At the start of the summer UC Today reported on the huge fluctuation within Cisco's collaboration division. One of the main changes was the departure of their SVP and GM of the Applications Group, Rowan Trollope. A technology industry veteran, Trollope, was a crucial member of, Cisco CEO, Chuck Robbins' management team. The departure caused much speculation within the industry as Trollope's departure to Five9 left many questions unanswered.
Now at the helm of one of the leading providers of cloud solutions for the contact centre, Five9, we were lucky enough to get some time with Rowan to find out why he made the move from Cisco.
Why did you move from Cisco?
Trollope explains the move materialised after he had considered his next progression within the industry. He joined Cisco in 2012 and had been a senior member of the team there for over five years. He was tasked with transforming Cisco's collaboration division, which was no mean feat considering the competition in that space. Reinventing their approach to collaboration required much change and Trollope was key in that transformation both within the collaboration portfolio but also with Webex.
"That was a big success, and I said well what is my next step going to be? While contact centre had been a part of my portfolio, it was coming up more and more with CEOs and CIOs that I was talking to. It had been increasingly surfacing as a major priority for them. As I looked into it, it occurred to me that there is going to be a major shift here."
"I have spent my life looking for these big tectonic shifts in industries and it seemed to me that the compliments of cloud and AI, along with the new age of the customer were all going to conspire to create a condition where the contact centre became rapidly more important to business - and that all led me to Five9 - the company had approached me and then that’s how it went."
So once you had decided on contact centre why did you choose Five9?
Five9 are one of the leaders in the cloud contact centre space with innovative solutions and a position within the market that made the move appealing for Trollope for a number of reasons. The main reason however might seem slightly surprising for such a technologically focussed character. In previous interviews with senior executives at Five9 their culture has been cited as a huge asset and this proved to be the deciding factor for Trollope.
"That was the main attraction. Comparing this opportunity to others, maybe not in the contact centre, a big differentiator for me was culture of the company. If a company doesn’t have a great culture it is not something that is easy to fix. It's hard to create and it's even harder to fix if it's broken."
Trollope also explains that Five9 are in the golden window of contact centre providers. For him they were established at just the right time to catch this new wave of innovation with AI, without being too well established and unable to react to market changes.
"There are many other companies in this space that were either too early or are too late. If anyone is coming to the game now it is going to be in some ways too late for this next trend of disruption, around AI and the cloud, and if someone was there too early they're probably not really in business anymore."
What are your thoughts on the contact centre industry?
Unified Communications and Contact Centre
There is a narrative in the industry relating to unified communications (UC) and contact centre (CC). There are two sides to this argument, one is that the two, UC and CC, should be together from a technology perspective. The other is that the two should be separate. Five9 have no unified communications proposition focusing solely on developing their contact centre solutions.
Trollope explains that first argument, for the combination of the two propositions, is generated fundamentally for the wrong purpose. Historically some buyers have expected to buy both solutions in one and therefore there is go-to-market advantage for those provider's which can provide both solutions. Trollope explains though that this does not provide any benefit for the customer themselves.