BCM One Executive Interview- network aggregation and SDWAN
Automated Transcription:
Patrick Oborn:
Greetings everyone. It’s Patrick Oborn co-founder of Telarus here in beautiful studio, 19 in Sandy, Utah at our beautiful headquarters. Today, we have a very special guest. We are joined by Mike Nowack, the CRO, the chief revenue officer of BCM, one, one of our many stellar providers and one that people might not know a lot about. Mike, let’s just go through a little bit about the company itself. You guys like many other successful vendors that we work with used to be an agent, a master agent. In fact, in the Northeast, you yourself actually came from an acquisition that they made from next vortex, cuz every time I see you, I think next vortex, I think sip manage sip a lot of the stuff that, that you guys pioneered. So number one, you guys really understand the agent community better than most because you’ve been there, you’ve lived it even in fact, I think next vortex, right? You actually were also a partner that kind of graduated up the, the food chain a little bit and became an awesome supplier. So tell us a little bit about the evolution of how BCM one really kind of came from the, the agent community and became one of our indeed most stellar providers that we offer.
Mike Nowack:
Thank you, Patrick. It’s great to be with you. It’s interesting how we’ve come full circle. We started out as a master agent at BCM and that’s what we were known for and it’s amazing how we have come full circle. What really started, this was the acquisition of BCM one back in 2019 mm-hmm . And since that period, the mission was to really transform the company into becoming a supplier, but we have that experience of being a TSD. And I have that experience personally from being a Telarus subagent and working with various different providers, making sure that commissions were handled correctly, making sure that our partners were paid accordingly and we still have that heritage with us, but we’ve transformed the company really into a supplier. Right. So it’s very valuable experience.
Patrick Oborn:
That’s awesome. So tell me a little bit about the company that you transformed into looking through your website, looking through your product materials. It feels to me like you guys are a very SMB mid-market Swiss army knife of technology, right? Because you have the voice component dialed in with the next vortex. You aggregate bandwidth, you are able to aggregate that bandwidth and optimize that bandwidth with your SDWAN and manage SDWAN products. Yeah. You can throw a layer of security on there with your sassy products. Then you layer on productivity, suite things like office 365, you throw in things where your voice can actually go in and, and voice enable Microsoft teams, and, and a lot of those type of things. Where do you guys like to focus if there’s one area in there that you would say we really stand out or is it because that you can bring that consolidated technology buffet to a customer and put it all into one portal for them to operate? Like where would you guys say your focus is right now in terms of product development? Yeah,
Mike Nowack:
I think just taking inventory Patrick of what we have, we, we have made several acquisitions over the last couple years and we have inherited various different business practices. And that’s why you have a, a pretty extensive portfolio and we can do a lot of things, but the key, the core competencies that we bring mm-hmm , and that’s what I, I like to talk about.
Patrick Oborn:
And what are those core competencies? If
Mike Nowack:
You, if you look back at the history of BCM, one, one of the big values that we brought was network aggregation. That’s right. So whether it’s unmanaged or fully managed with visibility tools, that was always a staple for the company. And that is still a very lead for us. I would say our spin on that is the front end and the sales engineering experience. Mm-Hmm we put a lot of stock into that, as I know you do as well, absolutely. Setting the right expectations. So, and then having the right vendor management portfolio to extend your reach and be competitive from the acquisitions, we have a SD wan practice. We’re very focused on
Patrick Oborn:
And what SDWAN technology are you guys focused on?
Mike Nowack:
We focus on versa. Versa is our choice. Okay. What we really like about versa is the security aspects of it and able to extend the security other way to the edge. So that’s very attractive to us and we made sure that we built our practice around that to do an expert deployment of that service. And you’re talking about network aggregation. You it’s very common to start talking about security and network management. And so those are two big, big assets. And then you alluded earlier some of our history on the voice side, especially the sip trunking side. And I would say I’m still a sip trunking junkie and right. There’s a lot of us within BCM that are.
Patrick Oborn:
Is sip trunking, still a thing?
Patrick Oborn:
What say you?
Mike Nowack:
Well, most, I think folks need to realize is most of the PSDN is being delivered through sip trunking, whether it’s UCaaS or teams or what have you. And if you talk about a traditional sip trunking deployment there’s fewer phone systems that are out there, however, there’s vertical markets where those phone systems are still extremely prominent. Yeah. So you gotta know where the, the vertical markets are and those folks have a tremendous need. And I’ll leave you with this. There’s also a massive movement for folks to replace their PRIs mm-hmm and they’re doing it with sip pruning with PRI handoff, if they’re not ready to make the jump,
Patrick Oborn:
Which is still quite, if you still 60 to 70% in fact of the market, it’s not a small chunk. Yes. Right. Talk to us about the difference between sip trunking and your guys manage sip trunking. What companies need to take that next level to have it managed and have auto fail, like all the different things that managed sip trunking does. Yeah.
Mike Nowack:
I think I would start with all of the sip trunking lines that we have have certain core elements. Mm-Hmm, , I’d start there three level disaster recovery failover. So you can fail from circuit to circuit or system to system mm-hmm , that’s huge. The 9 1 1 module is really powerful. The 9 1 1 module allows you to have many DDS and not necessarily have to pay for all the 9 1 1 designations and manage it through a portal. Because what you’re really paying for is an address, right? And the test procedures that is there, the controlled portal is there. And then the manage sip trunking service allows you to get definitive troubleshooting in visibility, into every single call you make mm-hmm plus network peering, which allows you to stay on your ISP, that you send your calls out to our receiving ISPs and our service notes.
Patrick Oborn:
That sounds super geeky and interesting, but I love it. you guys are also a big Cisco house. I mean most of your managed network stuff is done on the Cisco side, including voice quality and everything else. But the thing that I found it interesting is knowing that you’re on the voice data, everything else integrated, you guys also have done some stuff in telecom expense management. Talk to us about your TEM practice. I wasn’t really aware that you had one.
Mike Nowack:
We really should do a better job of that, Patrick.
Mike Nowack:
Absolutely. So the founders of BCM one really believe that TEM was a key add on service for our agents mm-hmm and especially if they’re selling network aggregation. And so they invested internally internal development in house to build out a TEM portal interface and then build a practice around it. So we can do your true expense management.
Patrick Oborn:
Send all your bills. You’ll take care of them.
Mike Nowack:
We can make the payments for them if they choose, but the visibility aspect and the auditing is key. And I think it’s an important conversation today, but with some of the economic headwinds, I think it’s even gonna be a bigger conversation and a good in for a number of our partners to get into different customers with that product.
Patrick Oborn:
Yeah. That’s fantastic. Well, we’ve really enjoyed our relationship between Telarus and BCM one in the time that we’ve been working together. Let’s talk a little bit about that. Talk, talk to us about how Telarus partners have been winning with BCM. What, what type of deals have you seen in recent history that have made you think, wow man, the Telarus agents are, are killing it with us.
Mike Nowack:
Yeah, I think it starts with the impression that we’ve always had with Telarus agents are of a high quality group and a high integrity group Patrick. And I think your leadership and Adam’s leadership has really attracted a high quality individual and team that want to work with high quality suppliers. And I think that’s, that starts at the intention of detail and I think, think doing it the right way, not short cutting certain types of deals, the customer experience being in hand. I think that that’s a big piece of it. So I think the chemistry has always been exceptional and that’s why I think we’ve always been very big fans. The types of deals folks win. It, it really goes along with the core competencies. There’s the home run hits of course. And, and we love those whales.
Mike Nowack:
Don’t we? And, and we love ’em and they could be a, you know, a fortune 500 toll free deal using our sip trunking service. It could be a large network international network. And then we do a lot of base hits and the base hits could be, teams direct routing. They could be GCCI high deployment. It could be,
Patrick Oborn:
What does that mean for those of us that don’t know GCCI?
Mike Nowack:
GCCI and I, I think I’m getting ahead of myself, throwing out some terminology that maybe not everyone knows Patrick GCCI, think of the department of defense and you think of high security. And when you’re doing a Microsoft teams deal, you’re gonna be asked, can you do GCCI type deployments? And if those that are watching us do anything with the department of defense, I’m sure have a good opportunity there and they’ll need to make sure they’re working with teams, providers that can access.
Patrick Oborn:
And the same thing in healthcare, right. With your HIPAA compliant sip trunks, right. And everything else that you have is, is really focused on healthcare defense. What other weird certifications have you guys really undergone so that you can participate in some verticals that maybe some other vendors can’t participate in?
Mike Nowack:
I, I think one of the big one that one of our biggest verticals is healthcare. Yeah. As you’ve said, that’s huge right now. And, and really you’re just off the top. It’s it’s can you perform a, a BAA execution? Can you do a BAA form? Right. And can you, can you represent us in front of the customer with your services and the answer is, is definitely, and, and that’s, that’s probably one of the, the biggest one that comes to mind and the vertical markets that we really do a lot of work in is that healthcare sector, right? The financial services and the education sector. And those commonly have a lot of locations. Commonly are very sensitive to detail and can be one over with a very good risk mitigation story on product deployment. That’s usually very helpful and they are sensitive to, you know, certain regulations like the Ray bomb act or right car Carrie’s law, et cetera. And then we do a, I think a very good job of articulating that. And then I think the last one I would mention is any of the voice products you really have to be in tune with 10 DLC for your SMS transmissions and stir shaken to be able to sign calls, to make sure your calls can even be processed at the PSDN level.
Patrick Oborn:
Wow, that’s great. So complex when we use the word complex, but, but unique voice requirements, you guys are, are a great fit. Microsoft teams enablement, great fit anything network, network security, network optimization manage network network, operation services, inclusive. Great fit. Yeah. Let’s talk, lastly, we’ll wrap this up. Talk to us a little bit about the channel team that works for you. Yeah. You guys started in the Northeast, right. In fact, your headquarters is in downtown New York city. It is. Talk to us about your go to market nationwide and even globally.
Mike Nowack:
Yeah, I think first off Patrick, we’re a national company. Yep. That has international reach. We cater to our partners in the us with dedicated channel managers. And part of that was BCM as we’ve gone through the process as a process of acquiring companies we had reach in different markets and that was an easy add on for us. The team that came from next vortex at a national reach and then we’ve been very strategic adding to the team. And so our vision is to have very good geographic coverage for our partners to engage us. And we are a true sell with program. And if we’re not in your city, we’re, we’re really just a, a car ride or a, a plane ride.
Patrick Oborn:
So it’s the traditional models that in wins. Is it a deal edge model or depends on how big inc. Wins? Fantastic.
Mike Nowack:
Inc. Wins, inc. Wins. We love that.
Patrick Oborn:
And do you have direct sellers that partner with the agents or are you channel only what’s, what’s your primary go to market?
Mike Nowack:
We have or we’re a channel company. We do have an account management team. Okay. And then account management team. We’re very proud of because what’ll happen is we know that our channel sales organization only has so much capacity because they’re in high demand, especially on some of the more elaborate orders that they’ll have to be involved with. The account management team strategically takes over the relationship at a given time and they are their philosophy is a channel philosophy. So we engage with the subagent or the agent on the arrangement prior to the renewal. That’s extremely helpful to know, do they, has anything changed in the environment that we don’t know? Do they want to take it in a different direction? And it really keeps the harmony in place. And that’s great. So some folks just say you do it and just tell me the results. And it’s common that you see folks that had one single product from us and with the expanded portfolio, they add to it. And so it’s a win for the original.
Patrick Oborn:
The gift that keeps on giving. That’s fantastic.
Mike Nowack:
Absolutely. So we’re proud of that model.
Patrick Oborn:
That’s fantastic. And it aligns really well with the Telarus account management team too, for even like the non BCM vendors and, and you know, the, the financing program where we can take the BCM commissions and use that as collateral to help them, you know, become more liquid and, and be able to take advantage of more immediate opportunities. So it’s, it’s a great partnership. I know our sales engineering team and your sales engineering team, or get, get along great. We, we know your products really well, and we like to recommend and, and suggest you guys where you’re a good fit. And you’ve just been a fantastic supplier, fantastic partner for all these years, both on the ne next vortex side, but also on the BCM one side. So we’re, we’re really excited to have you in the portfolio. Well, Mike, thank you so much for stopping in here to studio 19 here at Telarus.
Patrick Oborn:
It’s been a great conversation. I’ve loved learning more here about BCM one. I’m sure you guys have too. If you would like to engage BCM one on any of your opportunities, please give Telarus a call. We would love to put you in contact with their channel management team, their sales engineering team, and really get that opportunity rolling for you. You can go to telarus.com and sign up if you’re not partnered with Telarus, we should probably fix that. But thank you so much for your time today and learning a little bit more about BCM one. And again, thank you for taking the time to come out here from Michigan, Michigan state or Michigan, Michigan state Sparty. Here we go. Good luck this season on the big 12, it’s gonna be fantastic year, very, very difficult year, cuz that’s gonna be a very tough, tough conference. Hopefully the rest of the universities don’t and up in that conference. But anyhow, yeah,
Speaker 3:
I think it’s gonna be the big 20 for this.
Patrick Oborn:
It’s gonna be the big 50. Yeah, but anyhow, well BCM when you guys are outstanding again, thank you so much for your time until next time. Take care byebye.