EP 57: Success Stories from OmniAdvisors and Silver Eagle Beverages

INTRODUCTION VOICEOVER: Dive into the world of innovation with us as we unravel the challenges, breakthroughs, and latest trends that are shaping our digital landscape. This is Tech UNMUTED, your guide to the tech revolution.

TERRY: Hey, everyone. Thank you for joining us for another great episode of Tech UNMUTED. I'm your host today on the podcast, Terry Corder with Fusion Connect, and I'm excited to bring on an outstanding customer and a partner to be able to talk about their solutions today. I want to bring on our partner, David Miller. I'm going to bring him on screen, and I want to bring on our customer, Kenny Lenfestey. Did I get that right?

KENNY: Pretty close.

TERRY: Pretty close. Sorry about that. Let me bring you on screen. Lenfestey. Yes, that's more accurate. Sorry about that. Gentlemen, thank you for joining us today. We really appreciate it. I'd love to get each of you to introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about your company. David, do you want to go first?

DAVID: Yes. Yes, I can go first. My name is David Miller. I'm the founder of Omni Advisors. Been working with Kenny for a couple of years now. Omni Advisors is an IT procurement-as-a-service company. We focus on anything and all things IT-related, hence the word Omni. We formed a relationship with Kenny a couple of years ago. That's basically the gist of it.

TERRY: Great. Glad to have you on here. Kenny, please tell us a little bit about Silver Eagle and tell us about yourself.

KENNY: Like you said, Kenny Lenfestey, Director of IT for Silver Eagle. Silver Eagle is an Anheuser-Busch distributor for the primary. We sell about 60% AB products, and we sell others like Constellation and some others, but we're a wholesale beer reseller. Part of that also is non-alcoholic beverages, so that's more of a new product line for us. It's been really lucrative. We serve the San Antonio market plus about 16 surrounding counties, and Anheuser-Busch is more territorial. You can't sell outside your territory, and others can't sell inside yours. You have that part locked up. We sell about 16 million cases a year, so a lot of stuff going and a lot of plates spinning. We needed a system that was really going to fit us, and that's why we went where we went.

TERRY: Awesome. Great to have you. Thank you for joining us today. You fed right into the next question I had for you and David is, how did that relationship evolve? You said you've worked together for a couple of years. Tell us a little bit about how that relationship evolved and got you to this point, and a little bit about what brought you here. David or Kenny, either one, please.

DAVID: I can lead off with it. Really the best marketing that I can do within my company is to make cold calls. I am habitually making cold calls, and one of the first cold calls I had made in starting this business was to Silver Eagle Beverages, but it wasn't actually to Kenny. I had cold called Kenny's predecessor, Rick Shasteen. That was his name, Kenny. I convinced him to have a meeting with me. We hopped on a call and was talking with Rick. He was super nice, didn't really ask many questions, just sat there with his hands in his hoodie just listening to me.

I gave him the pitch, and I go, "Hey, what do you think? We align with you, and we help you tackle some of the challenges you may face, and what do you think?" He goes, "Write this name down: Kenny Lenfestey." I said, "Okay." He gave me Kenny's phone number. He gave me his email address. He goes, "You're going to want to book time with him." I go, "Okay." I thought Rick was the guy, and he goes, "No, I'm retiring at the end of the week." I go, "Okay, well, I guess I'll get in touch with Kenny then." I met with Kenny, and at that point in time, actually, it was a great time to talk to him. Good and bad.

Good for me in a way, I guess, but good for both of us to develop a relationship. He had a Rackspace issue at the time. He was looking for another solution in that aspect. We immediately got to working on that project, and then from there, we developed a deeper relationship, and now we've been working on quite a few projects together, and it's been going pretty well. Kenny, I don't know if you want to expand on that at all.

KENNY: No, you're spot on. I'd been here maybe six months. The whole plan all along was Rick was going to work for me and the rest of the team, and then six months into it, he's like, "No, I think I've had it. I'm good. I think I'm going to retire." He'd been here for 20-plus years, almost 25 years by the time he left. Had some big shoes to fill and a lot to learn in a short amount of time. Rick, with having spent so many years at Silver Eagle and before that at Sedba, he really cared about the company and wasn't going to just leave us high and dry. I really trusted him to point me in the right direction on things.

When he first started talking about David, what's in it for David? Why is he wanting to help us? How much is it going to cost us and all that stuff. It took a little bit of time because Rick didn't really know the answer. It took us a little bit of time to get to that and set up time to meet with David. Then, like David said, we'd had the Rackspace debacle at the time, and it hit us the weekend that we were switching over to Microsoft 365, Exchange Online, and all that. It was horrible timing, but it could have been much worse if we'd not been prepared to do the switch. We were so busy with that, it's like, "Okay, David, sure, here, try this."

Exactly. We didn't want to get rackspaced again. That became a verb at that point, and we wanted to make sure we had backups. David went down that route of finding us a really good solution for backing up 365 because it does revision histories but it doesn't truly back up your environment. He ran the gauntlet for us, and we came up with a great solution. From there, it was what can we give David to find? He's our bulldog when it comes to finding solutions, and we're a small group. It's worked out tremendously.

TERRY: Yes, and that's a great thing to point out, and for any of our partners that hear this or any of our customers, is bringing in a trusted advisor, a partner that is going to work with you and find more than just one solution. Obviously, David came in with something that in an opportune time for him, but just really a rough time for you, was able to help you get over that hurdle and has since brought on multiple other things to work with you on, including the solution with us.

The Rackspace solution wasn't something that we would have been able to take care of at the time, but here down the line, it's developed into a relationship where David was able to bring up some of the things you're trying to resolve and the things we have resolved with you together to bring forward this opportunity. I'm glad that happenstance occurred, and glad that you guys came together because it's helped us, but it's also helped you. It's helped you continue to grow your business and focus on the things you need to.

KENNY: 100%.

TERRY: That's great. You talked about the challenges early on. Tell us a little bit about, so people are aware of what we work together on, is we work together on your Microsoft Teams calling, on your Microsoft Licensing, and then also there was the unique portion of the analog, the overhead paging that is something outside the realm of Microsoft but needs to be tied in there because you're replacing a voice solution. If you don't mind, let us know a few things that you had to think about and look at in making decisions on those. Then if you can let us know those, Kenny, David, then maybe let us know how that led you to the decision to bring Fusion Connect on board to help you with those.

KENNY: Absolutely. The biggest thing for us, the reason we even started looking at a solution was we had a really old system that, unfortunately, carriers and all, I won't name the carrier, it starts with an A, ends with a T, and it's got a T in the middle. They have their own way of doing things. When they're trying to phase out technology, their MO is to make it super expensive to where it's in your interest to switch to the new technology. The thing is, when I got here, we had been fighting that for quite some time. We were spending a lot of money per month, and it was not worth it, the downtime and everything else. We were looking for a good solution.

I had put in a similar system at a former company. Wasn't super happy with the process. The product itself is fine, but we were promised a lot of things that were not really delivered. They were not delivered on time. It's a long story but could give you several examples of where things went poorly. I knew who I didn't want to go with. We had just switched probably eight months prior to Microsoft 365 as a whole after the whole Rackspace thing and implemented Teams, SharePoint, the whole thing. Getting something that was integrated with the whole system was ideal for us. The thing at that point became because of Rackspace, we didn't want all our eggs in one basket, so we didn't want to use Microsoft as our carrier.

Knowing that we've started looking, but as you know there's, I don't know how many, probably 100-plus people to choose from in the Operator Connect world and recognize some names, didn't recognize others, but David went down that route for us because he's got that dogged determination to where he can go in. He's also got experience with other customers that might or might not be doing the same thing. He went down that route and got us tied in and we started talking to Fusion Connect as well as a few others.

The lessons learned for us from the previous company I was at was don't just listen to the words, but really get into the behind-the-scenes stuff with the company you're dealing with. Are they going to be able to deliver? That was something that really Fusion Connect stood out with Ashley and the team that they had great follow-up. They had good answers. If they didn't have the answers, they got them back to us. They were just excellent. Then really, jumping ahead a little bit, we had that same excellent service throughout the whole implementation part of it.

TERRY: I'm glad to hear that. That's important. I appreciate you saying it. For those of you that don't know, Ashley Cole's one of our senior channel managers here. She's been with the organization for quite a while and does a great job. Can appreciate that. I know she really does take care of her clients and her partners. Appreciated. David, how about you?

DAVID: To be honest, we started looking at I like to call them the usual suspects when it comes to carriers. Kenny had that experience that he had with not one of those carriers, but he told me who they were. We didn't look at them, but we looked at carriers that resembled, had some similarities to that carrier. It came up that Kenny was like, "Hey, what about Operator Connect? That's something that I'm starting to hear about. Maybe we should start looking at that." I dipped into the pool of resources that I have and the vendors that I have in Fusion Connect. I really dug deep into Fusion Connect and what they do, what they're about.

Met with Ashley before introducing Fusion Connect to Kenny. Right away, I knew after meeting Ashley that this is going to be a good fit. I know that she has a great level of follow-up. She has a very honest aura to her. She presents a very "hey, this is what it is and if I can help you save money, that's what I'm going to do." I think a lot of customers really appreciate that. I tend to take the same type of approach to working with clients like, hey, I'm not going to push you into doing a project or completing something that you don't want to do or it's not even on your radar. That doesn't make sense for me. I want to build a long-lasting relationship with my customers.

If it's something that you're working on, I'm going to do everything I can to help you find the right solution for what you're working on. Anyway, after meeting Ashley, I knew it was a great fit. I brought her in, met with Kenny. We brought in an engineer and really started to dive in deeper onto aligning more with Microsoft and what they were currently doing. It wound up being a great fit. We went deep into discovery too about a lot of different aspects of Microsoft. The different types of hard phones and how it's going to work. Furthermore, the training that was provided through Fusion Connect too for the Silver Eagle side, I think was a big value as well.

TERRY: I'm glad to hear that.

KENNY: I'll go a little bit deeper on that. I've been through a lot of these implementations, and you wait for another shoe to drop. You get all the promises up front and then, okay, here it comes for time for delivery, and it falls short. The thing was with Fusion Connect where I kept waiting for that other shoe to drop and it kept not dropping and I was getting a little uncomfortable at times. This is going down here pretty far. We're almost done with this and it's still a great service. With the project management, they were on top of it. Kim Roberts was our project manager and, she followed up.

Just like David, they had a great really ability to get answers and follow up with us without really being obnoxious or heavy handed. That's very much appreciated. We do over $400 million in revenue. We've got 24 by 6 operations. We've got a lot of stuff going on. I'll miss meetings or whatever it is. It was never an issue. It was like, totally understand. They'd rebook it and we'd have the answers, whatever they were promising us. Then on the training that David touched on, Billy was the trainer that we worked with the most. Man, I don't know how many trainings we set up, which, for us is really important.

IT is really well known for doing a dump and run where we just put the technology out there and say good luck. I had promised when I came here not to do that to the company. We were really looking for somebody that had follow up. I don't even know how many sessions we had, and we've got with 24-6 operations, we've got a lot of different schedules. Billy was really great. He kept everybody interested. It was short, it was to the point, but it was really well received by all of our clients, and it just went really well from start to finish.

TERRY: I'm glad to hear that. I appreciate that. You talked a little earlier about that company that shall not be named and how they continued to raise prices. We're seeing that across the board. We see it with other clients and I'm glad that Operator Connect was the right solution for you. A lot of clients it's just moving to a SIP solution or moving to a basic hosted, but more and more the leverage of Microsoft and the global reach of Microsoft, being able to do Operator Connect and Teams Calling to replace a full phone system for something that you're already paying a good amount for really worked out well. I'm glad to hear that.

You've talked about the implementation and our great implementation team, how they've kept you on task without bringing you to task. They were able to keep things going really well. Really happy to hear that. That's something a lot of clients that I talk to and a lot of partners that I talk to say is an issue in the industry is keeping the process rolling smoothly without being overbearing. David, I know you were a big part of helping keep that implementation smooth as well. When Kenny may have been delayed for something else, I know you were involved and engaged and worked with us throughout the process. If you can give us a minute or so on that and then we'll talk about some other things.

KENNY: It was fairly quick. Like I said before, I've been through a few of these. I've got the wounds from other implementation and waiting for those things to happen too. Really the delays that we had were really related to that three initial company that we're not naming and getting the numbers ported over. That was something that Kim was able to run for us that I didn't really take the bruises. She was taking the hits for us and really staying on top of them and getting stuff done, which we all know that's a really tough thing to do with that other company. For us, that was the slowest part, but that's understandable.

What was nice about it is Kim was very proactive on I don't have the answers for you today. I know I said I would, but here's why. I'm still following up with them. Then the next day we'd have an update. It didn't necessarily need a phone call. She would shoot an email, which is very much appreciated too. I don't always have time to be on the phone. This may sound weird to say, and it's the same way with David. By the time this is all done, and it's a rare thing in this industry, is really, it almost came into a friendship. We're talking about families during all this time. I consider David a friend and Ashley and Kim too. It was just that interaction between us the whole time. Those are rare, and you got to go shout them out when they come to you.

TERRY: I appreciate that. Building that real camaraderie. That's important. We internally refer to ourselves as our Fusion family. Really, as we bring partners in and customers in, they become a part of that extended family. I'm glad to hear you say that, just out of the process, out of just day-to-day saying that same thing. Overall, results have been good. You're happy. We're moving forward. If you were to just make a statement to other customers, Kenny, what would you say to another customer that's evaluating? It doesn't have to be about Fusion Connect directly, but just what is some advice that you would have, maybe, for other businesses out there looking to evaluate, whether it be their full-tech stack, or just the voice side, or anything like that?

KENNY: It's the case with anything. It's not earth-shattering but do your homework. A lot of times people will give you references, follow up on the references. Obviously, they're going to give you the bright and shiny ones, and whatever. There's enough information on the web that you can get enough information to do that. I go back to the other carrier that we went with at my previous job, they promised a lot, but it didn't take long to see that it wasn't going to be what they promised. If you do your homework and you get a bad feeling, even after that, in the early starts of it, question your own judgment, if you will.

If you get the service that we saw, and like you said, it's not necessarily Fusion Connect Direct, but if you get that service at all, it's becoming more and more rare. When you see it, embrace it, understand it, build it yourself. Really, those things are what I'd highly suggest. At the end of the day, is something that Fusion Connect offers that much different from what other Operator Connects offer technology-wise? Not necessarily, but it's a lot of computers. You got Dell, you got HP, they got the same insides, but which one has a better warranty after the set? That's the thing with Fusion Connect, is the follow-up and everything after the implementation that's really been the gold for us.

TERRY: Cool, appreciate that. Hey, David, how about you? What would you say to other partners out there that are looking to help their clients and looking for this type of solution?

DAVID: Piggybacking off what Kenny said is do the homework but do the homework on behalf of your customer. I've heard of some partners who align squarely with certain solutions, and that's fine if that's the route that you want to go. For me, it's more about aligning with my customer, my client's wants, their needs, their desires, and then doing the homework to figure out, hey, who is the actual best fit for that customer, and then bringing them in.

Staying vendor neutral, staying agnostic, I think that's extremely important, because it'll help you to build long-lasting relationships. I like to say that I don't really sell anything because I really don't. I really don't. I do the honest work. I am very, very transparent, and I over-communicate as much as I possibly can to ensure that my client understands that, my customer knows that. Then they also understand that, hey, I'm here to help you. I have no other interests than doing that. That's probably the advice I would give.

TERRY: That's awesome. That's important, is you're working for your client. You're not working for any of the partners or vendors like ourselves out here. You're working for your client, and it makes me happy when I can bring a partner and a customer on together and hear that they've worked together and landed on Fusion Connect. I've been here a very long time, been with the company throughout all of its iterations, almost 20 years. Just knowing that we continue to put forward that positive family atmosphere that I've grown and been a part of for so long, hearing the great things about Kim and Billy and Ashley, of course, and knowing that still comes through across the board makes me really happy. I really appreciate it coming from both of you.

DAVID: I will say one quick thing. I will say that I don't necessarily align solely with specific vendors or anything like that, but I do have a client that I'm working with now who, as soon as I heard, and I introduced him to Kenny so that Kenny could have also an unbiased conversation with the customer. As soon as I heard that they were looking for a new voice solution and they wanted to look at aligning more within Microsoft, I immediately introduced Fusion Connect because of the experience that we had with Fusion Connect. Once I heard a few buzzwords, I said, I know exactly who I'm going to.

TERRY: That's awesome. I appreciate it.

KENNY: What I was going to say is, for me, word of mouth is the best seal of approval I can give, and I don't do it very often. We deal with a lot of vendors, a lot of technology, a lot of everything. The word of mouth for you guys is I've already spread the word about David and for Fusion Connect. I'm happy to do it because when you have a good experience, you like to share those because there's too many of the others. If you can head people down the right path without them going through all the bloody mess that you've gone through, or just help in some way in that, I can easily say that's the case for Fusion Connect and for David and Omni.

TERRY: Appreciate that, Kenny. I know David does, too.

DAVID: Oh, yes, absolutely. Oh, yes.

KENNY: David's going to pay me afterwards, so.

[laughter]

Totally kidding. No payback here.

TERRY: We appreciate, I appreciate both of you joining us today on our podcast and just really excited about the continued relationship. If you need other things, we're not just an Operator Connect provider, we're a full-stack provider. As you look at other things, I'm sure David will evaluate them thoroughly, as he should. Then hopefully here at Fusion Connect, because of our relationship, we can continue to work together and grow your solution, but also our business with David. I just want to thank everybody for coming on board, everybody listening and watching our podcast today. Just remember to like and subscribe to the podcast and follow us as we bring out new podcasts throughout the year. Thank you very much. Appreciate it, David, Kenny, and everybody have a great day.

KENNY: Thank y'all.

DAVID: Appreciate y'all. Thank you.

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