Mind the Tech London 2022"You need to understand the company, not just push the product"
Mind the Tech London 2022
"You need to understand the company, not just push the product"
Andy Newman, vice president at BT Security, and Gal Rimon, founder & CEO of Centrical, spoke with CTech’s James Spiro at Calcalist's Mind the Tech conference in London about the fruitful collaboration between the two companies. Centrical has developed a platform that provides employees with customized training
Andy Newman & Gal Rimon (Calcalist)
"We started in the cyber business in 2014, and by 2020 we had grown to $1 billion in revenue,” said Andy Newman, Vice President of BT Security, the information security division of the telecom giant British Telecom. “We have about 3,000 employees in the division worldwide. We quickly recognized that we had to enlist the help of other organizations to grow and to succeed in selling cyber products. Our sales people did not have confidence in these calls. They were not the strong point in our traditional business. We sought to provide knowledge and skill to our sales people in the company.”
Newman spoke at Calcalist’s Mind the Tech conference in London as part of a conversation with James Spiro of CTech and Gal Rimon, founder and CEO of Centrical, a company collaborating with BT, which has developed a system that focuses on improving employee performance in sales and service centers.
"A salesman who works for the company and sells the same product for 20 years, the last thing he wants is to learn something new,” Newman said. “We wanted to make it competitive and include elements of gaming. We were looking for new start-ups that could help us find an exciting path to improve in this area. The main thing we were looking for was someone that would succeed in driving our business forward.”
BT found an ideal partner in Centrical, which has developed a platform that provides the employee with customized training, sets goals for them, monitors their performance, identifies weaknesses and directs targeted training to them.
"We sell not only technology but also a process," Rimon said. "We have developed a process that includes consulting and assisting the organization to undergo change. Also, there is no substitute for field work. We need to understand the company, and not just push the product."
"Organizations have invested in consumers but not in their employees to create a personalized experience that will help everyone succeed,” Rimon said. “These days we want to listen to employees, and try to understand how to make the manager a coach. We are looking for the human element to improve the job environment."
