New Fusion Channel Chief Q&A: Fair to Integrate MegaPath, Birch Channel Assets

… sell additional services to that end user and get the mind share of the partner that’s typically used to looking at a siloed solution. Maybe in the case of Birch it’s a traditional service, which is often just small percentage of what the customer spend is. We’re interested in the 90 percent that we don’t have. We may have 100 percent of the 10 percent, but we’re interested in getting the rest of that business, which are the services that Birch traditionally did not focus on. That’s where you start bringing in the cloud services and the connectivity services and security. We can bring into that a one-stop focus to deliver a single invoice and a single technology platform. A single “back to pat.” We want to bring a solution across a unified platform to an end user, versus selling a product set.

CP: What would you like to say to Fusion partners?

MF: I enjoy doing this because of working with the different entrepreneurs that are out there. There are so many different variants of the same business model. The thing that’s brought me to Fusion is the opportunity to pull this all together. I really like the portfolio of services in the cloud. It’s focused on the highest growth areas of the business. And the opportunity is to put three good programs together and make one great program.

It’s an extremely channel-focused enterprise. Seventy-five to 80 percent of the services sold will be coming through the channel — that’s the goal of the company. And when services are not coming through the channel, there’s teaming and channel integration capabilities. So it’s an extremely channel-friendly organization. Whatever you could say about me, you could also say about Dan Foster [MegaPath president and chief operating officer turned Fusion chief revenue officer], who is well known within the channel. It’s an extremely channel-biased company.

CP: Is there anything else you’d like to add?

MF: My additional responsibilities are not just to manage the traditional agent channel. We’re going to be establishing a very robust reseller program as well as expanding our program into our Canadian assets, which is called Primus – appealing therefore to both channel partners that are in the U.S. that sell up into Canada as well as Canadian native channel partners.