Nextiva Intros New Communications Platform, Pushes Analytics

NEXTIVA NextCon16 —  Nextiva, the cloud communications provider, says it is introducing a new chapter of business communication with a new operating system.

NextOS, which is set to launch in 2017, combines communication, collaboration and engagement into the same platform.

“We have built an operating system from the ground up to provide a complete view of the customer,” said CEO Tomas Gorny, who introduced the solution at Nextiva’s NextCon16 conference in Scottsdale, Arizona.

Gorny says NextOS fixes what he calls the “business communications crisis,” where organizations either use outdated communication systems or several modern solutions that lack cohesion. It’s the answer to Nextiva’s own soul-searching and a work in progress over the past two years, he said. He said his company wants to take on a more holistic identity than just a VoIP provider.

“Today, people think of Nextiva as phone the way people thought of Amazon as books,” Gorny said. “But Nextiva is becoming significantly more, and we want to be the destination company for all of your business communications needs.”{ad}

NextOS is comprised of three categories: a platform built on Nextiva’s database, intelligence engine and automation; applications spread across three categories – communication, collaboration and customer engagement; and finally, Nextiva Analytics.

Gorny said many businesses have employed as many as 10 to 15 customer communication applications, but the lack of unity among the apps leads to an “inaccurate view of the customer.” He cited a recent survey that found nearly two-thirds (63 percent) of employees fail to reach weekly goals as a result of inadequate business communications.

Nextiva’s partners will doubtless learn more over the course of this week about how they can be involved with NextOS, but the company shared other exhortations to the solution providers on Monday.

Channel chief Ira Feuerstein and Cathryn Valladares, senior sales engineer, told partners in a morning session that they need to advantage of the add-ons Nextiva offers. That’s because they offer more revenue opportunity and make customers more “sticky.”

“We want our customers to stick a long, long time. We want them to be happy, of course — that’s what makes them stick,” Feuerstein said. “But you can’t be in a residual income business and expect a long-term income if you’re not taking a play out of this playbook and selling the customer two or three or four different things to make them more reliant on you.”

The most emphasized add-on was analytics, which, according to Valladares, is “applicable to every single customer.”

“I encourage all of you, as partners who are looking to make revenue, to understand what analytics is capable of doing, the fact that it is a minimal cost for the value you actually get, and it is applicable to every customer,” she said.

Other add-ons included call center, Nextiva Clarity, Nextiva App and Nextiva Drive.

Feuerstein argued that partners need to transform their sales mindset and begin calling themselves “solutions architects.”

“Many get stuck in this rut,” he said. “And this rut is trying to sell a commodity… we are quickly moving out of that commodity business, at warp speed.”