Interpreter. Advocate. Multiplier.
Our goal is to make sure IT wins, the business wins, and your chosen cloud vendors win—together.
Why CXponent?
We believe when IT and the rest of the buying committee collaborate to select and authentically partner with the best vendor for the client’s current needs and future aspirations, powerful things happen.
Translate
We align goals, expectations, and requirements inside our clients and translate the efficacy of what each vendor is saying and capable of delivering on.
Propel
We help you identify wins and remove hurdles slowing your success so you can lower organizational anxiety, reduce pressure, and keep moving forward.
Advocate
As instrumental players in clients and vendors move on after a purchase, we build continuity through influence and relationships with our vendors to navigate and advocate for our client’s changing needs.
Our service delivery principles
Be a Client Exponent
Being a client exponent means creating clarity to drive decision making and maximizing the gains, upside, and value from a broad vendor ecosystem. A great customer experience is the outcome of a thoughtful, people first approach to partnering.
Align people to drive change
The risks and results from buying, implementing, and operating technology are more dependent on the skills and alignment of the humans in our client and vendor organizations than ever before.
Be Relatable
When translating information to facilitate buying decisions, we need to be relatable. Being ‘relatable’ includes tailoring information so our clients understand the relevance and significance of those decisions to their business and careers. Listening well is foundational to this principle.
Teach and Learn
Trust can be measured by the gap between what someone says and what they do. Teaching is an action that creates value for clients, builds trust, and accellerates deeper learning for our organization. When we approach planning for client interactions with the intention to connect, teach, and learn something new, progress follows.
Make forward progress
All our clients are being asked to contribute to their organization’s progress, and we should be generous and creative in ways to contribute. Making progress easier is about reducing friction throughout the journey to make our clients and vendors easier to do business with.
We produce win-win-win relationships between business, IT and the vendors they choose to power their digital infrastructure.
Our Leadership
Joe Rice
CEO
Joe Rice is CEO of CXponent. Throughout his career, Joe has focused on IT, communications, and networking infrastructure advisory and implementation services. He specializes in vendor evaluation and assessment and is recognized as a key advisor to both Gartner’s and G2’s top vendors. He helps technology providers enhance their transformation delivery, managed services, and partner programs.
Prior to founding CXponent, Joe Rice co-founded a two-time INC 5000™ professional services firm. The innovative advisory firm helped enterprise business leaders transform legacy contact center, networking infrastructure, and phone systems into cloud-based, omni-channel communications platforms. Joe and his team helped clients negotiate and invest $1B of IT spend and implemented over $100M of new SaaS, infrastructure, and managed services.
He has held roles at an early-stage, high-growth Chicago tech startup (AVANT) and large Enterprise IT Delivery vendors (AT&T and CenturyLink now Lumen). He graduated from the University of Illinois.
John Merriman
Sr. Manager, Service Delivery
John is Senior Manager, Service Delivery at CXponent. John’s background is in Customer Experience transformation & strategy, spending the past three years specializing in contact center/CCaaS transformation engagements.
With CXponent John will help create our go-to-market service packages, and lead all digital transformation projects with our clients, while also operating as an extension of the sales team to help define project objectives goals, etc. during pre-engagement.
Amanda Armitage
Business Development Manager & Solutions Advisor
Amanda is a customer advocate and is experienced in customer service and business development. As Business Development Manager and Solutions Advisor, Amanda is responsible for advising and supporting clients on their purchases by understanding their business needs and objectives. She also develops category expertise and is part of client-vendor proposals and engagement.
Before CXponent, Amanda was a Customer Success Manager at Netrix LLC, a full-service VAR and service provider that designs, implements, and supports technology solutions. She proactively looked out for customers’ business and ensured customers achieve success while using the company’s product/services.
Sam Toninato
Business Development Manager & Solutions Advisor
Sam has years of industry experience, with a focus on implementation, organizational alignment, and vendor management. He has led clients through all stages of the buying process, from the fledgling stages of an RFP to the QBRs after a solution is implemented.
When Sam isn’t helping clients upgrade their network, he’s helping people with communication disorders as he pursues his master’s degree in Speech Language Pathology.
More About Our Expertise & Capabilities
Ecosystem Experts
Ecosystems are complex and rapidly, constantly evolving. One of our core focuses is maintaining an expert edge in ecosystems. Which means we understand, staying current on vendor investments and ecosystems wins, understanding which SIs and implementation partners are taking care of customers consistently and with high alignment to outcome, and helping customer create their Ideal Vendor Profile and then find a vendor. We can provide an explanation and ongoing education on how ecosystems are structured, how they work, and how to navigate them to drive your ideal outcome.
CXponent is particularly well-versed in the following ecosystems:
- CCaaS
- Conversational AI
- UCaaS
- Managed Services
We are committed to learning and evolving with ecosystems so we can help you navigate them to get you the most out of the ideal buying journey.
Partnerships
We are an ecosystem partner with our vendors, which provides us access and funding for specialized pro services around client and vendor partnerships. We partner with nearly every market leader in the CX/AI/UC space and selected niche vendors you might not even have awareness of yet.
Ready to win together?
Let’s talk about how we can help you confidently navigate your unique transformation path.