J.P. Dundas, previously Fuze’s director of North America channel sales, has joined Edify.cx with plans to accelerate the contact center-as-a-service (CCaaS) and unified communications-as-a-service (UCaaS) company’s channel strategy.

Dundas is part of Channel Partners’ Top Gun 51, which recognizes a new generation of channel executives, those who build and execute programs in a way that drives partner, customer and supplier success. He is now Edify.cx’s vice president of channel sales and alliances, said the company will be “making a pretty big splash over the next three-to-five months.”

Dundas tells Channel Partners that one of the reasons he wanted to join Edify.cx is because he’s worked for startups in the past and “being able to come in and build the partner program from the ground up was most appealing to me,”

Edify.cx’s JP Dundas

“I’ve had my feet in the partner’s shoes for a long time now. I know exactly what they’re looking for, which makes me a great ambassador to build out a partner program the way that I think partners think is the most necessary way to do it,” he said. “Experience is the most important part when dealing with partners. They want it to be frictionless. Everyone knows that there could be an issue here and there, but If you have problems resolved fast, good communication and the tools to be able to be successful is what they’re looking for.”

Edify.cx has a 100% referral model and some of the changes that will be taking place involve taking the partner program to the next level, Dundas said.

“We are in the process and final stages of creating our new partner portal, which is going to be one of the pillars of our partner experience,” he said. “It’s going to be on our platform where you can go and deal registration, see company collateral, open tickets and have live-chat functionality videos. It’s really going to be a one-stop shop for our partners be able to go in and look at their dealer registrations, see their commissions and really be able to just feel like they don’t have to go and talk to multiple moving pieces to be able to find what they’re looking for.”

Edify.cx’s partner program is in the “very beginning stages” and Dundas is looking for channel managers throughout the country.

“We’re looking to hire two to three channel managers in the next 30-60 days,” he said. “We just brought on our new chief revenue officer (and are) hiring a sales team that will be working hand in hand together with to build this out across North America.”

Edify.cx’s business communications-as-a-service platform, Huddle, unites UC, CC and communications platform (API) functionality in a single software solution that lets users move among channels within one conversation.

“If you’re a toy company and you’re talking to someone on customer support and say there’s a toy that’s broken, you could take a picture with your smartphone and send it through the chat while you’re talking live with that attendant and they could see exactly what’s wrong with that toy,” Dundas said. “Big tech companies have really held the customer experience hostage for decades with the giant servers, complex implementations, buried software and expensive contracts, and that’s just not OK with us.”

Last October, Edify.cx received $10 million in seed funding, and as the company continues growing, “we really feel like we will be competing with some of the big contact center companies out there today,” he said.

“What I’d like to see a year from now would be definitely channel growth 100%, working through multiple partners in regions throughout the country,” Dundas said. “I’d love to see large sales growth and also be known as one of the CCaaS companies as go to among the partner community.”