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December 6, 2011
Q&A With Phill Meeks of Cox Business
By Kaylee Hultgren
Cox Business is the fastest growing organization within the MSO—and it shows not signs of slowing down. It surpassed $1 billion in revenue last year and is busy working toward its next milestone: doubling the business over the next 5 years. Here’s Phil Meeks, SVP of Cox Business, on how the company plans to make that happen.
What are the top 3 things you’ll be doing to double your business in 5 years?
1. Continue to focus on the needs of small businesses. They represent more than 80% of our customers and we’ve developed specific products to help them utilize technology to improve their operations. We intend to double our market share in this space through aggressive sales.
2. Launch industry specific solutions for “large locals.” Verticals such as healthcare, education and government have robust communications needs and are uniquely aligned with our regional networks. We are planning turnkey services that address the needs of their business sectors.
3. Provide reliable, diverse, fiber connections to carrier cell towers to support the explosive growth of wireless data, aka “wireless backhaul.”
In what ways will you continue to gain an edge over your competitors, the telco companies?
We will provide local, comprehensive support for small business customers in all our markets. This is something rarely done for small businesses, particularly in smaller metro areas.
What’s the top technological innovation that has lead to your strong growth?
The proliferation of data in all industries and the requirements to continually share that information throughout the enterprise is driving a dependence on more robust transport solutions. Efficient communications capabilities also expand the reach of small business owners, most of whom are hungry to grow.
Beyond initiatives that are already planned over the next few years, what are some trends on the horizon for business services?
While we offer some managed services today, this is a very broad category and it opens tremendous opportunities for customers with limited IT resources to outsource critical administrative functions that allow more focus on core business activities. I also think mobility and flexibility of solutions will continue to be extremely important as more employees work remotely or on-the-go and companies support customer-facing applications that rely on mobile data.
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