Nextiva Helps Partners Make Communications Simple

The world of business is more complex than it was 10 years ago. Companies need to be nimble and have technologies and solutions that handle increasingly complex problems.

That’s where Nextiva thinks it can help its channel partners.

The voice-over-IP company has been around for six years, and it has more than 90,000 customers. But recently it decided to launch a channel program to help reach more businesses that could take advantage of its suite of communications services.

“Everything we had done was mostly direct up until then, and we knew that having partners is going to take us to the next level,” Ira Feurestein, director of sales for Nextiva, told virtual-pbx during ITEXPO Las Vegas earlier this year.

Nextiva thinks there is a real opportunity to simplify communications technology for businesses, and it can help its channel partners make complex communications problems simple.

“One of the big focuses for us as a company is taking our partners and helping them be better at solution-based selling,” noted Feurestein. “We’re living in a more and more complex world when it comes to needs of businesses, so Nextiva is really focused on creating applications and add-ons to our voice-over-IP services to enhance them and make them better.”

By tying together various solutions via apps and add-ons, Nextiva can simplify adoption for customers who can get overwhelmed having to learn a number of different platforms.

“We really consider ourselves more of a communication collaboration company rather than just a communications company,” Feurestein added, citing the company’s brand new Nextiva Meetings product as an example. It competes directly with other services such as join.me and GoToMeeting, but it is easier for customers because it ties right into their existing Nextiva VoIP business phone system. One click and the system calls the customer, dials into the bridge and makes the connection dead simple.

“The biggest thing is that it has got to be easy,” stressed Feurestein. “When you put in a new communications system for customers, generally the average person loses it—they freak. Because it is new. So it has got to be simple. It has got to be easy. It has got to be the same experience from device to device, whether I choose to use my Android phone or my tablet or my laptop, it needs to be the same experience.”

Edited by Alisen Downey