Star2Star - February 2021

STAR2STAR’S CLOUD-NATIVE SOLUTIONS IN ASSOCIATION WITH

Star2Star

DIGITAL REPORT 2021

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COMMUNICATIONS AND COLLABORATION FOR THE ENTERPRISE

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President and Chief Revenue Officer Michelle Accardi discusses Star2Star’s cloud-native offering and its necessity amid COVID-19

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tar2Star is a unified communications company that offers collaboration, voice, video and text chat integra-

tion capabilities, as well as contact centre and desktop-as-a-service offerings. Michelle Accardi is President and Chief Revenue Officer at the company, responsible for the entire sales and goto-market strategy of the organisation. “We offer a way to take companies into the cloud and great mobile applications to keep people connected, whether they’re in a work from home environment because of the pandemic or because that’s just part of the way the world is working these days.”

Star2Star’s huge experience as a communications company has stood it in good stead for the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, and re-emphasised the benefits of strong communication. “We’ve really taken a very agile approach to making sure that we’re doing daily calls, helping people understand where they need to be focused, overcoming whatever obstacles and giving them the focus for the next day. And then we use our great tools and

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Hear from Citrix and Star2Star on the latest productivity integrations to help you do your best work as well as the latest trends in digital transformation.

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“ We build solutions that enable companies to not just get through the pandemic, but to actually thrive” so we can remove those obstacles,” — Michelle Accardi, President and Chief Revenue Officer, Star2Star

says Accardi. “It’s certainly why we’ve won workplace awards, because we foster that kind of open but hard working culture.”

everything from our own video meet-

Its approach is why it is favoured by

ings to our own mobile applications to

its customers as a solution provider,

help us all stay connected.” That use

with the highest customer retention

of technology is informed by a culture

rate in the industry at 99.4%. “We

of transparency at the organisation.

are one of the only vendors I know

“I really try to facilitate people bringing

of that focuses so much on customer

forward any challenges they’re having

retention, with our retention rate

The Future Is Here: Connect & Collaborate From Anywhere With Star2Star CLICK TO WATCH

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08 being due to putting the customer at

months, deferments, anything to help

the centre of everything that we do,”

our customers.” The holistic nature

says Accardi. “During the pandemic,

of its solution is another key part of

for instance, we’ve rolled out many

its appeal. “There are a lot of single-

different types of programmes – free

threaded vendors out there who can

2006

Year founded

only do one thing. The fact that we can do so much is very unique to us. I don’t know of any other solution provider like Star2Star that has things like employee alerts as packaged applica-

300

Number of employees

tions that can be built into workflows, for example.”

Among its raft of solutions is a mobile softphone app. “It’s about being able to get a call to your business phone

E X E C U T I V E P R O FILE :

Michelle Accardi Title: President and Chief Revenue Officer Industry: Telecommunications Location: Florida, USA As President and Chief Revenue Officer, Michelle’s mission is to inspire and maintain growth for the company and its partners, ensuring that customers get significant value from Star2Star’s products and services. Michelle works with the executive leadership team of Star2Star to define long-term vision and operational strategy to assure that growth and market potential are achieved.

In pursuit of this goal, Michelle sees engaging and listening to employees, partners, and customers as a primary function of her role in order to keep Star2Star on the optimal strategic path. In this way, customer success is assured as employees and partners are inspired to deliver an excellent product and experience with every interaction.

In her previous position as the company’s Chief Operating Officer, Michelle used these same methods to develop new processes and systems to streamline business interactions.

She grew departmental leadership and expanded Star2Star’s support capabilities to better serve customer and partner needs.

Michelle is also regarded as a technical thought leader in next-generation marketing and communications strategies. Her book, Agile Marketing, chronicles her experiences applying agile methodology to the marketing process for better results and faster time to value. She brought her substantial executive-level and tech industry experience with her to Star2Star, having driven innovative, agile, revenue-producing field and channel marketing programs for one of the world’s most relied upon technology companies, Computer Associates.

Michelle holds an MBA from American Intercontinental University and earned her bachelor’s degree from the University of South Florida. w w w.st a r2 st a r. com

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“ The fact that we can do so much is very unique to us” 10

— Michelle Accardi, President and Chief Revenue Officer, Star2Star

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number versus your personal phone

to do things like mass marketing, or

number, right on the mobile app, while

getting information out to people like

also being able to do text messaging,

appointment reminders or curbside

or even fax via a mobile application,”

checkout, which we can help with.”

says Accardi. “You’d be surprised how

A strong enabler of the work

often different industries, whether it’s

Star2Star does is its partnership

healthcare or real estate, need that

with Citrix, with the company being

kind of thing. Those text messaging

the only UCaaS provider certified as

applications, both on mobile and on

Citrix-ready. “They have great tech-

desktop, are really game-changing in

nology that allows companies to put

the pandemic. Businesses are trying

their applications that were previously

“ How people work and where people work is changing” are literally millions of companies and users who depend on Citrix, so

— Michelle Accardi, President and Chief Revenue Officer, Star2Star

we can either provide desktop-as-a-

housed on-premise in the cloud, so

put our communications on top of the

that workers can now work from

Citrix environments they have in place.”

service from Citrix if customers don’t have that capability, or we can simply

everywhere,” says Accardi. “And it

The pandemic has accelerated

can do that in a secure manner. There

changes in the work environment,

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with Star2Star serving as a model for how businesses may look going forwards. “Thankfully we’ve always been a cloud-based company and we’ve always had a remote workforce,” says Accardi. “So for us, having everyone go remote just as those people who aren’t in our headquarters means we can understand

“ We are one of the only vendors I know of that focuses so much on customer retention” — Michelle Accardi, President and Chief Revenue Officer, Star2Star

or they prefer to have a mobile app that can communicate via voice, text, or fax.”

As the world bends to precisely the mode of working that Star2Star can facilitate, Accardi is clear that the company’s future is bright. “We see a future where it is going to be a mix of remote and working from home. Once vaccines come about, there will be a return of some workers to the office. But they’re going to want the flexibility to have mobile applications that enable them to work from home when they want to.”

Star2Star is perfectly positioned to allow companies to straddle that gap. “I often like to say: it’s with irritation that you make the pearl. For Star2Star, we build solutions that enable companies to not just get and give all of our customers the

through the pandemic, but to actu-

capability to go remote as well.”

ally thrive as they digitally transform

Accardi sees that as a permanent

because of it.”

change, even once the pandemic has abated. “How people work and where people work is changing. And we have a broad spectrum of solutions that can help them, whether they prefer to have a desk phone, w w w.st a r2 st a r. com

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