Bridgepointe Buys PPT Solutions, Supercharges CX Consulting Chops
Bridgepointe strategists can tap into PPT's deep CCaaS expertise and services to help new and existing customers.
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Bridgepointe chief strategy officer Scott Kinka said that for agents, CCaaS and CX represent the most common technology bucket where clients require upfront consulting. That’s in part because customers who change their CCaaS platforms do so because something is broken in the current system.
Namely, the implementation process was broken.
“If a contact center implementation goes poorly, it’s almost never that the platform doesn’t work. It’s that they didn’t install it smartly. The customer didn’t know what they didn’t know,” Kinka said.
But the challenge with consulting customers around this technology is that partners must engage with an entirely different person. Although the CIO and CFO are still peripherally involved, partners will primarily engage with the client’s contact center leader. And that means speaking an entirely different language.
“They’re talking in terms of their NPS. They’re talking in terms of the average speed of answer, mean time to repair, mean time to book an order. It’s just a completely different lexicon, and they’re expecting different things,” he said. “That’s the one challenge: How do you speak that buyer language?”
Kinka said an average strategist can make due when engaging with midmarket and SMB contact centers, oftening leveraging solutions engineers from the vendors.
However, Kinka said more and more deals revolve around specific business needs than technology platform requisites.
“It’s not like, ‘Give me a piece of software that does X.’ That’s not the question they’re getting asked. What they’re getting asked is, ‘I need to be able to answer the phone faster. I need to be able to get people offshore. I need to go to get people at home. I need to be able to get 50% of my calls to not actually make it to somebody in the contact center, but I want them to be able to be self-service.’ They are needs-based conversations, and it’s hard for your average seller in the field to translate that into, ‘Oh, you need 10,000 seats of Five9,'” Kinka said.
PPT Solutions can give Bridgepointe strategists the consulting firepower they need to answer those questions. And PPT, which specializes in CX solutions, connects to a customer base that has engaged with Bridgepointe agents for all of their other technology needs.
“The strategist has done the network. The strategist did the WAN. The strategist did the data center. Maybe they’re in there on UCaaS, and then the CCaaS opportunity comes up,” Kinka said.
Kinka said its CX supplier partners have given enthusiastic feedback to the deal.
Kinka, who came from the vendor Evolve IP, noted that although vendors provide installation and professional services to end customers, those functions, especialy that of consulting, don’t match their core value proposition as SaaS providers.
“The service providers are not getting credit for net revenue retention (NRR). You know how they’re all valued. You know how the street looks at them, how the equity markets look at service providers. It’s subscription revenue against how much capital you have to spend,” Kinka said.
Moreover, the acquisition of a CX consultancy and professional services firm fits with predictions from partners that the vendor community will offer more financial incentives to certified deployment partners.
“There are projects they would prefer to not get involved in if they can avoid it and deal with a certified partner,” Kinka said.
Kinka said that in many cases, CCaaS providers were requesting PPT to get involved with customers.
“The provider was saying, ‘We need you involved in this tier, to help us to get it installed for our collective customer at the end of the day,'” he said.
In addition to contact center consulting, PPT provides various CX services.
It conducts IVR programming and design and CRM consulting. It also provides business process outsourcing (BPO). In the latter category, PPT can actually provide bodies to its contact center customers.
“This brings us BPO relationships that look like supplier relationships. We can bring agents to bear. [Customers] are saying, ‘I need a solution, and I need seasonal agents for Christmas in retail,’ and we can supply that,” Kinka said.
In addition, ometimes PPT actually functions as the administrator for client contact centers.
“Then it becomes an MRR. We’re effectively the provider on the managed services side,” he said.
PPT also provides artificial intelligence and robotic process automation (RPA) services.
By bringing in PPT’s project management and managed services capability, Bridgepointe is opening up new revenue streams.
“We’ve got both billable contract services and managed services that are designed to pull through our advisory services – our agency revenue,” Kinka said.
Bridgepointe has already seen opportunities for billable services emerge from its acquisition of Canon Group. Kinka said a Bridgepointe strategist recently found a large opportunity to leverage Canon’s telecom expense management (TEM) services for an existing customer. But that same customer may also need PPT’s services for its CCaaS needs.
PPT has used relationships with technology services distributors (TSDs) to build relationships with agents. Kinka said that go-to-market strategy will continue.
“We have all intention of continuing to work in those channels,” he said.
Kinka has emphasized in interviews with Channel Futures that Bridgepointe operates in a different swim lane than the TSDs. Although it operates certain direct partnerships with suppliers, the company openly partners with national TSDs, including Intelisys. Moreover, Bridgepointe directly touches the customer and is specifically investing in ways to expand its advisory services.
“We’ve got some some 350 strategists. There are 100 people who are actively working under the Bridgepointe brand selling every day. It’s not like we’re a TSD with 4,000 agents,” Kinka said. “It’s a totally different story.”
PPT has used relationships with technology services distributors (TSDs) to build relationships with agents. Kinka said that go-to-market strategy will continue.
“We have all intention of continuing to work in those channels,” he said.
Kinka has emphasized in interviews with Channel Futures that Bridgepointe operates in a different swim lane than the TSDs. Although it operates certain direct partnerships with suppliers, the company openly partners with national TSDs, including Intelisys. Moreover, Bridgepointe directly touches the customer and is specifically investing in ways to expand its advisory services.
“We’ve got some some 350 strategists. There are 100 people who are actively working under the Bridgepointe brand selling every day. It’s not like we’re a TSD with 4,000 agents,” Kinka said. “It’s a totally different story.”
Bridgepointe Technologies has acquired customer experience (CX) and contact center consultancy PPT Solutions, expanding Bridgepointe’s vision of providing end-to-end advisory and life cycle management services to end customers.
The deal, fueled by funding from Charlesbank Capital Partners, gives Bridgepointe’s roster of IT strategists deeper consulting expertise in contact-center-as-a-service (CCaaS) customer engagements. On the other hand, PPT can tap into Bridgepointe’s deep customer base of midmarket and enterprise clients.
“The main thing for them is the opportunity to expand those services into a customer base that we know is already ripe for it,” Bridgepointe chief strategy officer Scott Kinka told Channel Futures.
Bridgepointe’s Scott Kinka
Bridgepointe at the beginning of this year announced a $100-plus million investment from middle market private equity firm Charlesbank, with the intention of fostering organic and inorganic growth.
Its transactions have included giving partner/equity status to its most loyal card-carrying IT strategists/agents, buying partners that existed outside of the Bridgepointe ecosystem, regional TSDs that sell in a hybrid model (including RealCom Solutions), and in the case of PPT Solutions, “strategic adjacencies.” Bridgepointe’s investments in strategic adjacencies began in earnest when it acquired professional services provider Canon Group. That acquisition created Bridgepointe’s life cycle management division. Moreover, it brought on expense and mobility management services as well strategic sourcing and transition management services.
PPT Solutions
PPT has built a hybrid reputation in the channel over the years. On one hand, it is an award-winning partner organization, having sold in the agency model and won awards with Telarus. But leaders from the company said they would always remain a consultancy rather than becoming a pure agency. In recent years, the firm has positioned itself as a professional services partner for agents that want extra expertise in their contact center deals. PPT has partnered with distributors like Telarus, ScanSource and Avant to help those companies ’ subagents.
PPT’s Kris Kramer
“We were the first company of our kind to enable the channel with CX resources and solutions, and that’s the type of continued innovation we’ll be able to execute with Bridgepointe’s world-class team and tools behind us,” Kramer said.
PPT, founded in 2013, has landed in the Inc. 5000 five consecutive times. The company is headquartered in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Bridgepointe hails from San Mateo, California, although it has built up a significant East Coast presence in 2022.
Personnel
PPT’s Dennis Weikle
Kinka said it will remain business as usual for PPT’s 50 employees. PPT Solutions will retain its branding and operate as Bridgepointe’s CX arm. PPT founder and managing director Dennis Weikle and managing director Kris Kramer are taking the titles of Bridgepointe managing directors. They will lead the company’s CX division.
“Our people and partnerships are always our top priority, and joining Bridgepointe will provide everyone involved with an incredible opportunity in the coming years,” Weikle said.
In the slideshow above, Kinka speaks to Channel Futures about how PPT Solutions fills needs for both agents and suppliers.
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