Enterprise organizations during the first two years of the Covid-19 pandemic rushed to adopt new meeting technologies and upgrade network services to address sudden shifts in the work environment. Having grown anxious and dissatisfied with services they may not have had time to properly evaluate, they are ready to become shoppers again, Windstream Enterprise’s new chief revenue officer told Fierce.
Michael Fiacco recently was named CRO at Windstream Enterprise after several years with Lumen Technologies, where he most recently served as SVP of enterprise and financial markets. Before Lumen, he worked at Level 3 Communications and Verizon Business, and his industry experience reaches back to MCI WorldCom in the late 1990s, so he has seen plenty of business communications technologies come and go.
In an email interview, he declined to comment on his departure from Lumen, but addressed other questions regarding his new role at Windstream. Below is a portion of the Q&A edited for length and clarity.
Fierce Telecom: Some telecom providers have talked about seeing lower churn activity in the market during the pandemic - how do you create revenue opportunities in that environment if customers aren’t actively shopping?
Michael Fiacco: For us, that notion of low churn seems to be a fallacy. While our customer base has remained quite stable, we still find significant numbers of customers that are dissatisfied with solutions they hurriedly deployed in the initial phases of the pandemic. From meeting solutions that were too complex, too feature-lean, too expensive, too poorly supported, etc., to networks unable to keep pace with the explosion in work-from-anywhere, we’ve found customers anxious to bring more stability, security and utility to their teams. So, dissatisfaction is high and our job is to help customers see a path forward, one with products that meet their specific needs paired with deep technical expertise on the support side.
FT: The current environment also is characterized by rising prices. What’s your view about when and how much to raise prices when your supply chain also is raising prices on you?
Fiacco: There’s no doubt that there’s a lot of pricing pressure in the market today. In spite of that, our goal is to continue to offer high levels of value to our customers. We’re fortunate in that much of our portfolio is based on our own proprietary intellectual property—and we have our own network backbone upon which much of our connectivity offering rests. So, we’re somewhat less exposed to those inflationary pressures vs. some of our competitors in the marketplace. We [also] have what we call the Rate Lock Guarantee and, simply put, when you upgrade your legacy UC or network to our OfficeSuite UC or SD-WAN solutions your rates are guaranteed for the life of the contract.
FT: Are there technologies Windstream Enterprise has been adopting that have been under-hyped to the enterprise market? SASE perhaps?
Fiacco: First, I think there is already entirely too much hype out there when it comes to technology for the enterprise. Windstream Enterprise is appealing because our focus is on the customer’s needs vs. some new flavor of tech we’d like to sell more of. So sure, SASE is exciting for us, but it isn’t a one size fits all solution. For many customers it’s exactly the right step beyond today’s SD-WAN. For others, there are solutions and service bundles that provide a better fit. If anything, I’m excited to build on Windstream’s legacy of bringing solution expertise to our customers to develop a deep understanding of their situation – future needs, legacy investments, and current challenges – and then architecting a solution that makes absolute sense for them.
FT: From a marketing standpoint, what is the image Windstream is projecting to the enterprise market?
Fiacco: We’re no stranger to the complex environments that mid-market and enterprise-scale organizations face. From broad macroeconomic challenges and the rapid pace of technological change, to the specific challenges common in verticals like financial services, healthcare and retail, we have the hard-won expertise to reduce and simplify that complexity for our clients, allowing them to thrive.
Another big part of our differentiation comes from our secure-networks expertise, especially in those verticals I just mentioned. Enterprise organizations typically have large legacy networks, cobbled together over time, across mergers and acquisitions, organic growth, etc. The results are often networks that don’t perform as well, are less secure and are more prone to disruptions. As the foundation for cloud-based applications like unified communications and omnichannel customer experience, this isn’t an ideal situation.
Our expertise and wide solution portfolio allow us to help customers build a rock-solid base from which to access and leverage applications across the cloud. For many reasons, this network piece is more important than ever before and Windstream Enterprise is pretty unique in having this combination of expertise, experience and portfolio to help customers navigate towards a better outcome.
FT: How are macro issues and broad changes across the telecom ecosystem affecting the enterprise market, and how is Windstream Enterprise responding?
Fiacco: There are many macro challenges impacting our customers—including but not limited to tighter IT budgets, shifting business priorities, accelerating digital transformation or technical staff shortages. Today’s enterprise customers clearly have their plates full. For that reason, we believe our clients should expect more from their service provider. Most customers don’t have the time, talent or bandwidth to be managing the intricate security, connectivity and collaboration needs of their organization on their own—nor should they be. Rather, they should be leaning on a trusted partner like Windstream Enterprise to bring the core capabilities and professional expertise that can help address these challenges head on, in ways that make sense for them. This leaves the client free to invest their industry-specific expertise and capacity in ways that can bring significant value.
The evolution of technology is happening at such a blistering pace, and businesses have been forced to operate differently to meet their clients’ more sophisticated needs and expectations. For instance, this has resulted in the great migration away from legacy TDM solutions and towards more capable and flexible solutions like SD-WAN. Couple this with the most recent evolution of network and security, which is ushering in the next wave of innovation with SASE. When Windstream Enterprise launched their SD-WAN solution five years ago, they established their position in the marketplace as a leader to support companies struggling to find network solutions that offered the high-capacity and security required to support cloud-based apps and services. The next adaptation of this effort is happening now with the melding of enterprise networking and security into a single construct via a cloud-native SASE framework for greater simplicity, security and flexibility. We understand the roadblocks that stand in the way of our clients’ success, which is why Windstream Enterprise continues to make huge investments in its processes, people and tools to address their needs, without disrupting the digital experience.