing? How does Intrado, you know, help help an enterprise go through that decision?
Max: 09:39 And, you know, are they 1 or the other, or are they both? And and and what does that look like?
Speaker 2: 09:44 Yeah. So it’s really fun, actually. So when we are meeting with business customers, we’re focused on what their objectives are and what their outcomes are, and then propose and deploy solutions with those features and capabilities that meet their specific needs. Everything is very tailored. It is not a, you know, one size fits most type of approach.
Speaker 2: 10:08 And so with our unparalleled relationships with Cisco and Microsoft, we’re a technology provider for them and so and a and a learning partner with them. And so they will come to us with new technologies and want us to pilot them and put them in our incubator and figure out all the bugs and then how do we go to market. And so because of that, we have more deployments than anybody in the world from, HCS perspective or, you know, hosted voice perspective, which means that we’re extremely well versed in those solutions. And when you add in the Microsoft, when you talk about Office 365 and you talk about Microsoft Teams, we have options that meet the needs, you know, starting with the small business customer as they grow to midsize all the way up to global enterprise organizations.
Max: 11:03 So since you mentioned small business and global enterprises, I mean, what kind of customers are you servicing today? I mean, how small of small business do you support and how big of enterprises do you have in your in your customer base?
Speaker 2: 11:15 Yeah. So when we talk about hosted voice specifically, we look at everything from a seat count perspective. And when you look at on the large global end, we have over 70% of the Fortune 100 companies that lean on us, as a global provider for them, you know, services for technology from a hosted voice perspective. And then now with our Microsoft Teams offer that we’ve rebranded calling MaxConnect, we can go all the way down market to a single location, you know, that has 25 employees. And so we can we we really are all the way around the globe and up and down.
Max: 12:00 And so do you end up with a specific sweet spot in terms of, you know, industry or segment or geography or vertical? I mean, you know, e 911 obviously has a very specific, you know, service provider or PSAP centers. But what about with the enterprises? I mean, how do they find and select you?
Speaker 2: 12:16 Yeah. So so, typically, whenever we look at verticals, you know, retail’s been a really hot topic right now, manufacturing, oil and gas, financial education. So we have vertical expertise across all of that, and we have a really strong partner community like yourself, Max, where we marry you, if you will, with experts on our side so that we can talk about, the needs out there in the market and how and we build a joint, you know, go to market strategy together of how we’re gonna go out there shoulder to shoulder to make it easier for business customers to find us.
Max: 12:55 So this idea is interesting because you talk about enablement of remote work, you know, as work and maybe a misconception of, oh, we’ve got a phone, and we can just take that phone home, and now we can work from home. I mean, that’s really only scratching the surface of what remote work really looks like and what it means. And as you layer into and you start talking about your digital and health and wellness practices as well, I mean, it’s it’s a much bigger conversation with somebody to help them navigate and changing how their workforce actually works. I mean, what are you guys doing for that and how do you see that evolving now over the next, you know, year to 2 years?
Speaker 2: 13:30 Yeah. So one of the questions from a health and wellness perspective is, and you might have heard this also, but it’s, how can corporations untangle society’s current and future complex problems, and how can we create this psychological safety during a time like this that’s just been so disruptive out in the market. And so our health and wellness portfolio really is critical here because it helps to improve employee health and wellness, increasing productivity, you know, and working with or augmenting or extending the benefits teams and the HR teams to make sure we’re really driving the utilization. And even internally here with Intrado, our human resources team is now sending out notes on, you know, tips of the day of how to take a break from your laptop and the types of foods we should be eating and to get moving. And if anybody’s experiencing any sadness, how to treat some of that and ways to be better leaders in the business and and kind of giving us skills and capabilities that we would need to thrive, not only in our business life, but also in our personal life.
Max: 14:51 It’s gonna be a very interesting process, I think, for all involved to make this transition. And, you know, leaning on people that can help and provide that skill set is gonna be essential for so many.
Speaker 2: 15:03 I think what you’re onto here, Axe, is that this remote work revolution is really only the start of a much bigger digital transformation, which will profoundly change the nature of work, how organizations are designed, and and really this human element of what does it mean to be an effective leader. You know, this is the dawn of a new age.
Max: 15:31 So this isn’t a very technical conversation at this point. We’re talking about much much, you know, different things in terms of soft skills and enabling soft skills with technology. And, you know, I mean, that would lead into from an organization, you know, if you I mean, you have experience with this with Intrado and and with your teams. I mean, what happens if if this is not addressed and if companies don’t get ahead of this shift and and supporting their employees to this change and supporting them through, you know, you know, right now, remote work or, you know, future options for remote work? I mean, what what are the stakes here?
Speaker 2: 16:03 This is my opinion, but from our perspective and the reason I bring this up and I share it with you is because I don’t see enough or I don’t hear, I guess, enough people talking about it. And I think it’s important for everyone to know that we take employee safety and business continuity very seriously. And conducting meetings without sitting right there with each other, there’s a way to still do it with video face to face experiences where you don’t have to compromise your safety. And everyone needs to be leveraging these collaboration solutions to keep teams engaged and to keep them productive. And so I think there’s gonna be winners and there’s gonna be losers, and that’s just how it is in in every industry in the world.
Speaker 2: 16:52 But I love that you’re doing this podcast because it’s important for us to get the word out and to share with people their options on how they can continue their business and also expand their business, you know, in this new culture that we’re in.
Max: 17:06 So, I mean, normally, like, a conversation line would be, how would a business leader know that they have a problem to solve? You know? And right now, that is, you know, I need to support remote work or I need my my employees to be able to work from home and collaborate internally or use their phones externally. Right? It’s a pretty simple problem solution.
Max: 17:23 Okay. We had an on premise system. We wanna go to a a cloud based system. You know, as we’re talking about this, though, we’re getting to it’s it’s a much deeper dialogue. Right?
Max: 17:32 You’re not talking about how do you enable, you know, taking your phone home or using a soft client or or getting onto a video remotely. You’re talking about how do you change the nature of your your business to support that. And that’s a it’s a very unique, you know, dialogue in this in this time.
Speaker 2: 17:48 Well, it is. And it’s about it’s about us taking a pause and under and figuring out what do we not need to understand in this new reality. And how do we tap into opportunities to create new markets during this disruptive time? And together, how do we work harmoniously? And so at Intrado, for example, every week, I get a text message and an email where HR is saying, hey.
Speaker 2: 18:17 I care about you. Tell me you’re okay. Tell me where you are, and how are you doing. And then we’ve been doing some fun things to get people engaged over video that typically we would do, you know, on-site. But it’s it’s an interesting feeling to invite everybody into your home, and everyone’s seen my pets, you know, and I’ve been on calls where one of the kids have come in the room saying, hey, daddy.
Speaker 2: 18:43 Why don’t you stop working and take a break and dance with me? And so I think we’re just having to have a lot more patience and to realize, this human element here and all the stuff that we’ve been balancing. And it’s no longer, about, you know, putting it off. It’s about how do you integrate your work life together.
Max: 19:03 So as we go back to your portfolio here, and we we talk about digital and life and safety and enterprise and health and wellness, I mean, at first, it feels a little confusing of of why these different verticals. But then as we talk about it more, you can see how it layers on top of each other. I mean, you have this life and safety, you know, how do you communicate in an emergency? And how do you communicate as a day to day? And how do you communicate externally?
Max: 19:24 And then how do you support your internal employees and staff across different methods of communication to improve their, you know, health and wellness and which in turn should improve productivity and and satisfaction and employee care and sorry, customer care, etcetera. I mean, am I stretching too far? Is that actually the intention here?
Speaker 2: 19:43 You know, I mean, I wish you sounded like me when you said that because that was perfect. We’ve been enabling remote work for over 30 years with this broad portfolio that we’ve had of tools that really focus on keeping employees safe and connected. And that’s why at the beginning I said, you know, everything we do is around mission critical communications, and we enable those technologies so that everybody can do what they need to do and what they wanna do and wherever they wanna do it. It doesn’t matter anymore. That’s why I was saying that it’s no longer about work is where you go.
Speaker 2: 20:16 It’s just what you do.
Max: 20:18 Meredith, thank you so much for your time. This has been very interesting for me. Thank you, Max. I hope you have me back soon. Oh, interesting for
Speaker 2: 20:22 me. Thank you, Max. I hope you have me back soon. Oh, so do I. Thank you very much.
Max: 20:25 Thank you. Thanks for joining the Tech in 20 Minutes podcast.
Speaker 2: 20:28 At Clark Sys,
Max: 20:30 we believe tech should make your life better. Searching Google is a waste of time, and the right vendor is often one you haven’t heard of before. We can help you buy the right tech for your business. Visitus@clarksys.com to schedule an intro call.
