Company Overview
From the time founder, Greg Folkerson, began his career as a technical writer in 1976, Folkerson Communications was built around providing exemplary service in all facets of communications to customers in the Central Texas and Austin area. Greg's commitment to customer service and employee training has positioned Folkerson as an industry leader.
The company offers 5 key services -- Phone/VoIP, Carrier Services, Network Solutions, Structured Cabling, and 24/7 Customer Service -- and handles everything from purchasing and deployment to networking and troubleshooting.
Folkerson Communications became an authorized NEC Channel Partner almost 25 years ago, and for several decades that meant providing clients with NEC’s on-premises communication servers and IT technology. As cloud and hosted solutions grew in popularity, Folkerson knew that it needed a rock-solid cloud solution that would provide the reliable and dependable services that his clients had come to associate with Folkerson.
The Challenge
Greg Folkerson explains some of the challenges he faced with other cloud providers, “The industry is changing. There are now non-interconnect companies selling voice services, and many of these vendors do not understand that for most of Folkerson Communications existence we were a traditional interconnect company – we have technicians, we roll trucks, we train customers – and we built a reputation around providing this type of hands-on customer service. While selling cloud services has immensely simplified the programming and implementation, the need for human-like customer service has not gone away, and that is what our customers expect from us.” NEC’s UNIVERGE BLUE Channel Partner Program has helped Folkerson own more of the customer relationship while being there to provide significant sales, marketing, and service support.
Greg continues, “Our customers trust us and the relationship we have built with them over the years. It was imperative that we offer a reliable and dependable solution that meets our customers’ needs and one that reinforces our reputation of providing exceptional customer support.”
Because of the competitive solutions UNIVERGE BLUE offers, the great sales, marketing and service support NEC provides coupled with the ability to set our own margins, we are able to focus more on selling and building relationships with our customers and less on other ancillary activities often associated with hardware that cut into our profits. The margins with BLUE are very attractive, and it didn’t take long to adjust to a monthly recurring revenue model.
Greg Folkerson,
CEO of Folkerson Communications
The Solution
Now Folkerson Communications sells UNIVERGE BLUE CONNECT – NEC’s Unified Communications As A Service (UCaaS) solution and UNIVERGE BLUE ENGAGE – NEC’s Contact Center As A Service (CCaaS) solution. Unlike other providers, UNIVERGE BLUE has allowed Folkerson to maintain its customer relationships and expand its service offerings into existing and new areas of its customers’ businesses, in turn allowing Folkerson to grow its own business.
While customers certainly enjoy ENGAGE’s full-featured contact center (CCaaS) capabilities and CONNECT’s (UCaaS) features, which include a full-featured phone system, video/web conferencing, team chat, file sharing & backup -- Greg says the flexibility and simplicity that UNIVERGE BLUE provides is key. “Many of our customers found it challenging to manage the complexities associated with maintaining a phone system in multiple locations – with UNIVERGE BLUE, we were able to solve these challenges by offering our customers a centralized, fully managed, and scalable phone system hosted in the cloud.”
Greg continues, “UNIVERGE BLUE CONNECT has reduced complexity for our customers, minimized telecom costs, improved communication, and collaboration, and even enabled remote work environments, which would have been difficult to do with a hardware-based solution.”
On Folkerson’s end, the UNIVERGE BLUE Administrative Portal has allowed Folkerson to easily monitor and troubleshoot customers’ voice services and contact center features. Greg was able to retrain his existing staff to handle UNIVERGE BLUE UCaaS and CCaaS implementations.
The Results
Folkerson Communications is now an exclusive NEC Solutions Integrator, “Becoming an exclusive NEC Solutions Integrator was a no-brainer decision based on the success we have seen with NEC’s hardware solutions and now with the business growth we are seeing with UNIVERGE BLUE CLOUD SERVICES.”
Folkerson Communications is embracing a new role – a complete cloud technology provider who offers end-to-end cloud solutions, committed to being a trusted advisor, and adding value across every customers’ lifecycle. Greg notes, “The UNIVERGE BLUE CLOUD partnership has allowed us to keep pace with the external marketplace and everchanging demands of our customers. We are starting to see significant growth in our cloud business and do not see it slowing down any time soon.”
NEC and Folkerson will continue to partner together to provide tailored solutions to customers’ unique needs. The future of Folkerson’s business includes a combination of both cloud-based and on-premises solutions, creating a hybrid IT and UC portfolio that balances the scalability and flexibility associated with cloud and the security associated with hardware. NEC will continue to be an integral part of what Folkerson does in the IT and Communications space.
