Mark Morgan, Intelisys President, sits down with VP of the Spectrum Enterprise Partner Program Michelle Kadlacek to discuss Spectrum’s bandwidth and connectivity solutions for the remote workforce.
Mark: Good afternoon, everyone. I’m Mark Morgan with Intelisys, and today in our Remote Workforce Spotlight, I have with me Michelle Kadlacek, VP of Spectrum Enterprise Partner Program. Did I get that right, Michelle?
Michelle: You got it right, Mark. Thank you for having me today.
Mark: Well, thank you. It’s great to see you again. It’s been, I was thinking when we just jumped on this call, when was the last time we saw each other face to face? Was that Monterey?
Michelle: Yeah. I was about to say, it’s Monterey. It’s been a while.
Mark: Yeah, and we’ll come back to Monterey in the fall. That’s right. So it’s very good to see you again, and I appreciate you taking the time out today to chat with us. And I hope all is well with you and your family.
Michelle: Absolutely. Thank you.
Mark: Well, cool. I’m going to jump right in. We’ve got just a few questions. Early on, we all got on calls. Intelisys did, with suppliers, and you guys were one. And one of the things that we were very considerate of and concerned about was the impact of COVID-19 on all businesses. And I know that you guys did a lot early on to help partners adapt and help end customers adapt. Can you give us some details on some of the things that you’ve done?
Michelle: Absolutely. I think it goes without saying that this has been a very challenging and difficult time for everybody, right? We understand that we’re all going through a very challenging time, and clients especially have had to adapt extremely quickly. Spectrum has been working to ensure that our clients, as well as our partners, stay connected and they feel supported. We have serviced thousands of business customers across the country with our temporary bandwidth upgrades, with service adjustments, and even remote work solutions, to help keep businesses moving forward. Spectrum has really focused on strengthening our network to support a greater need for those wider-end network services, and really that increased bandwidth. There was a huge, huge demand for an increase in bandwidth. And we’ve also provided just scalable solutions to businesses that can adjust their services at just the snap of your fingers based on those ever changing business needs that just seem to keep happening today.
Mark: One of the questions I have is, early on, we were considering a number of solutions around going remote. So help me understand. As bandwidth and connectivity has moved from centralized office locations, how have you helped? How have you really helped end users manage that, just your connectivity going remote? What are some of the offerings you have that might be of interest to the channel?
Michelle: Yeah. Spectrum has really … We helped our partners and our clients in a variety of different verticals, really, to solve those problems that we thought organizations were being faced with. We know that partners play a critical role in ensuring that their clients have the right amount of bandwidth, and to help keep those business owners operational. Not just operational, but secure, Mark. I mean, this has been a new and really evolving world with security. Spectrum has been offering those temporary bandwidth increases that I mentioned to secure that connectivity, along with providing new offers to our partner community, to help sell and assist them as they really restart and jump back into this post-COVID world.
Mark: And so as you look at … If you look at your offerings, what are some of the product changes you’ve made to … You talked about security. That was one of the big questions very early on. As we get outside of our local network and move remote, what are some of the product offerings that you have?
Michelle: Our FIA product, our fiber internet access product, has always been our flagship product, right? So we really improved that to support businesses with multiple locations, regardless of where they’re located, either in our footprint or outside of our footprint. We’ve made enhancements to that product as well as our SIP product.
And we also launched what we called a solutions pricing tool, which enabled our partners the ability to very quickly quote multi-product deals as well as our security products and our wireless internet backup solution to support those growing demands that we saw businesses needed.
On the coax side, we offered connectivity solutions for businesses with employees that were working from home, those remote workers, for business, internet, and voice services. Keeping those workforces connected and producing at a high level was really important to us and to Spectrum.
We also launched our Spectrum Mobile product, which I know Intelisys is a big part of. We launched that to our partner community. And Spectrum Mobile is really built with two simple plans that we’ve gone to market with. They have an unlimited data plan for $45 a month per line for a 4G and 5G, as well as an option to purchase it by the gig for $14 per month. Mark, this product is really competitively priced in the marketplace, and we’re saving subscribers up to 40% off their current provider that they have today. So customers can choose any of the latest devices that are in the world today, or they can bring their own device with no contracts. So, pretty impressive that we’re not locking clients into that. And what you see is what you get. Our Spectrum Mobile has all the fees and taxes baked into it, so it’s a product that’s allowed our small business owners to stay connected more than they’ve ever been able to.
Mark: Yeah. One of the first questions–when we went remote back in early March–from our team was, “Hey, are you going to cover my cell phone bill? And are you going to pay for the increase I’m going to need in bandwidth in the home?” And so how have you guys helped resolve that? Because it’s an interesting dilemma for companies. And even us, we put 2,000 … over 2,000 people went remote within a two-day period.
Michelle: I am happy to say that Spectrum is offering several different promotions and offers both on the fiber side, as well as the coax side. So first on the enterprise side, we have a three month free promotion to clients that we’re offering today, as well as a discretionary FIA promotion to help customers who need that pricing flexibility to stay connected, as well as minimizing some of their economic impacts that we know that they’ve all faced–and that they’ve all had to deal with through this COVID-19, as it relates to business closures or even losses of revenue.
And then on the coax side, we also recognize that small businesses are the backbone of the American economy, right? And we’re supporting those businesses with a national grand reopening offer for new coax customers. We launched a one month free business recovery offer that helps our customers as they reopen their doors to the public. And this offer has been … It’s really been successful. A lot of our customers are using this offer to get back into business, open their doors. And the offer features one free month of service with free installation. Our internet, voice, and video services are all bundled into this promotion. So I encourage our partners–as you’re helping your clients get back and opening their doors again, to reach out to your channel manager, get more information on these details, if it’s something that you’re not familiar with.
Mark: That’s fantastic. That’s a great offer, and I have heard a number of our partners talking about that. So it’s a great offer from Spectrum. It’s a great offer to help these businesses get back to business, and we’re all looking forward to that. So one last question before we wrap up. What can partners look forward to once we start getting back to whatever the next normal is?
Michelle: We coined this year kind of the “year of automation” for Spectrum Enterprise. We are really focusing on updating our tools and our resources to give partners more reason to think Spectrum first. We’ve improved a lot of our existing products. As I mentioned, our FIA product, that went national; and we’ve rolled out new products from a managed services standpoint. And we continue to a support large number of remote workers, as we have with our managed solutions product offering, to really help keep clients protected. And of course, we continue to really be product focused, to deliver fast, reliable access for our partner community.
We’re currently developing a new onboarding process for our partner community, right? And we think it’s really important that as partners join Spectrum Enterprise, that they understand what our differentiators are, and how to position and sell Spectrum services. And of course, we’re going to continue to enhance and roll out new managed services solutions because we know that clients today had this kind of ever-changing work environment that we know needs to stay secure.
And Mark, for the time being, a lot of us are still doing virtual meetings. So all of our partner briefing sessions will remain virtual, obviously for safety reasons. And then all of our big-group face-to-face partner meetings will remain virtual as well. And we’re all just focusing on improving our overall partner experience. We’re taking this time to really focus on how we can best support our partners. So reach out to your regional channel managers, make sure that you visit us on our partner link, where you’ll always get the latest news, information and happenings within Spectrum.
Mark: Well, that’s fantastic. And as you said, everything that we’ve done, I mean, Intelisys has always been a very close … We have great relationships in the channel with both our Supplier Partners, such as Spectrum, and our partner community. And we’re so used to doing everything face to face. We’ve had great events. We’ve moved 100% of what we do to digital. And soon, we’ve got our big Channel Connect event that will be a 100% digital. So we appreciate what you guys do and what you do for the channel. And I sincerely appreciate you taking time out of your day to talk to everyone. So it’s great to see you.
Michelle: Absolutely. Mark. Thank you. I appreciate the partnership, and that everyone in Intelisys and ScanSource. Stay safe, and I look forward to seeing you real soon in the field.
Mark: Same here. Thank you.
Michelle: All right. Bye bye.
Mark: Bye bye.
