The work-from-home model is becoming highly popular and today it is one of the most favored working models for both employees and companies alike. What started as a measure to rise up from the pandemic, the world of business overcame all the hurdles, and that too with a flare!
Organizations today are going fully remote owing to the benefits to them and the employees. The most important thing that makes it all happen – Communication!
Mindglobal is a leading managed mobility and telecom expense management company. The company has three major focus points:
- Wireless Telecom, by supporting domestic and global enterprises to reduce costs and improve efficiency
- Fixed Telecom, through engineering solutions, to cut costs while improving performance;
- Cloud Management, by reducing cost and improving security while optimizing billing, identifying vulnerabilities, and auditing for compliance with various regulations.
The Telecom Revolution – Mindglobal
Mindglobal was founded in 2000, with its base of operations in Austin, Texas. Mindglobal is still run by its co-founders, Kevin Whitehurst and David Wise.
Mindglobal provides full Telecom expense management lifecycle services for wireless, fixed, and UCaaS services to the world’s leading corporations, including The Coca-Cola Company, Tesla, Humana, Nordstrom, Southern Glazer Wine & Spirits, Carlson, Louis Vuitton, and numerous other entities.
Over 82% of their customers are Fortune 1000 with many listed on the Fortune 100. Their service model enables customers to experience a “Best in Class” solution that is flexible, configurable, and offers many tools to the end-user. This effectively meets any of the specific telecom expense management needs of each client.
Initial challenges in Mindglobal’s journey?
The company came into existence at the onset of the Mobile Expense Management industry. Their initial challenges were mainly focused on data acquisition from the mobile carriers.
Even after an explosive growth and tremendous journey of 22 years, the company sometimes still faces those same challenges as carrier billing systems are inconsistent and change frequently.
Now, as their scope of services has expanded, keeping up with hundreds of international data sources for mobile and fixed-line telecom continues to be a major focus area for the company.
What makes Mindglobal a success, especially in today’s ever-changing times and trends?
Mindglobal’s roots began in helping customers buy wireless voice minutes more efficiently. Through the rapid expansion of wireless in the enterprise as well as the exponential growth of wireless data and smartphone devices and an ever-increasing need for employee support, Mindglobal’s services expanded to encompass a complete suite of enterprise software for procurement, asset management, reporting, audit, and a 24x7x365 multilingual help desk for both fixed and mobile telecom.
With no signs of telecom growth slowing down in the enterprise, Mindglobal is poised to continue helping leading organizations as they further deploy fixed and wireless initiatives.
They continue to witness a greater extension of mobile solutions within the workforce and expansion of the rapidly growing IoT and machine-to-machine opportunities.
What establishes Mindglobal’s long-standing success is its executive leadership, which has extensive expertise encompassing a combined total of 100+ years of experience in business strategy, telecom supply chain management, and working directly with telecom carriers in assisting global enterprises. Their management team was cultivated from organizations such as Arthur Andersen, IBM, AT&T, and KPMG.
Their proficiency includes working with the world’s leading companies to leverage buying power and reduce third-party expenditures. The team feels proud to say Mindglobal has had the same leadership team in place since its inception in 2000. Their Operations and Information Technology leadership have all been with the company for 14+ years. No other firm in Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) and Telecom Expense Management (TEM) has the continuity of leadership and management!
It is these factors mixed with the exceptional service arsenal of Mindglobal that has enabled the company and its team to establish their roots in the EMM and TEM industry. They are constantly evolving their services and setting industry benchmarks for support and standards. This not only strongholds their position in the industry as leaders of the space, but also brings them an immovable loyalty and reputation.
The Service Arsenal of Mindglobal
Mindglobal is an end-to-end service provider for the management of corporate wireless devices and fixed telecom harmony with an intentional outsourcing strategy for telecom expense management.
Their service fleet includes a comprehensive range of the latest technical and advanced solutions including the ability to scale providing the setting to support long-term stability, decreased costs, and improved efficient processes.
Mindglobal’s service offering includes a combination of automation using state of the art technology as well as administrative support necessary when you are working with the telecom carriers:
- Asset tracking and inventory management
- Procurement management
- Rate Plan optimization
- Contract management
- Carrier administration
- Invoice processing and bill payment
- Cost allocations by cost center/business unit
- Reporting
- Mobility care support (help desk)
- MACD, Transfer of Ownership
- Mobile device management (MDM)
- Mobile device recycling management
- Machine to machine management (M2M)
- Internet of things management (IoT)
- BYOD
Wireline or fixed services remain the largest telecom category expense for most companies. These increasingly complex Voice and Data networks still serve as the backbone for critical corporate communications and information transfer. Mindglobal’s support is focused upon three integrated offerings that effectively help manage the expenses, service orders, and support needed to efficiently operate a telecom environment.
Mindglobal differentiates itself from competitors in several ways:
- Mindglobal is privately owned and has been profitable for over 20 years. Their primary focus is on customer delivery, and they are not concerned with an investor or Venture Capital demands.
- Their software has been developed over the last 20 years, and the depth of their capabilities has consistently proven to be the best amongst the competition.
- As they are based in Austin, TX. They have been able to hire some of the brightest technology folks to help them as they serve their clients with a class-leading range of solutions.
- In addition, they have expanded into international markets with their Fortune 100 clients. They have deployed in over 40 countries, and represent clients in North America, South America, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia.
How does Mindglobal take its services ahead into the future with changing times and trends? And new additions to their service arsenal?
Mindglobal actively participates in several telecoms and IT industry associations which help them to keep up with trends in both their core business of wireless expense management and also in emerging areas of expansion such as UCaaS.
They also have bi-annual strategy meetings with their clients, where they ask them about areas where they are struggling or expanding their services. These insights led them to expand their kitting and procurement services, enhance their client portals, and open a near-shore Mindglobal outpost in Guadalajara, Mexico to accommodate bi-lingual and time zone needs.
This constant look back to their service range, referring to clients for their feedback, and maintaining a leading position in the market as pioneers has propelled them to a position, where they can gauge the market and its trends beforehand. And craft services that not only excel today but become a pinnacle solution of tomorrow!
In 2022, Mindglobal is focused upon:
- Moving from 90% to 100% cloud-based storage for all customer-facing systems.
- Expanding ERP systems automation (such as SAP, Ariba, Coupa, Oracle iProcurement, Workday, ServiceNow)
- Increasing operations support for custom branding and custom inclusions (i.e. stickers, barcoded logos, client branded packaging for hardware kits)
- Meeting or exceeding their 2021 help desk live answer rate of 94%
The Telecommunication Experts – Leaders at Mindglobal
Mindglobal and its reigns have been under the command of not one but two exceptional leaders, who have successfully established a revolution in the TEM and EMM space. It is their subpar capabilities, values, and dedication that makes Mindglobal one of the most advanced and cutting-edge Enterprise Mobility solution providers.
Their leadership, management, and constant drive to produce something that adds value and growth to their clients, along with nurturing the team into leading industry professionals. They are in all the definitions, the two pillars of Mindglobal!
David Wise is the Co-founder and CEO of Mindglobal.
He has represented Mindglobal clients in carrier negotiations, best practice recommendations, and implementation of creative strategies to maximize end-user services while minimizing wireless total cost of ownership. David’s understanding of the business issues facing corporations with large, distributed wireless environments is the driving force for Mindglobal’s business development and operational strategies.
Before co-founding Mindglobal (previously known as mindWireless) in 2000, David was with Accenture in their Telecommunications practice where he led the large-scale, multi-phase design and implementation projects involving organizational design, customer-focused technology, and process re-engineering initiatives. He previously held senior management positions with AT&T, AT&T Wireless, and Time Warner Communications (video and CLEC).
David received his BA Economics from the University of Oklahoma and his MSc Economics from the London School of Economics.
Kevin Whitehurst is the Co-founder and CEO of Mindglobal.
Kevin’s analytical expertise provided the architectural foundation for Mindglobal’s powerful software platform. He is a leader in wireless telecom optimization analytics, working with clients to evaluate and optimize their most complex wireless deployments. He is a regular participant and speaker at wireless telecom management conferences.
Kevin has extensive telecom consulting expertise, having spent several years before co-founding Mindglobal (previously known as mindWireless) in 2000, with Accenture and KPMG where he performed research and consulted on business strategy and supply chain management for global enterprises. In supply chain management, he worked with Fortune 100 companies to leverage buying power and reduce third-party expenditures.
Kevin received his BBA in Marketing and an MS in Applied Statistics both from Baylor University.
“We are proud of the hundreds of jobs we’ve created over the years and across the globe. We place a high value on our team members and the impact that they make on our team as well as we make on their future.” – David Wise and Kevin Whitehurst
The team and work culture at Mindglobal?
Mindglobal has maintained a very strong culture since its founding in 2000. Routine birthday celebrations, work anniversaries, client wins, and any silly “National Holiday” that seemed fitting is a part of their company celebration and culture. For example, on National Hot Dog day, they’d cater a hot dog lunch for all employees!
The leadership strongly believes it’s important to infuse a bit of fun into their daily routines because no matter how proficient their team is at analysis and logging calls, looking at spreadsheets and CRM systems all day doesn’t naturally build camaraderie.
Since the onset of Covid, their workforce has been scattered, and their culture which was largely driven by in-office or off-site after-hours events has evolved. They now send quarterly packages to their team, ranging from branded t-shirts, candy, and the ingredients for a summertime cocktail.
Their team is encouraged to have their video cameras on for calls so they can still engage with each other as if they are in person, and at the end of team calls, a virtual “all hands” which can’t help but put a smile on your face.
It is this immersive and fostering culture of Mindglobal that not only motivates and keeps the team inspired, but it is these small bits that make the most monumental changes. This culture and work environment instills a feeling of belongingness and oneness with the company, thus, keeping everyone dedicated, and in sync with the company’s vision, mission, and goals!
“We are driven by customer requirements and feedback, deficiencies, and frustrations we hear about our competitors and employee innovation from our staff to state in front of trends and industry evolution.”
Leaders at Mindglobal share their take on the competition in the market and how do they cope with it?
We view our competition in three ways: internal teams who are currently managing TEM as part of their role within a company, wireless carriers who offer to provide analysis upon client contracts, and true managed services vendors.
We have found that when companies have been managing TEM themselves, we provide a strong value proposition that offers both cost savings and increased productivity from their team. When the competition is the carrier, we believe that putting the fox in the hen-house won’t offer the best savings or service to the client.
And when the competition is other MMS vendors, we compete on value, service, and our sustained leadership team. Mindglobal is not looking to grow through competitor acquisition, which has historically created stumbling blocks for our competitors who have gone that route, disrupting their ability to provide a high level of service and value to their clients.
