Director of Business & Sales Operations, Verizon Partner Solutions
Brian Brady leads the Verizon Partner Solutions (Verizon Global Wholesale) business and sales operations team, which provides direction and support for pre-sales systems and reporting, with particular insight into sales tool automation and processes. He is also responsible for operational metrics, local regulatory compliance, and reporting. Prior to joining Verizon, Brian was the director of financial planning and analysis at MCI International for both international retail and wholesale sales divisions. Brian also served as a captain in the U.S. Air Force at Wright Patterson Air Force Base, where he was a flight test engineer in advanced development at the former Flight Dynamics Laboratory. Brian has a B.S. in mathematics from Syracuse University, New York and an MBA in finance from Wright State University, Ohio.
What is your role within Verizon Partner Solutions?
I am the director of business and sales operations at Verizon Partner Solutions. I lead a team that mainly provides direction and support for sales systems, tools, and customer quoting. We have additional responsibility for other areas such as sales quotas, commission plans, and state-level regulatory reporting and analysis.
What have been the top three to five digital transformation initiatives that organizations have undertaken within the last year?
Organizations have had to quickly embrace – and for many, build from the ground up – a predominantly remote workforce environment, requiring virtual tools at a scale nobody could have predicted. These companies have realized the need to accelerate the development of efficient and easy-to-use customer interfaces for quoting and ordering services, and for tracking their services online. These process-oriented tools drive higher productivity and ease of doing business.
I think there is also a tremendous data transformation movement underway, where companies are looking to find new and innovative ways to use information for the enhancement of both customer and employee experiences.
No doubt, the introduction of 5G and associated technologies, along with advancements in digital data transformation, will facilitate the long-anticipated Fifth Industrial Revolution – bringing what was once considered science fiction to life.
How has the accelerated need for digital transformation affected VPS customers, and what is the team currently doing to further support partners’ efforts and deliver on customer needs?
Organizations have had to quickly embrace – and for many, build from the ground up – a predominantly remote workforce environment, requiring virtual tools at a scale nobody could have predicted. These companies have realized the need to accelerate the development of efficient and easy-to-use customer interfaces for quoting and ordering services, and for tracking their services online. These process-oriented tools drive higher productivity and ease of doing business.
Video conferencing has also experienced explosive growth, brought on by the shift to remote work environments.
For 2021 and beyond, global business leaders and governments are more likely to expect the unexpected – situations like climate change-induced extreme weather, cybersecurity failures, and social media influence.
Last year, we launched our Citizen Verizon corporate responsibility program, which encompasses awareness, contributions, and internal volunteering drives as a way to take an active role in addressing economic, environmental, and social advancement in and around the cities in which we do business. Digital inclusion, climate protection, and human prosperity are key pillars of the Citizen Verizon framework.
People often think of digital transformation as a simple investment in new technology. What are some of the soft skills and operational tactics organizations are utilizing when going through a digital transformation?
Digital transformation should be just that, transformational. I think someone that views this as a simple investment with good old-fashioned development projects is missing the mark. The pandemic has exacerbated organizational evolution, communication challenges and societal issues, and the accelerating pace of technological change is part of this evolution.
This transformation is increasing the stress of time management and the need for enhanced management skills and new ideas in decision-making. However, it also offers the potential for leaps forward in how we do virtually everything, which can relieve some of those burdens and move us forward in ways we hadn’t thought possible.
As Verizon started its journey to transform its wholesale customer experience, we developed “personas” for each of our customer segments. This involved meeting with customers to learn more about their thought processes, their individual users, and how they wanted our portals and tools to look and function. We created mock-ups and scenarios for the portals, and met again with customers to gain additional insight and to partner together on what is needed to bring us to the next level.
Change, especially on the level of digital transformation, can be both stressful and invigorating. Teamwork and critical thinking skills are in demand more than ever to successfully venture into these new frontiers.
What do you think is the next big step for digital transformation adoption worldwide?
Customers are seeking ways to build and rebuild their businesses – integrating data technologies into operating models with machine learning and potentially artificial intelligence capabilities.
As the telecom industry shifts from a “sense and respond” mindset to a “predict and act” model, there will be a tremendous competitive advantage for those companies and partners that have created rapid service optimization.
When it comes to customer experience, we need to anticipate customer needs and allow for the proactive preparation of solutions faster and more effectively than ever before.
About Verizon
Verizon works with customers in over 2,700 cities across the world, helping us to connect our customers globally. As our industry evolves further within the digital world, we have seen a change in the expectations of what customer experience should be. In an effort to fully transform our customers’ experience in doing business with us, we have made a significant investment into our network to create a new ecosystem that we strongly believe stands Verizon up to be the provider of choice. At Verizon, we don’t wait for the future, we build it.
