Jan-Feb 2020 - ChannelVision Magazine

CHANNEL MANAGEMENT “I had about a billion dollar organi- zation that we were running, and we re- ally had to put a lot of thought into how to build it for the future and position it in a way that would be responsible to the bond holders,” he continued. RebuildingWindstream Around that time, Allen was work- ing closely with Matt Milliron, the com- pany’s vice president of channel sales and now channel chief. “Matt came with a real propensity toward channel integration and the be- lief that we can’t be competing with our partners,” Allen said. “It was clear that we had to align.” The team, including vice president of channel sales Eric Solomon, ran a beta test on a channel integration model that proved to be a tremendous success. According to Allen, the pro- gram started bringing in $1 million per week during the first few months with this new system in place. “I can’t split atoms, but I can recog- nize when something’s working,” Allen said. “So we accelerated that program and moved forward with restructuring our sales organization to become more channel-integrated, recognizing that every large opportunity ultimately has a partner in it. We’re either working with them or against them, to quote our CMO Cardi Prinzi.” Allen’s original plan was to help get the company to the other side of bankruptcy and then transition out of Windstream midway through 2020. But with the organization picking up steam, Allen decided to make an early handoff to Milliron. “At this point there is still some fine tuning around team alignments, but we’re moving forward with what we call a reve- nue accountability model,” Allen said. “It’s kind of a move back to some of the old models where we’re putting far more re- sponsibilities into the regions, and realign- ing some of the operational functions.” Looking forward Allen will continue to have a hand in Windstream as a consultant, and by serving as Chair- man Emeritus of their partner advisory council. At the same time, Allen is going in a different direction altogether, and turning his efforts to tackle a critical is- sue that’s ravaging the United States – substance abuse and addiction. The next phase of Allen’s career will focus on using technology to provide care and assistance to people in recovery. From Success to Significance For Allen, the wheels started turning a few years back, when he read a book called “Halftime: Moving from Success to Significance,” by Bob Buford. The book’s subtitle stuck with Allen, and caused him to start thinking of ways to start driving meaningful change using the knowledge and experience from his time in the carrier, conferencing and channel spaces. As it happened, Allen – who will be celebrating nine years of sobriety in January – linked up with colleague and friend Carolyn Bradfield, who is CEO of InterAct LifeLine, a newly formed subsidiary of Convey Servic- es. InterAct provides a turnkey tech- nology solution for addiction treat- ment and collegiate recovery centers. Built on Convey’s portal and network platform, InterAct provides content, forums, outreach and virtual support groups for its members. Allen joined InterAct’s strategic board of advisors in November and will be working on delivering market- based technology solutions to the addiction and recovery community. Much like the business world, the recovery community is facing an urgent demand for modernization and digital transformation. For example, Allen riffed on the ex- perience of chairing recovery meetings and having to sign pieces of crumpled or torn legal documents for attendees. “Think of the technology available to us, and that’s how we’re handling these processes,” Allen said. “The addiction and recovery industry is still in a legacy mindset. It’s been slow to embrace technology. But what better way to serve this community than with technologies that we’ve sold and been immersed in for years?” Focusing on Students Heading into 2020, InterAct will be making a major push into colleges and universities, where young adults are ex- tremely vulnerable to the pitfalls of sub- stance abuse. Research, for instance, shows that college students comprise one of the largest groups of drug abus- ers. And those enrolled in a full-time college program are twice as likely to abuse drugs and alcohol. InterAct will be bringing its platform to more schools nationwide and provid- ing resources for young people. “We will have a column of the busi- ness that will utilize Convey’s solutions to deliver that platform to all the univer- sities that will consume it so that we can help more and more kids,” Allen said. “The idea of recovery communities is to take people typically who got side- tracked – whether it was while they’re in high school, college or later in life – and give them an opportunity to attend school because, quite frankly, they have arrests, bad grades from when they were in school, and drained bank accounts from spending money on rehab.” Addiction by the Numbers At least 21 million Americans have at least one addiction, yet only 10% receive treatment. Source: AddictionCenter.com More than 90% of people who have an addiction started to drink or use drugs before they were 18. Source: AddictionCenter.com Up to 29 percent of patients prescribed opioids for chronic pain abuse them, and between 8 and 12 percent develop a disorder. And about 80 percent of people who use heroin first misused prescription opioids. Source: Drugabuse.gov The number of teenagers vaping marijuana has doubled over the last two years. Source: National Institute on Drug Abuse 24 CHANNEL VISION | January - February, 2020