We are celebrating! We just hit our one year anniversary since starting True North Advisory.

Wow, it’s been a year since I’ve worked remotely and I hate it. In a previous blog, Mike shared his advice in connecting in the new world. While collaboration tools have kept up with the pace of remote work and made the transition from office to home easier, it doesn’t fully replace the office.

In Scott’s previous blog, he defined what it meant to become a cloud first managed service provider (MSP) and focused on choosing their own application suite, integrating customer applications, providing access and security, and concentrating on customer success. To provide an example, we will focus on the insurance vertical.

We are very excited. Our first client Datalogue (signed in March 2020) just announced it has been acquired by Nike! You can view the press release here.

Channels have always been an important route to market for collaboration solutions, providing value added services to the enterprise in addition to reselling products. The transition to the cloud and SaaS hasn’t changed the need for this route to market, but it does impact what a channel can provide on top of the base services provided by the SaaS solutions. Channels don’t want to be “just” a reseller with low margins and little differentiation.

For most business owners, they have a website and one or two social media sites. Usually the company’s social media will have content that they posted 3 months ago or possibly last year! It is challenging to post content on a consistent basis when running a business that requires 24/7 attention. Marketing is normally the last item on a company’s priority list, however this can cost sales and opportunities to connect with customers.

In Scott’s The Morphing Contact Center, he summarizes how contact centers are focusing on the overall end to end customer experience. Technology is a key factor in contributing to this strategic shift, but let me explain why companies have a long way to go from some personal experiences.

At BroadSoft we drove the Future of Work as a core foundation of what we were about. It animated our strategic thinking and direction as well as our company positioning. We engaged in conversations with our customers and our industry. We evangelized cloud collaboration and communication tools to enable such a digitally based collaboration future.

Recently, we’ve been exploring the future of contact centers. One macro trend we see is that more and more enterprises view customer service as a key differentiator. They’re shifting strategic focus to the overall customer experience. Subsequently, contact centers are increasingly being used for marketing and revenue generation, as opposed to ‘just’ dealing with customer complaints and problems.

One day, you wake up and realize you are a CEO responsible for leading a global organization. This was my reality for a long time. In my experience, it was the best job I could imagine, leading a great group of professionals from all over the world. It was an honor to represent the company as the CEO and with the role came great responsibilities and some challenges.

We ask our entrepreneur CEO’s what are the driving assumptions underlying their business model projections (especially those they propose to share externally, including current and prospective investors)?

The world of unified communications has changed dramatically in the last few years. The industry shifted from unified communications to collaboration meaning everything is in the cloud and accessible from anywhere. Look at the market today. The leading suppliers have integrated calling, meetings, and messaging into a single unified user experience. As a result, they provide a go-to app for all real-time communications needs all in one place. And, they’re leveraging user’s data and artificial intelligence to continually provide an enhanced user experience. We have also seen the emergence of Microsoft and Google — with a renewed focus on this business. These are some examples of the many changes we have seen.

Recently, I was chatting with a buddy of mine whose daughter was trying to sort through several job offers. That is, of course, a good problem to have. But a problem nevertheless.

This time of year takes me back to the many wonderful BroadSoft Connections events that we held. Each year, the company would come together and be energized to put on the best event for our service provider community. Every event would be bigger and better than the year before.

Revenue and Billings forecasting is a lifeblood of modern technology companies. Getting it wrong can have disastrous impacts on cash flow, resource allocation, and of course can yield very uncomfortable conversations with your board and shareholders.

To those who may know me, I enjoy mountain biking. It’s my way of getting outside, relaxing and clearing my mind. Now, when I say I “enjoy” mountain biking, some of you may be rolling your eyes. Why, you ask? Because during my days at BroadSoft, I’d get caught shopping for bike parts instead of paying attention in meetings.

In previous blogs, I mentioned the importance of aligning your teams and the methods we have used. It’s obvious how important it is to make sure that everyone on your team is pursuing the same goals. However, many times leadership fails to prioritize and deliver on this.

It’s no question that COVID has upended lots of things — our lives, our livelihoods, our economy.

You might be wondering if the pandemic has claimed my mind. What in the world does pasta and leadership have in common? Well, let me share my thoughts.

In today’s world, remote working is just about mandatory. For many people, it’s a new experience and takes getting used to. As a leader, there is an extra challenge of managing a remote team. It’s a lot easier to manage a team when you’re in the same office and see each other every day. With everyone now working remotely, you really have to make a concerted effort to ensure your team is aligned, efficient and effective.