OPGs to Hipsters: Enterprise Connect 2018 Recap
March 20, 2018
I just spent the last week in Orlando, Florida at Enterprise Connect, meeting with Five9’s great customers, our partners, industry analysts, as well as my industry colleagues. It was another successful event filled with informative sessions, and a great opportunity to connect with customers, analysts and partners in person.
The Five9 team kept busy the entire week. Between the great speaking sessions, booth demos, partner programs, analyst reception, customer dinner, and meetings, there was never a dull moment.
On Monday, Five9’s SVP of Global Enterprise Sales, Jim Nystrom moderated a panel with Five9 customers Teladoc, Rocketloans, and Microsoft Dynamics 365. The panelists discussed how their organizations are embracing digital transformation and the steps they are taking to make it a reality. The session was great, but even better when the audience chimed in. One of the customers in the audience commented, “Everything the panelists are saying is true as I’m an existing Five9 customer and they’ve never let me down – they are amazing!”
On Tuesday, Jim Hickey, VP of Product Innovation and Strategy, rocked it on a session led by industry analyst Sheila McGee-Smith, McGee-Smith Analytics on Monday. Jim was part of a panel discussion with executive though leaders from the contact center market. The panel discussed technology trends, including cloud, digital transformation, and AI.
Wednesday started early with our customer McKesson who joined other industry experts on a panel moderated by the great Sheila McGee-Smith. Some key topics included what drove their decisions to update their contact center infrastructure and why they chose a cloud approach for their businesses, the return, etc. .all in all a compelling session and always fun with Sheila as the moderator.
And the Five9 booth, well it was a hit. Looked amazing, with the new Five9 Corporate Positioning around Digital Transformation, many demos and conversations with customers and prospects – blowing out our lead projections. There was also some extra fun with giveaways and prizes, such as a Plantronics headset and co-branded socks with Tetra-VX and a joint raffle with Calabrio where the winner received a Fitbit. Five9 also partnered with Verint for the booth crawl, which was a blast.
I’ve been coming to this show for over 15 years, and it is amazing how much this industry changed since then. It started as VoiceCon, with the OPGs (Old Phone Guys) touting their best PBX or hardware and now it’s all cloud with top brands, like Facebook, Slack, Google in attendance, represented by a hipster looking crew, talking about the merits of collaboration and how to provide the ultimate customer experience. All in all a great week, insightful meetings, blowing out lead #s, and just connecting with the team made it all worth it.
I’m already looking forward to Enterprise Connect 2019!
