Adobe Connect is primarily sold by a network of trusted partners who in addition to delivering the software provide additional services to our customers. Most of them have been selling and supporting the product for a very long time; some since the Macromedia days. They have deep expertise to make sure the solution proposed match your needs and ensure your Adobe Connect deployment will be successful. In a serie of blogposts, we want to give you the opportunity to meet some of them. This week, we talk with Melanie Flowers, Senior Director of Unified Collaboration Product Management at InterCall.
Guillaume Privat (Adobe): Melanie, can you give us a quick overview of InterCall?
Melanie Flowers (InterCall): Sure. InterCall is a subsidiary of West Corporation and is the largest conference and collaborations service provider in the world with over 4,000 employees globally. We are a leading provider of global cloud-based unified communications services. Founded in 1991, InterCall offers telephony, messaging, event services and conferencing and collaboration tools for businesses of all sizes, from large global enterprises to small or regional companies.
GP: Do you have a global presence?
MF: Yes, InterCall has a global footprint. It is headquartered in Chicago and has a strong U.S. presence, including four call centers and 26 sales offices across North America. We also have operations and sales offices across the globe in Canada, Mexico, Latin America, the Caribbean, the United Kingdom, Ireland, France, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, China, India, Hong Kong, Singapore and Japan that managed over 130 million conference calls in 2012.
GP: How long have you been selling web conferencing?
MF: InterCall has been selling web conferencing services since 1997. We have seen tremendous success with Adobe Connect since adding it to our portfolio in 2009.
GP: Why did you choose to resell Adobe Connect ?
MF: We listened to our customers and prospects and their request was pretty clear. They required a solution that would allow multiple participants to join from any device. As the market and technologies expand, adding Adobe to our portfolio made sense – to offer a solution that is not only easy to join but can allow for robust multi-media files to be shared along with the creation of custom content to truly make your meetings unique. Adobe Connect has a specialization in eLearning and the event space, which fits nicely into our overall portfolio. Adobe is a strong recognizable brand in the market and coupled with their universally compatible Flash technology, the platform offers a solution that meets our customers’ needs.
GP: When selling Adobe Connect, what would you say is the unique value brought by InterCall?
MF: InterCall knows more about remotely connecting people in business settings than anyone else, and we are making it more seamless and more flexible to the user – without sacrificing security or quality. This is where our experience provides the most impact and value to businesses of any size. But when you look at all we offer, what really sets us apart from other Adobe partners is our Reservationless-Plus® audio conferencing service and our first class web conferencing training and support organization. We have spent the time and technology to integrate our audio conferencing with Adobe Connect to ensure a seamless audio and web meeting experience for our customers and their participants. Through this integration we are able to leverage our extensive global audio conferencing platform to provide our customers with the best end to end combined audio and web conferencing solution. In addition, InterCall is able to able to create unique offers in the marketplace, for example WebConnectUS, which bundles Adobe with both audio conferencing and event services to offer customers a premium event service for a flat fee without a long term contract.
Adobe Connect is a web conferencing platform, powering complete solutions for web meetings, eLearning, and webinars, on any device.