Masergy CEO: Loyal Customer Base a Plus For Partners

Masergy Communications last year achieved double-digit growth and a market valuation of nearly $1 billion, and now its CEO has been recognized by Glassdoor as one of the highest-rated chief executives for 2017.

Chris MacFarland, who joined the global service provider nine years ago, is ranked 10th out of 25, with a 97 percent employee approval rating. He was recognized by his U.S. employees who shared their views online.

“CEOs tell us the Glassdoor Employees’ Choice Award is one of the highest honors they can receive because it truly reflects employee opinion about the job they do every day,” said Robert Hohman, Glassdoor’s co-founder and CEO. “We know that CEO approval ratings correlate to overall employee satisfaction and trust in senior leadership, which contributes to long-term employee engagement, ultimately helping an employer’s recruiting and retention efforts.”

Masergy offers hybrid networking, managed security and cloud communications services to medium and large enterprise customers. It serves enterprise clients in more than 75 countries.

Masergy’s Chris MacFarland

Last winter, Berkshire Partners completed its acquisition of Masergy. MacFarland said his company received positive feedback from its key partners about the acquisition.

In a Q&A with Channel Partners, MacFarland shares his thoughts on winning the Glassdoor award and what his company has to offer the channel.

Channel Partners: How has Masergy evolved, since its inception in 2000 and leading up to Berkshire’s acquisition?

Chris MacFarland: Masergy has always had aggressive growth aspirations. Our goal is to double our growth every four to five years relative to our customers. Our customer experience is the reason we have been able to keep close to 100 percent of our customer base intact. Having such a loyal and receptive customer ecosystem is a plus for our channel partners as well. Partners know that when they bring Masergy into an engagement, we are going to deliver innovation, a fully-managed and customized solution that’s agile and responsive to customers’ changing business needs.

When we deliver a solution, we know that it’s going to have a significant and positive impact on the customer’s business.

CP: You have won a Glassdoor Employees’ Choice Award, recognized as one of the highest rated CEOs of 2017. How did you get such a high employee rating?

CM: I’m certainly honored by this recognition, but the credit really goes to our team and our culture of openness. Our core values stress that employees, customers and partners are always first in our decision-making. We embrace transparency in how we conduct business. And we’re innovative in our markets so people are excited to come to work here. We recruit people who have core skills and personalities that make them good collaborators and creative problem solvers.

We offer training, mentorship and internships to help develop the next generation of technology leaders. Masergy uniquely offers a culture of innovation and transparency and that’s why people like to work here and are strong brand advocates in social media and recruitment sites like Glassdoor.

CP: What is the current status of Masergy’s channel strategy? Has it been evolving to meet changing channel and market needs?

CM: Our business is built on …

… our partner relationships and we are continuing to invest in new partner relationships as a key business objective in FY 2018. We realize that channel partners have lots of options around the solution providers they work with. Our strengths that [relate] to partners include our ability to address global customer needs in networking, security and cloud communications. We also have strength in addressing the needs of North American and Western European organizations. We have a strong track record of teaming with partners and serving all of our segments well.

CP: What are some of the latest opportunities for Masergy’s channel partners?

CM: The channel and customers are shifting from a commodity hardware/software and transactional model to a cloud-first computing model. Masergy has been ahead of the competition in these areas, able to deliver automation, virtualization and programmable solutions that take the complexity out of the equation and allow customers to respond more quickly and effectively to digital transformation opportunities. Our focus on innovations such as SD-WAN, cloud computing and support for high-performance applications allows us to help our customers and partners to anticipate change and to easily evolve to where the market is headed.

CP: Is this a big year, or perhaps, the biggest year yet for Masergy? How?

CM: Every year represents a major milestone for Masergy. In December 2016, Masergy had a major change of ownership event when Berkshire Partners, a Boston-based private equity firm, acquired us. Berkshire is committed to helping Masergy grow the business for the foreseeable future and will make significant investments and provide expert counseling in growing our solutions, sales and partner organizations. Berkshire’s majority ownership of Masergy is a very positive statement about our future and demonstrates our joint commitment to customers. This should have a major impact on our business and relieve any market uncertainty about where we are headed for the foreseeable future.

CP: How will your channel and business strategies look in three to five years?

CM: Masergy is investing in its channel organization by hiring additional staffers and managers. We hope to double our partner organization over the next two to three years and be the preferred provider of hybrid networking, managed security and cloud communications solutions to key partners and customers.