DIRECTIONS Communication for Carriers, Consultants & VARs

March 2019 // Volume 7 // Issue 3

Your Total Telecom Resource

Welcome to this edition of GTS DIRECTIONS, the monthly newsletter with updates and information for our family of over 100 VARs and referral partners, key carrier partners, and dedicated team of in-house solution consultants. This month’s edition includes information on …

• April Event — Save the Date!

• GTS Updates — New Website and Marketing Materials

• Solution Spotlight — 10 Quick Hitters and Solution Providers you should have in your Talk Track TODAY!

• Provider Spotlight — Learn More, Win More with 8x8

April Event — Save the Date!

Join GTS, Vonage Business, and The Mako Group for a Sunrise Solutions Selling Seminar! We will be talking SaaS with Vonage Business, and learning how their UC platform is a potent, power-packed solution loaded with integrations and service offerings wrapping around SaaS. In addition, we will spend some time talking CyberSecurity with the Mako Group, a cybersecurity audit, advisory, and risk management firm based in the Midwest. We will have a breakfast buffet, a ton of exclusive content for our GTS sales partners, and we’ll still have you out the door to conquer your day at 10 a.m.!

Who: All GTS Sales Partners

Where: GTS Office // 1501 6th Street, Detroit, MI 48226 // (313) 371-9440

When: Tuesday, April 16th 8-10 a.m. (Breakfast at 8 a.m. // Presentations from 8:30-9:45 a.m)

GTS Updates — New Website and Marketing Materials

As the industry transforms, GTS transforms with it! Earlier this year, we designed new and improved marketing collateral for 2019, with short fliers, a long-form flier, and a brand new product guide. We’re also working on something very exciting: our brand new website! We’re revamping it entirely, trying to capture our core values and provide a better depiction of how we see GTS fit into the transformational landscape of telecom and cloud offerings.

Contact your channel manager to receive electronic copies, or to have hard copies mailed out to your office. Watch for the new website to drop in early April!

March 2019 // Volume 7 // Issue 3

Solution Spotlight 10 Quick Hitters and Solution Providers you should have in your Talk Track TODAY!

Are you staying optimistic and thinking “spring” in your neck of the woods? Here are some quick highlights, talk tracks, and providers to think about in addition to the sunshine we are all hoping for:

Are you talking SaaS with your clients? Have you asked if they are using O365? Providers to consider: CloudRoute, Century Link, TPx, Evolve IP

Has your organization caught up with cybersecurity? Why not start by meeting with some experts? Providers to consider: AlienVault, DDI, Verizon, TPx, Telesystem, Massive IT, Mako

Are you using next gen collaboration tools to make your sales organization excel? Providers to consider: PGi, ZOOM, Vonage Business, 8x8, Nextiva, Mitel

Are you confident you understand SD-WAN? Do you know how it could fit into your WAN? Providers to consider: CloudGenix, TPx, Bigleaf, Cato, Comcast, Aryaka, Masergy

Does your business know how IoT could help transform both your products and sales force? Providers to consider: MetTel, AT&T, Verizon, Metro Wireless, Viasat

Have you considered that there is a more cost-effective way to manage a contact center? Providers to consider: Zailab, 8x8, Masergy, Fusion, Vonage Business, RingCentral

UcaaS is exploding and helping reshape corporate communications. Have you seen a demo? Providers to consider: Call Harbor, Nextiva, Vonage, 8x8, Nexvortex, Masergy

To achieve true redundancy, we need last mile diversity. Are you sure you are truly redundant? Providers to consider: 123.NET, Everstream, IFN, Telesystem, TPx, Crown Castle, WOW!

Many customers need a direct connect to AWS, Azure, or Google. Have you discussed cloud strategy? Providers to consider: 123.NET, Century Link, Evolve IP, Cyxtera, US Signal, Rapidscale, Tierpoint

I have been asleep under a rock for 3 years! What providers are unique to GTS that I need to know about right now? Providers to consider: Call Harbor, Rocket Fiber, IFN, WOW!, TPx, 123, Telnet, Metro Wireless

Provider Spotlight — Learn More, Win More with 8x8

A longtime service provider for SIP and UCaaS, 8x8 has recently made some organizational changes to better enhance their service portfolio, as well as significantly ramp up support and project management for GTS Sales Partners. Please be sure to reach out to your GTS channel manager for more info on products, support, and deal registration with 8x8. Here are a few things to consider when thinking about 8x8 (see following pages):

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

313.371.9440 // www.gtsdirect.com

For more information, call 1.866.879.8647 or visit 8x8.com For more information, call 1.866.879.8647 or visit 8x8.com

WAVE 3

Contact Center

Telephony

Video Conferencing

One Cloud Engagement SolutionWAVE 2

Collaboration

PhoneContact Center

Meetings

Point Cloud ProductsWAVE 1

On-Premise

All Employee and Customer Interactions

Even Lower TCO Revenue AccelerationEven Lower TCO Revenue Acceleration

One System of Intelligence

Systems of Record

One System of Engagement

Although the majority of businesses believe customer experience is key to their success, very few have a communications infrastructure that enables best-in-class customer interactions. Many enterprises today have on-premise, siloed point solutions for phone, video meetings, collaboration, and contact center. 8x8 changes this paradigm with X Series.

X Series transforms the customer experience by enabling customers and employees to interact in one system of engagement. Enterprises can now optimize valuable moments of engagement with one set of data in one system of intelligence. The results are faster time to resolution at a lower cost and a better experience for customers and employees.

The 3rd Wave of enterprise communications brings the power we have as consumers to the business creating one system of engagement and in turn, one system of intelligence. With a single cloud engagement solution, you can now arm employees with the tools they need to communicate, collaborate and access the organization’s most valuable data and experts in one intelligent, easy to manage solution. One engagement platform allows you to move at the speed of employee and customer expectations, leading to less churn and more revenue.

X is• An easy transition from collaboration to phone to video• Full context with every live interaction• Centralized team messaging with all collaboration platforms• Data analytics on every employee and customer interaction• Supervisor enablement and agent feedback• Intelligent interaction between employees and customers

The experience is everything

Contact sales manager Bob Chernock @ 313-371-9440 or e-mail chernock@gtsdirect.com to let us know what additional information you would like to see communicated in future editions of DIRECTIONS.

For more information, call 1.866.879.8647 or visit 8x8.com For more information, call 1.866.879.8647 or visit 8x8.com

X is a series of plans that have increasingly powerful engagement capabilities. Each X in the series builds on the previous plan. X2 and X4 deliver a superior employee experience. This single solution for voice, chat, video, meeting, and content sharing across a unified mobile experience enables your team to collaborate from anywhere on any device. Our mobile and desktop applications integrate with your CRM and other systems of record, allowing employees to have context-rich communication anytime, anywhere. X6 and X8 deliver improved employee experience and deep customer engagement. By providing complete context and easy access to subject matter experts, customer service and sales teams are able to increase the speed to resolution and accelerate revenue. What sets us apart is our ability to provide real-time insights into the voice of the customer and your business through advanced analytics including our patented speech analytics, graphical interaction flows, granular interaction search and usage reports.

It’s all about the X

The X8 differenceBefore X8 • Customers had to repeat information they’ve already

provided and a contact center agent often responds with “I don’t know.”

With X8 • Agents are armed with complete context on customers

before they start a conversation and collaborate in real-time with peers and subject matter experts, both inside and outside the organization.

Before X8 • IT spent valuable time integrating disjointed solutions for

voice, video meetings, collaboration, and contact center only to find it nearly impossible to create a complete and unified view of the customer journey.

With X8 • IT and their business partners are able to view the

complete customer journey from initial contact to issue resolution with analytics based on a single data set for all employee and customer interactions.

One System of Engagement

One System of Intelligence

Efficient, intelligent engagement• One click from chat to voice to video• Cross-platform team messaging• Google integration• Mobile to desk/conference phones to desktop

Integrated global engagement suite with analytics • Unlimited global calling across 46 countries• Meetings for up to 50 participants• Interaction analytics

Speed to resolution • One-click subject matter expert access• CRM integration• Customer engagement analytics

More intelligent customer interactions• Integrated voice, email, webchat and social• Advanced speech and interaction analytics • Predictive outbound campaigns • Quality, collaborative performance mgt

2

4

6

8

”Delivering an exceptional customer experience is the difference between thriving and failing for a business like ours. 8x8’s X Series is the foundation Lenox needs, leveraging real-time customer data, an integrated set of communications tools and providing access to the right subject matter experts to transform our employee and customer experiences.”

—Ravi Kurumety, CIO Lenox Corporation