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This week we had the opportunity to sit down with Mike Nowak, who is the Chief Revenue Officer of BCM One. I won’t steal his thunder, but if you’re not familiar with BCM One, they are an MSP, with what Mike describes as a Nordstrom class approach, to customer fulfillment. BCM One is in connectivity. SD-WAN, SIP, and they’ve got about a million UCaas seats out there.
I’m excited to have Mike join us as he’s a great speaker, dad to two girls, and a self-professed builder. In fact, he goes out and builds stuff in the yard for stress relief. During our conversation, we talked quite a bit about the pandemic, including the moment when they realized it was going to be something on both a corporate and worldwide level after Channel Partners was canceled.
Prepared for Remote Work, and Return to Work
This was the company that was already prepared for remote work as they’re in the space, but Mike shared how depressing the pandemic reality was and how shocking it was to see empty offices, stopping traveling, stopping seeing partners and customers.
Mike shared some great insight into how even though the office vibe is sort of lost, at least to some degree, it’s really about trusting your people and creating leadership opportunities.
Plus we chatted about what BCM One’s return-to-work policies are going to be going forward. Their approach and decisions may be useful to you and your business.
Teams as the Pandemic Default
BCM One is also a partner with, on a handful of the collaboration platforms, WebEx teams, plus they have their own platform.
We talked a lot about MS Teams became the default in the pandemic and how companies are now trying to figure out what their long-term strategy looks like. Mike cautioned against people just saying: “Hey, this is what we did in the pandemic, so let’s just do that going forward”.
With the realities of hybrid work, it’s about figuring out requirements. We explore key questions such as: How do we want to work? Who do we want to be going forward? Plus, we had a fun conversation about desk phones and whether they matter. (We even talked about fax!)
Mike also talked about security. You know, businesses rushed into decisions. They made mistakes. And we got a mulligan if you will. But now’s the time to figure out what the businesses should look like on a go-forward basis, both from a security perspective and from a collaboration perspective.
The Evolving Role of the CIO
Lastly, we dove into the role of the CIO and how their role changed within the pandemic, and how they now have a strategic seat in the boardroom. We chatted about how the real key to holding that seat is to become a student of P&L as a tech leader so you can contribute to strategic conversations in the boardroom.
You can listen to the whole episode on your favorite podcasting platform and be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss an episode.
LINKS FOR THIS EPISODE
BCM One’s Website
BCM One’s Facebook Page
BCM One’s Twitter
BCM One’s LinkedIn Page
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