Images: Partners Gather at 2023 Telarus Partner Summit
More than 2,000 souls gathered in Dallas this week for education, training and networking.
![2023 Telarus Partner Summit Partners Choice Thrive Networks 2023 Telarus Partner Summit Partners Choice Thrive Networks](https://eu-images.contentstack.com/v3/assets/blt10e444bce2d36aa8/bltf89dfc61821ec9f0/6523ebba11c6ce6eb1f47079/aIMG_6224-scaled.jpg?width=700&auto=webp&quality=80&disable=upscale)
Telarus Executives recognizes Thrive Networks for being voted best engineering team by partners
Telarus CEO Adam Edwards kicked off the summit with a four-fold forecast for the future of the technology advisor channel.
That forecast asserts that: 1) the advisor community will expand and encompass more and more niche expertise; 2) more suppliers will enter the space and show increased committment – even as some of the existing vendors try to land on the proper profit balance for the future; 3) customers and CIOs will put more and more trust in advisors; and 4) the technology solutions brokerages (TSBs) that support advisors will scale, consolidate and grow more specialized.
Edwards shared similar observations in an interview with Channel Futures in July.
Constellation Research vice president and principal analyst Dion Hinchcliffe (left) hit the stage to discuss a study his firm conducted about how CIOs view technology advisors.
Constellation’s survey of technology decision makers found that most of them are open to working with a partner to evaluate vendors. But most of them currently don’t.
“Channel is underutilized. There’s an open opportunity, and there’s a hunger for it. They just don’t clearly identify it as much as they could,” he said.
Read more about Hinchcliffe and Telarus chief revenue officer Dan Foster (right) in our day one article.
Attendees congregated for some social time. Telarus hosted the summit at the Gaylord Texan Texan Resort and Convention Center.
Telarus chief product officer Patrick Oborn joined senior vice president of technology Michael Brown on stage to demo the latest Telarus technology.
Telarus added a new module to its guided sales tool. The latest module focuses on helping partners run discovery on their customers’ contact center needs.
Telarus also enhanced its commission reports and quote tracking.
Read Channel Futures’ article about the tech updates.
Telarus brought two firms into its Hall of Fame club, which encompasses the partners Telarus considers its most constant, loyal and productive partners from over the years. The members have all placed an order with Telarus for more than 100 straight months.
Strategic Telecom Partners and Invite Networks earned the nod. The picture above shows Brad Carrell, managing partner at Strategic Telecom Partners, accepting an award.
When asked by Telarus executives for his advice to his peers on working with Telarus, Carrell encouraged them to tap into the company’s resources and tools.
“Lean into it. You’ve got free resources that are here and ready to help you. There’s really no reason not to use them,” Carrell said.
The afternoons at the Telarus Partner Summit featured breakout sessions where partners learned about different technology and business trends.
In this case attendees sat in on a panel that addressed recent trends in diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging (DEI&B); namely, how DEI&B programs and their leaders them have been hard hit with cuts, only a few years after many companies vowed to build more inclusive spaces.
The panel featured Kelli Ballou-McMillan, Five9’s director of global partners (near left), Kyra Augustus (middle), Telarus vice president of pricing operations, Tom Shinners, Windstream Enterprise senior channel manager (near right) and Brandon Knight, Zoom’s head of global channel customer experience.
Telarus chief marketing and experience officer Jen Dimas (far left) moderated the discussion.
Telarus suppliers filled out the show floor in the afternoons.
Attendees enjoyed some dinner, adult beverages and dancing at the Glass Cactus facility next to the Gaylord.
Foster moderated a panel of suppliers on the hottest topic of the day: AI. Representatives from Level AI, Cox’s Logicworks, Pedowitz Group, Epic IO and Dialpad offered advice for partners on how to talk to their customers about ChatGPT and other large language models.
One overarching takeaway is that solutions like ChatGPT are not a solution in and of themselves for a business. The enterprise must determine how and where a large language model must operate within its organization, and what layers of data surround it.
Donovan Brady (second from left), director of solutions architecture for Logicworks, encouraged partners to frame the conversation around business outcomes and data optimization.
“How do you want to improve productivity? And second of all, what data do you have, and how do you use that data today? Because you can have ChatGPT or you can have some AI model, and you don’t have the data – the domain specific knowledge – it’s not going to give you anything that’s relevant to your business, to your sales process, to your productivity,” Brady told the audience. “How do you manage your data today? Where do you gather your data from? And what kind of aspects of your business can you transform?”
One partner offered a similar conclusion in an article Channel Futures published on Thursday about demystifying vendor AI messaging.
Different leaders from Telarus advanced solutions practices shared their observations.
Vice president of contact center Samantha Nelson (center) said Telarus is seeing more customer conversations that revolve around sales and marketing.
“We’re looking past just the operations of customer support. We’re actually seeing more sales leaders more chief marketing officers coming into the fold, asking what they can do and what tools they can leverage to justify their efforts, and how to tie that into the overall customer experience,” Nelson said.
Telarus honored suppliers and channel managers that advisors voted as their favorites. The Dialpad crew, pictured above, took home honors for best overall supplier.
Channel Futures assembled a list of all the Telarus Partners’ Choice winners.
Telarus honored suppliers and channel managers that advisors voted as their favorites. The Dialpad crew, pictured above, took home honors for best overall supplier.
Channel Futures assembled a list of all the Telarus Partners’ Choice winners.
We’ve officially reentered conference season in the TSD/TSB world, starting with the 2023 Telarus Partner Summit.
Technology solutions brokerage (TSB) Telarus brought employees, partners and suppliers to the Gaylord Resort and Convention Center, where it hosted a three-and-a-half day conference. Technology advisors (agents) attend conferences like these to meet with suppliers, hear about Telarus’ strategy, get trained on new tech and network with friends.
Telarus is growing organically and inorganically, having purchased multiple smaller distributors/brokerages in the last year and added several staff in multiple areas. For example, the company is making a big push in product development, having hired new leaders for that division and rolled out two new modules to its sales tool in the last four months.
Channel Futures was on the scene at this week’s event, chatting with Telarus partners and executives and writing about key trends. To read more specific coverage of the 2023 Telarus Partner S ummit, see Channel Futures’ recaps of the day one and day two keynotes. We’ve wrapped snippets from those articles, as well as juicy tidbits from Telarus’ AI panel and other content, into a larger recap.
See highlights from the 2023 Telarus Partner Summit in the 11 images above.
Then jump in the wayback machine and check out pictures from the 2022 conference.
Want to contact the author directly about this story? Have ideas for a follow-up article? Email James Anderson or connect with him on LinkedIn. |
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