Thomas Howe

One of the fun parts of our role as a professional services firm in this Mashup/CEBP industry is the conversations we get to have with interesting people and firms. By definition, as the CEBP market matures, firms like ours will be part of every CEBP service providers’ ecosystem. So, collaboration is our middle name. It also means we honestly do enjoy calls from companies with new ideas and offerings. Nick from Voodoovox contacted us about their new offerings and a developers contest. Voodoovox caught my attention because of their industry focus. Their experience and offerings in the media markets including radio and advertising differentiate them in my book. The simple marketing phrase “if you can generate a call we can monetize it” speaks to prospective clients in such compelling, bottom line language that I wonder if one of their client’s CFO wrote it. The long term value add provided by any successful firm in this emerging CEBP industry is vertically focused or business process specific knowledge gained from in depth interactions with real clients and end users. For any new technology company or old firm reinventing itself, it can be difficult to get beyond the we can do everything mindset. Smart minds put together really can do just about anything in this new age of voice as a service. However, it is best to leave the horizontal marketing efforts to the Telcos. Real value is sustained when the creativity that is presented to tomorrow’s client comes from the knowledge and hard work put into helping yesterday’s clients improve their businesses.