Announcements | 12.21.2021

A Look Back at NWN Carousel’s 2021 Milestones

At this festive time of year, we want to take a moment to thank our customers, partners and supporters for all the ways you make NWN Carousel such a remarkable place to innovate. Our Customer Success Obsessed mantra has carried us through an unforgettable year!

Together, we reaffirmed NWN Carousel’s commitment to transforming millions of remote users in support of hybrid work. From universities and municipalities to front line workers – we provided the expertise and tools to seamlessly, and securely, connect the workforce during an extraordinary time. 

As we focused and relaunched our offerings and customer engagement model, it was the NWN Carousel greater community who supported us each step of the way. As we look to 2022, we are excited to continue to build upon our outstanding customer service model to further our distinction as the leading Cloud Communications Service provider in North America!

Countdown to Memorable Milestones of 2021

New Offerings + Merger of Two National Powerhouses 

We brought together the talent, experience and resources of NWN Corporation and NWN Carousel to create a $1 billion run-rate national technology leader in cloud communications and infrastructure services. Together, we formed one company to provide cloud communications, networking, devices, security and infrastructure to help our customers thrive in a work-from-everywhere hybrid model. 

And we are excited to launch, in 2022, a new offering around Hybrid Work Solutions that will easily bundle the technologies, and services, you need to support your workforce.

Our six core offerings wrapped with our Experience Management Platform empowers millions of users across 7,000 of the leading organizations across North America to work-from-anywhere. Our hybrid designs are for organizations who favor remote, in-office, or the sweet spot of blended. We proudly tailor our solutions to each of our customers’ needs, preferences, and constraints. Resulting in happy, and productive, employees – and customers.

As we come out of COVID, we’ll be entering back into a work world that will most likely be hybrid. You’re going to have work environments where people want to work anywhere – it could be in the office, it could be at home, it could be on the road with clients.

And you need to be able to have that secure access into the right types of networks and the right infrastructure to support that.

And then, as everyone’s moving from on-prom into the cloud, there’s a whole new set of capabilities that used to be on-prem software, that now need to be cloud capabilities – analytics, predictive analytics, fault correlation, billing, asset management tracking, tracking your SLAs, your ELAs, your subscriptions.

EMP will be able to manage all these different domains, but also provide that type of capability in the cloud that used to be existing on-prem.”

Jim Sullivan, CEO, NWN Carousel

Awards, Recognition + Partnerships 

Throughout the year, we were delighted to announce that NWN Carousel was a multiple award winner! 

We are thrilled to be among the top 30 small-to-mid-sized companies in the country to be recognized by Comparably for 2021 Work Life Balance! The awards are selected based on employee opinion in nearly 20 core culture categories. We ranked #28 on this year’s list.

At NWN Carousel, we pride ourselves as being a culture that values leadership, innovation, enthusiasm, and work-life balance. While technology has blurred the boundaries between work and home, we strongly support our employees in their pursuit of an equal commitment to work, family and community.

There is no greater honor than meeting the new expectations around a better quality of life. By providing our teams with a flexible work style, we make fair time allocation our top priority. 

Closing out the year strong, we have been recognized by industry partners and leaders in several key categories. Each year at Cisco’s Partner Summit, they recognize top-performing partners and their incredible achievements.

As a proud Gold Cisco partner, we are extremely honored to earn the distinction of both Collaboration and Innovation Partner of the Year (East)

The Channel Company’s CRN also announced that NWN Carousel for being recognized as a finalist on CRN’s 2021 Tech Innovators Award list.  This award goes to cloud communications service providers who have shown an unwavering commitment to technology that empowers their customers. We were recognized for our Experience Management Platform (EMP) in the Business Intelligence and Analytics category.

IR Connect held their 2nd Annual Innovation, Accreditation Conference virtually this year. The remote format meant they welcomed participation from all over the world! NWN Carousel took top honor by being named Channel Partner of the Year. The recognition is for collaborators who demonstrate excellence in innovation and implementation of customer technology based on IR solutions. 

Community Giving + Partner Events 

Our teams across the country supported their communities in many significant ways in 2021. From volunteer events to charity golf tournaments — NWN Carousel teams made a huge impact on their communities!

In 2021, expectations significantly changed. COVID-19 compelled many of us to reconsider what’s important in our work lives. This led to devoting more of our time to purposeful work, as well as more meaningful personal and business connections. 

NWN Carousel had the honor to sponsor numerous charitable fundraisers over the course of the year – many virtual and an increasing amount in-person. 

Notable 2021 Charitable Events

Travelers Technology & Operations Golf Tournament
Highlight: NWN Carousel & Travelers were the winning team at 13 under par

NWN Carousel’s Annual Golf Tournament – West
Highlight: $13,000 raised for BBBS’ Sacramento community mentoring programs

12th Annual 33 Foundation Fundraiser Golf Tournament
Highlight: Inspiring speech delivered by beneficiary, Dianne Vitkus, in her fight for the best possible life after a spinal cord injury

3rd Annual Avaya Charity Golf Tournament
Highlight: Panoramic view of the Manhattan skyline

New & Continued Partnerships  

As a Boston based company, we took great pride in announcing our new partnership with Boston College Athletics! Our mission is to deliver secure, innovative and scalable cloud solutions to service the hybrid work needs of one of the most prestigious academic institutions in the Northeast.

We also worked earnestly to strengthened our Cisco and Avaya partnerships throughout the year. During the Annual Cisco Partner Summit we were honored with receiving a Cisco Collaboration and Innovation Partner of the Year (East). We also had a unique opportunity to partner with Cisco to provide cloud communications to the most distinguished tennis event worldwide at the 2021 Laver Cup hosted in Boston. 

At this year’s Avaya Engage event in Orlando from December 13 – 15, our customers, and partners, were treated to NWN Carousel’s Level Up experience with one-on-one executive level leadership meetings, an unrivaled after-party, and workshops presented by our solution experts.

Net New Promoter Score 

We were pleased to announce the results of our Net Promoter Score of 76! We accomplished high above industry standards, which is a reflection of NWN Carousel’s entire organization working together with one goal: to be Customer Success Obsessed. All in the spirit of continuous customer improvements, there were over 16,000 customer surveys sent. Well above an industry participation rate. These findings are considered a World Class benchmark!

NPS is the global standard utilized by most Fortune 500+  companies that measures customer satisfaction and loyalty by asking one simple question: “On a Scale from 0-10, How likely are you to recommend NWN Carousel to a friend or colleague?” Our NPS score stands above the IT service industry benchmark of 42, as reported by NPS Benchmarks Powered by Clearly Rated and Customer Gauge.  Kudos to our hard working teams and a big thank you to participating customers!

2022 Predictions & Trends

As the year comes to an eventful close, we had great fun, and success, in providing Technology Trends for 2022.

Here’s what NWN Carousel experts had to say:

Contact Center

“Contact centers are very much about the customer experience and how to improve it. Short and mid-term supply chain struggles will lead to budget constrictions and contact centers will be forced to do more with the same or less money. We’re going to continue to see contact centers implement more AI and automation, while trying to maintain the human touch,” said Kevin Basden, Vice President, NWN Carousel Contact Center.

Unified Communications

“Moving forward, the emphasis is going to be on the hybrid worker, and workspaces will need to work a little harder to meet these evolving needs,” said Alvaro Riera, Vice President, NWN Carousel Unified Communications. 

Devices

“Everything from device health and performance to the end-user experience should be measured. Tools need to be integrated into the monitoring and management processes of the company. This can provide organizations with the ability to proactively identify and resolve issues in a more effective way,” said Greg Konig, Vice President, NWN Carousel Devices. 

Advanced Technology Solutions (ATS)

“In 2022, the focus will be on designing and building an agile infrastructure that provides always-on availability and responds to quickly changing environments,” said Sonal Patel, Vice President, NWN Carousel ATS.

Visual Collaboration

“Organizations are strategizing on visual collaboration technology to stem the threat from pandemic workplace displacement. Cloud Collaboration tools supplant physical brick and mortar environments and provide a safe virtual workplace,” said Brian Fichter, Vice President, NWN Carousel Visual Collaboration.

Security

“Because of the rapid digital transformation that started in 2020 and continued through 2021, organizations are now tasked with re-evaluating where they are and what they need to do for security,” said Zane West, Vice President, NWN Carousel Cybersecurity. 

EMP

“We’re going to continue to focus on self-care and analytics around all six of our offerings and really drive towards automation,” says Krystina Silva, Vice President, NWN Carousel EMP.

Sneak Peek for 2022: New Webinars, Podcasts & Demos

We’re excited to announce our new eXcellerate interactive series of virtual events to navigate hybrid work. eXcellerate webinars and podcasts will offer access to NWN Carousel’s thought leaders, industry experts, and customers to gain insider guidance to effectively transform your hybrid work experience! Coupled with EMP demos of our customized analytics and reporting dashboards  – we will be kicking off 2022 with insightful plans!

January’s eXcellerate Webinar, “What Does it Take to Hold a Great Hybrid Meeting?”


Other Resources

January’s eXcellerate Podcast, “Trendsetting into the New Year with 2022 Predications.” Subscribe Now
January’s first live EMP Demo. Customers will be encouraged to attend and ask Q&As. Check back for more information on how to register.