Elevēo Partner Spotlight: Internetwork Engineering

This year, Internetwork Engineering (IE) celebrates 25 years as an integrated solutions partner. That’s no small feat given the steady churn of acquisitions and mergers in the technology sector and the challenges presented by Covid. We spoke with Brian Corum, VP of Sales for Commercial and Healthcare, to get his perspective on IE’s business and the company’s 10-year partnership with Elevēo.

Brian summarizes IE’s value proposition in three words: people, solutions and trust. “It seems cliche to say our ‘people’ are our differentiator, but it really is a difference-maker for us. We've built a culture where our average tenure of our employees is nearly ten years. Because of that, we have deep-rooted relationships with our customers and have built trust in those relationships,” he says. “Being a smaller, privately-owned, nimble organization, we've developed tried and true processes that help our customers achieve their desired business outcomes.”

Brian estimates two-thirds of IE’s employees work in technical roles, supporting IE’s consultative selling approach. “That’s a big advantage for us, because no matter how good we are at sales, marketing and operations, the quicker we can make technical resources and technical assets available to our customers, the better the outcomes and relationship.”

IE looks to its stable of solution partners to help deliver those technical resources and assets. Of the company’s approximately 100 partners, Brian classifies 20 as ‘core’ partners. Elevēo is one of those core partners, providing contact center WFM and WFO solutions supporting IE's Collaboration Technology practice.

“Proving value by showing we can help increase revenue, decrease or maintain costs or mitigate risk has always been part of our sales process. In the early 2000s, we could build a business relationship if we could do just one of those three things. Today; however, our customers expect us to deliver on at least two of the three - especially with the pandemic,” Brian says. “Every penny means so much more. Bringing in Elevēo’s solution set helps us quantify good, hard dollar savings.”

He adds, “If there's a silver lining to the pandemic, it’s that the companies that once treated IT as a cost center are now looking at it as a revenue generator or customer satisfaction improvement. In that context, Elevēo helps us expand that conversation into our collaboration technology practice, specifically into contact centers.”

IE’s results-driven approach places a premium on creating frictionless, compatible end-to-end solutions for its customers. That not only means working with technology partners with complementary solutions but with partners that gel and work well together. “We’ve always taken the oath of loyalty to the partners and customers we work with. It’s about the technology, certainly, but it’s also about trusting relationships, and by both measures, Elevēo deserves its position as a core partner."