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Welcome to the EasyLink Partner Site

Partner Update - Support and Escalations

Monday, 16 April 2012 11:32 Eric Westerkamp
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Eric,

No software application or Cloud based service survives for long without creating satisfied customers.  A service can be incredible, but if the organization cannot support the application when something does go wrong - customers will eventually move away.  We believe strongly in supporting our Cloud based services here at EasyLink.  That is one of the reasons we provide 24 hours a day, 365 days a year support to ALL of our customers.

As an EasyLink Channel Partner you also have an expectation of receiving top notch support.  However, supporting partners is different than supporting customers.  As a partner you are often directly in the line of fire.  You are responsible for solving the customer's issues and EasyLink is responsible to you. To make this arrangement work, and create satisfied customers, both sides need to work closely together.

Support is often mundane and routine.  A customer has an issue and they call into the partner who opens a ticket with EasyLink.  EasyLink support works on the issue and responds back to the partner.  Most issues are closed almost immediately.  Occasionally an issue is more impactful, serious or visible than others.  During those occasions EasyLink's partners need the ability to escalate issues beyond the first line of support up the chain of command.

Having a visible escalation path is something that differentiates us here at EasyLink.  Every one of our products has a chain of command within the support organization that can be used for escalation.  Something we realized recently is that we had not made this chain of command highly available to our Partners.  This is something we are fixing today.

New Support Handbooks have been added to the Support and Technical Guides section of the EasyLink Partner Portal. Each service has a guide that talks about how to get support, details the phone numbers and emails for contacting support and what to expect from different severity levels.  The most important part of the handbook is the escalation matrix at the back.  This escalation matrix gives you the contact information you need to escalate an issue.  This includes the email, office and mobile number going up to the Director of Support for each of our service lines.

In addition to publishing these documents we will also be running a number of webinar's on how to work with support, typical support issues and Q&A directly with our support leadership team.  We are also more than happy to schedule a one on one session with your organization.

Our goal is to provide our partners with the tools you need to be successful.  Accessing support and escalating issues is one of those tools required to create the high levels of customer's satisfaction we all look to achieve.

Best regards,


Eric Westerkamp
Director of Business Development
EasyLink Services International Corporation
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Partner Update - Pre-packaged Marketing Campaigns

Monday, 09 April 2012 08:46 Eric Westerkamp
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The Channel team here at EasyLink recently returned from the Channel Partner show in Las Vegas.  The show was a fun event and enabled the team to meet face to face with many of our partners.  After attending the show there is one thing that is clear, the Telecom industry is going through a time of change.  The number of events, booths and discussions that revolved around Cloud based services seemed to completely overshadow discussions about data, pipes and connectivity.  I think that people are still trying to figure out what the emerging landscape is going to be and the best way for Agents and VARs to build value within the space.  There is one thing that is clear; Cloud Services are going to be a big piece of the emerging solution profile.

We have a couple updates for you this week.  First, EasyLink marketing will be making available to our partners pre-packaged marketing campaigns.  These campaigns are all of the email templates; web-landing pages and content that you need to run your own lead generation program.   Second we are adding a section this week called What's Working.  This is a discussion about a vertical market, target area or business problem where we feel there is a strong fit for our services.

 

Pre-packaged Marketing Campaign - Fax2Mail General

One of our goals here at EasyLink is to help our partners grow their business.  Marketing is a big part of generating the leads and follow on activities needed to create sales.   Our marketing team here at EasyLink will now be releasing pre-packaged marketing campaigns for your use.  These campaigns contain all of the information and materials needed to run an email campaign, create an HTML email template or landing page and support lead generation.

Our first released pre-packaged campaign focuses on our core Fax2Mail service.  This campaign can be found up on the Partner Portal under the Marketing and Sales section.   It's a ZIP file labeled Fax2Mail Prepackaged Campaign.  Just download and extract the ZIP file and inside you will find an MS-Word template, Graphic Assets and HTML documents for supporting a Fax2Mail focused campaign.  When combined with the Email Lead generation templates and co-brandable materials our partners should have everything they need to start generation activity around their partner products.  Look for more pre-packaged campaigns over the coming months.

EasyLink Partner Portal - Marketing and Sales

What's Working - Voice over IP

Voice over IP was a hot topic at the Channel Partners show in Las Vegas.  Just about every company is now in the process of implementing or evaluating a conversion to a Voice over IP infrastructure.  Many of them are looking to deploy Voice over IP with their own hardware while others are leveraging outsourced or Cloud based VoIP services.   No matter which way they go there is an issue with their faxing.

We are seeing significantly increased demand for our Fax2Mail and Production Faxing services driven by organizations making the switch to VoIP.  When they do the implementation they often find their existing faxing infrastructure is incompatible with the new VoIP platforms and must be upgraded.  Alternatively they are left with the option of leaving copper lines into their VoIP platforms - just to support their faxing.  This is often a costly proposition and eliminates many of the benefits they get from going to VoIP in the first place.

The EasyLink Fax2Mail solution enables organizations moving to a VoIP platform to get the best of both worlds.  They can continue to use their existing fax numbers, multi-function printers or automated fax applications while adopting their VoIP platform.  EasyLink's Fax2Mail service solves all of the technical problems with a VoIP platform by moving all faxing to SMTP, FTP or HTTP.  Issues with dropped packets, slowed down fax lines, concurrent faxing and missed faxes all go away.  The customer is left with a fully functional VoIP solution that has increased not decreased, faxing capability.

 

 

USDA Selects EasyLink's Cloud-Based Fax Messaging Services

Tuesday, 09 August 2011 09:10 administrator
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USDA Selects EasyLink's Cloud-Based Fax Messaging Services

Tactical Digital Corporation to Offer Solution as EasyLink Strategic Partner

NORCROSS, Ga., Aug. 9, 2011 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- EasyLink Services International Corporation ("EasyLink" or "Company") (Nasdaq:ESIC) (www.easylink.com), a global provider of comprehensive cloud-based messaging services and e-commerce solutions, today announced that that the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) has awarded Tactical Digital Corporation, EasyLink's government sales partner, a five-year material blanket purchase agreement with a potential multi-million dollar value for the implementation of EasyLink's Fax2Mail desktop fax messaging services.

The agreement enables the USDA's offices to begin replacing fax machines with EasyLink's cloud-based fax services, leveraging their already existing email infrastructure. EasyLink's fax service will allow the USDA to reduce operating costs by eliminating hardware, supply, and telecom line costs, increase productivity by sending and receiving fax transmissions from the desktop, and improve reliability with unlimited scalability, secure delivery, and detailed tracking reports.

Tactical Digital, EasyLink's government sales partner and GSA Schedule contract holder, is a small business concern that specializes in the sale of commercially available cloud computing services to federal, state and local governments as well as educational institutions. "The United States government is following the lead of private business in moving to cloud computing solutions, and we are connecting with more IT leaders who are looking to retire aging fax infrastructures and replace them with secure, electronic delivery," said Scott McMillan, President, Tactical Digital. "Fax messaging is still a critical means of communication within the government space, and the USDA will recognize immediate savings through EasyLink's on-demand technology model."

"EasyLink is pleased to welcome the USDA as Tactical Digital's newest fax messaging customer in the government space," said Kevin Maloney, Senior Vice President, Global Sales and Marketing of EasyLink Services. "By working closely with Tactical Digital, EasyLink will be hosting thousands of fax accounts, securely transmitting millions of faxes per month for the agency's many offices."

About Tactical Digital

Tactical Digital Corp. specializes in providing voice and data solutions from industry-leading companies. Headquartered in Virginia, just outside of Washington, DC, Tactical Digital has thousands of customers throughout the United States and Canada and specializes in both the commercial and government space. Tactical Digital holds a General Services Administration Federal Supply Service (GSA-FSS) Schedule 70, offering many of its products and services to federal, state, and local government agencies and educational institutions. Solutions include audio, web and video conferencing, desktop fax messaging, notifications and reminders, connectivity, Voice over IP (VoIP) and online data backup. For more information on Tactical Digital, visit www.tacdig.com.

About the United States Department of Agriculture

The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) is the central federal executive department for developing and executing U.S. federal government policy on farming, agriculture and food. Its goal is to meet the needs of farmers and ranchers in state, county, municipal, and tribal governments, promote agricultural trade and production, assure food safety, protect natural resources, and end hunger in the United States and abroad. For more information on the USDA, visit http://www.usda.gov.

About EasyLink Services International Corporation

EasyLink Services International Corporation (EasyLink) (Nasdaq:ESIC), headquartered in Norcross, GA, offers a comprehensive portfolio of cloud-based business messaging and transaction services that can bridge the most challenging technology gaps while creating significant cost efficiencies across an organization. From Desktop Fax and Production Messaging to EDI, Managed File Transfer, Document Capture and Management, Notifications, and Secure Messaging we help companies drive costs out of their operations. For more information on EasyLink, visit www.easylink.com.

The EasyLink Services International Corporation logo is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/newsroom/prs/?pkgid=7889

Forward-Looking and Cautionary Statements

Except for the historical information and discussion contained herein, statements contained in this release may constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements involve a number of risks, uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those indicated by such forward-looking statements. These and other risk factors are set forth under the caption "Risk Factors" in the Company's Annual Report on Form 10-K, the Company's quarterly reports on Form 10-Q and the Company's other filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. These filings are available on a website maintained by the Securities and Exchange Commission at www.sec.gov. The Company expressly disclaims any obligation or undertaking to release publicly any updates or revisions to any forward-looking statements contained herein as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

CONTACT: Pamela Bernardino

         EasyLink Services International Corporation
         732-652-3733
         
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If This Then That (IFTTT)

Monday, 12 September 2011 18:41 Eric Westerkamp
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This morning I ran across an amazing new site called If This Then That - IFTTT for short.  You can check it out yourself at www.ifttt.com.  What's so amazing about this site is that it takes a very simple concept - the logical if then statement - and brings it to Cloud based services.  In a nutshell you can string together a number of different cloud based applications with some simple logic.

For instance if you want to get an SMS message when it's going to rain the next day you can string together Weather.com with the native SMS channel on IFTTT.  Let's say you want to know whenever someone decides to follow you on Twitter - just string together Twitter with Email or SMS.  The interface is incredibly simple - and massively powerful.  It's just amazing that it took someone this long to come up with the idea.

This got me to thinking about what makes good technology.  After some deliberation I came up with three key items.  First it needs to be deceptively simple to use.  Second it needs to enable people to do things more efficiently than they could do it before.  Finally it needs to just work, all the time, every time.  IFTTT scores an 11 on the first two, we shall see about the third.

So how can we use this new technology, and Cloud based applications in general, to help us all do a better job of selling into and servicing our incredible customer base?  Our first use of Cloud technologies (outside of our own Cloud Faxing, Notification and EDI Services) was to release the EasyLink Partner Portal using an open source Content Management application and a hosting provider that specializes in managing it.  Beyond that I have been thinking about other ways we can leverage social and Cloud services.  A couple of ideas I had are:

* Create an EasyLink Partner group on LinkedIn.  Folks in the partner channel could update each other on what is working and what is not.  This would be a forum in which our partners could link to and learn from each other.

* Setup a Twitter feed for the EasyLink Partner Channel linked to an Email address.  Any updates sent to the Email address would be turned into a Twitter message.  For instance planned downtime and notifications could then be streamed out through Twitter to our partners.

* Use SMS and Voice notifications as reminders of upcoming training sessions.

* Leverage an application like Zootool for the EasyLink partner community so that documents, images and links can be easily shared.

These are just a few ideas and I would love to hear some of yours.  If you have any thoughts on how better to service our partner and customer community using these services Email me directly at ewesterkamp(AT)easylink.com.

 

Best Regards,

 

Eric Westerkamp

Last Updated on Wednesday, 14 September 2011 11:57
 

Welcome to the new EasyLink Partner Portal!!

Friday, 22 April 2011 15:29 administrator
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We are very excited here at EasyLink about the release of the new Partner Portal.  This is where you, our partner, can get access to news, information, key sales documents and training materials for all of our products and services.  This is not a static web site but an active portal where the Channel Team can directly interact with our Partners.   On this site you will find documents and information you can use to help you sell EasyLink applications better.  This is also where you can find out about key events, the travel schedules for the Partner team and read the Partner Blog.  Check back often as the content on this site will change and be updated constantly.

At this point in time the Partner Team has already loaded a lot of very useful information for you to use.  The portal contains a number of key sections, each of which have different information to help you better sell and deliver EasyLink's products.

  • The Marketing and Sales section contains presentations, marketing templates, white papers and coaches cards.  Look here for information you can use during a sales call - or in preparation for a meeting or conference.
  • The Training and Demo's section is where you can learn more about our products and services.  In this area are recordings of our sales training webinar's, copies of the training power point presentations, and presentations to help you better understand the features of our services.
  • The Blog is where the Partner Team posts information they want to get out directly to you.  Here you can hear about key sales tactics, learn about new wins and find out about what our competition is up to.  Anything that the Partner Team thinks is of interest to our partners is posted in this section.
  • Lead Submission Form is where you go when you have a new opportunity and you would like to register it with our Partner Team.  Just jump into this section and fill in the form.  Your channel manager will be informed and register your lead in our Contact Management database.
  • Events is the place to go to find out about upcoming training sessions, learn about where the Channel Team will be visiting next or finding out about key items of interest within the EasyLink Partner ecosystem.
  • Head to Contact Us if you ever need to find out how to reach out to the Channel Team.

Again the entire Channel Team welcomes you to the Portal and hope that the information and resources you find here help you with your business.  As always the Channel Team is dedicated to your success.  We truly believe that if you are not successful at growing your business we are not successful.

Best regards,

Eric Westerkamp
Director of Business Development
EasyLink Services International Corporation

Last Updated on Thursday, 28 April 2011 20:17
 

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