In the early 2000s, when the roots of SolEx were initially formed and founded, most of its competitors were focused on selling and installing as many voice and data lines as they possibly could turn up. During this period, when the country was rapidly being connected to IP services, providers generally delivered a voice or data line to a business’s demarcation point – typically a server room or telecom closet – and whatever happened inside the walls of the building was the responsibility of the subscriber. SolEx founder Tom McCrosson, however, recognized what was happening in this new emerging industry and the opportunities it presented for channel partners on the other side of the d-marc. His vision then, as it continues today, was to incorporate ancillary vendors and interconnects to deliver “total solutions” that drive perceptible business outcomes, while enabling agents to expand their businesses and get stickier around what frequently evolved to become commodity products and benchmark expectations. That might all sound somewhat understandable now, even obvious, but this was well before anyone had uttered the “SaaS” acronym, and the term “edge computing” was rarely, if ever, stated during an earnings report. CRM software pioneer Salesforce was still just emerging. Still, it wasn’t the first time McCrosson had the foresight to peer past the obvious and see the greater possibilities. His history, along with that of longtime accomplice, fellow pioneer and industry veteran Tom McGoldrick, reaches all the way back to the origins of the partner channel, to the days of divestiture and deregulation. The two men were up front in the initial fight for end users to choose their providers and were part of the initial efforts to resell AT&T’s first product after its divestiture. McCrosson also was involved in the founding of the Telecommunications Resellers Association (TRA), evolving the methods by which companies would work together for the greater good, and many years later, he was part of the company that created VoIP pioneers Deltathree. McCrosson’s instinct to dig deeper into the tech stack where others might seek to churn-and-burn is apparent in SolEx’s reputation as a type of boutique shop, one that specializes in providing businesses with highly engineered, integrated multivendor, multi-location solutions, customized to the current and anticipated needs of individual clients. Ever since those pioneering days, products have been conceived and delivered with meticulous care to ensure that not only expectations were met but that innovative customer benefits beyond those typically associated with the product are delivered. An example of this is the SolEx customer invoice which, designed as a product in its own right, provides both clarity and simplicity of understating but also tangible actionable business intelligence to the reader. Through customizations, SolEx turns the invoice into a tool that the customer can use for all types of business-making decisions. The ability to code a customer’s General Ledger account numbers into the invoice, for instance, allows for the accounts payable and finance teams to have an easier integration of the invoice into their systems for easy and accurate accrual of expenditures. SolEx can integrate hundreds of different vendors into one bill image, with the added features of usage reports, location summaries, tax segregation and anything else that a particular customer may need customized. Additionally, it offers a portal for all clients to easily retrieve invoices and remit payment on. Continuously Evolving, SolEx Adds Security to its Partner Story PROFILE CHANNEL MANAGEMENT Data & Networking Dedicated Internet Access, Broadband Internet, Fixed Wireless, Satellite, Ethernet Private Line, Ethernet Virtual Private Line, MPLS, 4G/5G Wireless, SD-WAN Voice & Collaboration Hosted PBX, SIP Trunking Toll-Free, POTs Replacement, Virtual Fax, Conferencing (Audio,Video,Web), Unified Communications as a Service, (UCaaS), Contact Center Security Strategy & Risk Services, Network Security, Endpoint Security & Identity Services, Threat Detection and Response, Unified Threat Management (UTM), Consultancy Packages SolEx “3-pillar” Solution Portfolio SolEx “3-pillar” olution P rtfolio 42 CHANNELV ISION | SEPTEMBER - OCTOBER 2022
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