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Alex Laporte | Why Implementation Makes or Breaks an Industry Partner · The Wilmac Wire

• Emily McNulty: Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, everyone. Welcome or welcome back to the Wilmac Wire. Thank you for being here. Today's episode is a bit of an inside look. We're turning the mic inward and introducing someone who just joined the Wilmac pack. He's barely been here a month. And I know, Emily, give him some space, let him get like accustomed to what's going on. But you know, his first day, I was knocking on his door and asking him. To join us on the podcast. So we really appreciate him being a good sport about it. Today we're sitting down with Alex Laporte, our new VP of implementation and customer success at WillMac. Alex brings nearly 20 years of experience in telecom and customer success across companies like iCorp Networks, Vonage, and Extiva, working his way from a customer support rep all the way to VP. Today's conversation covers. Alex's career journey. We even dug into the role tennis has played in his life and how he was prepping for a Padel match later that night after we were recorded. We discussed what drew him to Will Mac at this stage and how he's thinking about implementation and customer success in a world where just AI is changing, everything. We also discussed what he's already building here in his first few weeks, and you know we're gonna have him back on in the future and see where he's at. So thank you so much to Alex. For joining us. We're really excited to have him at Willmack. Let's get into today's episode. All right, let's introduce our guest on the pod today. He is joining us from Delray Beach, Florida. He's a political science grad from Kenyon College, Go Owls, who found his way into the telecom world. He spent nearly 20 years building his career across iCore Networks, Allied Telecom, Vonage, and Nexteva, working his way from customer support rep to VP. He's now joined Wilmac as VP of Implementation and Customer Success. Welcome to the WilmacWire, Alex Leport. Alex, thanks for joining us. Alex Laporte: Thanks, Emily. Appreciate the introduction. Emily McNulty: Yeah, I had to I had to look up Kenyon College's mascot. I think Jim would appreciate that. We're gonna start things off with a brief icebreaker that we like to call this or that. I've got three questions for you. Each question will have two options. Choose your preference and then explain a little bit why. So the first one, Florida summers or Florida winters. Alex Laporte: Florida winters for sure. dry weather, sunny days, no rain, perfect for the beach. Emily McNulty: heck yeah. I I kind of expected that answer but just coming from Florida in July where it was I was sweating buckets outside. But Alex Laporte: yeah. Emily McNulty: do you get to do you still get to do like most of your outdoor activities in in the winter or go on the beach like the beach, that sort of thing? Alex Laporte: Well, I'm I'm a Florida native, so I'm used to the warm hot weather, so I I tend to do all my activities outside regardless of the time of the year. Emily McNulty: Yeah, love it. Okay, wonderful. Next one, this is where the tennis comes in. Clay court or grass court? Stephen McDonnell: We'll I guess we'll throw we'll throw a third out there, Padell Court. 'Cause he's and and Emily McNulty: Okay, yeah. Alex Laporte: Delcore. Stephen McDonnell: let it s explain Padell a little bit. Alex Laporte: Alright, so I would say in my elder years now playing tennis competitively on the clay courts for sure. A little bit easier for the knees, balls a little bit slower. but as far as newfound passion, I would say padell. And Padell is essentially pickleball, if you will, and squash slash racquetball in a box. so you're playing Emily McNulty: Okay. Alex Laporte: off different glass walls, you're able to play off the wall. it's very very intense, a lot of movement but exciting to play. And you only can play doubles, you can't play singles. So a little Emily McNulty: Okay. Gotcha. Alex Laporte: bit different than tennis. Stephen McDonnell: Why? Why is that? Alex Laporte: you can't cover the court's a little bit Stephen McDonnell: I don't. Alex Laporte: too big to cover for a singles Emily McNulty: Mm. Stephen McDonnell: A single Alex Laporte: player. Yeah, yeah, so it it's the points would be over pretty quickly if you did try and play singles. Emily McNulty: So I'm gonna ask Stephen McDonnell: Interesting. Emily McNulty: I'm gonna ask a dumb question too. So you said you're in a box. Like are you running into walls sort of thing? Have you ever run into Alex Laporte: You can be. Emily McNulty: a wall? Alex Laporte: I I ha I've and I've I've run into a wall and I've broken a racket on a wall. unin Emily McNulty: man. Alex Laporte: unintentionally of course, not out of anger. So Emily McNulty: Yeah. Yeah. Love it. Alex Laporte: yeah, the wall the walls are essentially glass. So Emily McNulty: Okay. Alex Laporte: they're see through and yes, you can absolutely run into them or break a racket on them. Stephen McDonnell: So it's like a glass cube. Alex Laporte: It's like a glass cube, think of it that way. Yeah. Stephen McDonnell: Yeah. And there's four Emily McNulty: That's funny. Stephen McDonnell: of you guys in this glass cube running around. Alex Laporte: Exactly. I know. It sounds sounds Emily McNulty: Man, that's intense. Alex Laporte: crazy. Stephen McDonnell: Do you have each partner have can do you have to take turns hitting the ball or you can you can hit the ball? Alex Laporte: You don't have to take turns, but you do play a certain side. So either you either play the left or the right side. Stephen McDonnell: Yeah. Okay. Right side, got it. Alex Laporte: And there's a lot of lobbing. So there's, you know, a bunch of forward movement to hit volleys and then backing up to retrieve lobs. So you're constantly either moving up or moving back with your partner in tandem. There is a net. Yeah. It's like a it's Stephen McDonnell: Is is there a net? So this so this is a huge class Q. Okay. So for us Alex Laporte: Yes. Yeah. It's a big glass cube. Yeah. Yeah. Stephen McDonnell: northeasterners, it's like it has some semblance to paddle. Alex Laporte: Exactly. Just imagine Emily McNulty: Right. Alex Laporte: putting a paddle tennis court in a glass cube and you basically have Padell. Stephen McDonnell: Got. Got it. Okay. That makes sense. Emily McNulty: Okay, so let me ask too, this might be a controversial question, but do you not like pickleball being a tennis and pedel player? Stephen McDonnell: W well I yeah, I notice a lot of really good tennis players a and professional tennis players kinda look down upon pickleball. Emily McNulty: Yeah. Yeah. Alex Laporte: So I don't I don't have anything against pickleball. I have played it. Emily McNulty: Yeah. Alex Laporte: it is I find it too easy. Emily McNulty: Mm. Alex Laporte: i.e. I don't get my workout in that I need each day. So Emily McNulty: Don't get a workout then. Yeah. That's fair. Stephen McDonnell: Yeah. Alex Laporte: yeah, I feel that you get a much better workout and a much better you know, level of competition on the tennis and pedell court. Emily McNulty: Right. Okay. That's fair. Alex Laporte: Yeah. Emily McNulty: we no hatred towards pickleball here. We know how how Alex Laporte: Yeah. Emily McNulty: loved pickleball is. Wonderful. All right. Alex Laporte: Well it's it it's interesting 'cause in Florida a lot of communities do complain about pickleball and the noise, right? So Emily McNulty: Really? Hmm. Alex Laporte: the pinging sound that you hear off the racket. Yeah. Yeah. Emily McNulty: Yeah. Yeah. Stay out of the kitchen. all right. And last one for you, Alex, of our icebreakers. Getting a customer live or keeping them long term, a little bit more position related. Alex Laporte: getting the customer live. Emily McNulty: Mm. Okay. Alex Laporte: i if you do it correctly the first time, you have a long term customer in your pocket. Emily McNulty: Love it. Like that perspective. All right, wonderful. Well, thanks for doing our icebreaker with us, Alex C. Like I said, pretty easy. Steve usually writes my questions and tells me if they're hard and those weren't too bad. Stephen McDonnell: Those are the the floor the the season, she always does seasons and that was maybe the easiest seasonal one I've Emily McNulty: Yeah. Stephen McDonnell: heard. Alex Laporte: Yeah, yeah, that you could choose. Yeah. Emily McNulty: I don't w I don't want to assume though. Like I'm I have my own assumptions. You never know. Stephen McDonnell: Who who it takes a special human being to enjoy Florida summers. Alex Laporte: It does. It does. It takes a Florida Emily McNulty: Yeah, it does. Alex Laporte: native and that's me. Stephen McDonnell: Yeah. Emily McNulty: does. okay, Alex. So we're we're gonna jump into the first theme today on your career journey. you studied political science at Kenyan College, which really isn't an obvious doesn't have an obvious path to to telecom customer success, kind of what you're doing now. So what drew you initially to political science, and then how did you end up in kind of the telecom world? Alex Laporte: Yeah, so so great question. I was a political science major at Kenyan, which is really a discipline built on understanding people, systems, and incentives. So it taught me how to think, right? How to lead and incentivize people to achieve a certain outcome. And so after I graduated, I didn't go naturally into telecom. I was coaching tennis. part-time in the Washington DC area. And during my available time, I searched long and hard and interviewed at many startup companies. I really, you know, at that point in my career had a desire to get in early, learn a business, and grow from there. And so these hours of searching landed me at iCorps Networks in the customer service role supporting voiceover IP and DIA services. And over those years, I was at iCor. I took on a variety of roles from account management and customer training through project management. And iCor really established that launching pad for my career in telecommunications. So an unusual path, but happy to be where I am now. Emily McNulty: And so what did ICOR do originally? Alex Laporte: So iCorp provided voice over internet protocol services, so Emily McNulty: Okay. Alex Laporte: hosted UCAS. And so essentially we delivered a T1 or Ethernet circuit, installed IP capable phones, and ran voice services over that managed circuit that was brought in to the customer site. Stephen McDonnell: And y you were in D C during this time? Alex Laporte: Yeah, yep. I was in the D C I was in D C from about two thousand seven until twenty twenty. Emily McNulty: okay. Stephen McDonnell: How was that? Alex Laporte: I I enjoyed the experience. I I had the opportunity to live in downtown DC, in DuPont Circle. so I lived there for several years and then, you know, as life progressed you eventually move out to suburbia. And so I found myself in Alexandria, Virginia, where I had my two children, before I moved back to Florida to be closer to family. Emily McNulty: so like in a way you you did f kind of fall into telecom. Like I know you said you were seeking out like startups and you had that that vision, but a lot Alex Laporte: Yeah. Emily McNulty: of the guests that we have on here kind of that are in that space, they end that they end up there unexpectedly. Like it kind of just naturally progress like goes in that that direction. Am I correct in in saying that? Alex Laporte: That is correct, I fell into telecom. So Yep. Emily McNulty: Yeah. Fell into telecom. Stephen McDonnell: Did you did you have any ambition to stay in the tennis world professionally? Alex Laporte: So my father was a professional tennis player. He played ATP Tour events as well as Dutch Davis Cup, and is actually one of the leading directors of tennis for private clubs in the US. and so, yes, at as a young child I did have aspirations to follow in his footsteps, but he advised me and said it's a very difficult position to achieve, Emily McNulty: Yeah. Alex Laporte: and he was one of the lucky ones. And so he continued to push me you know, to pursue my own career pursuits. Emily McNulty: Mm-hmm. Alex Laporte: And I'm certainly grateful for that because you know, I would not end up in a situation like I'm at like I am at Wilmac if it weren't for my career landing in telecommunications. Stephen McDonnell: Yeah, it's it's interesting. I feel like golf pros and tennis pros, it's a ver it can be be looked upon as a very sexy lifestyle, but there's only a certain amount of people that get to do it and then getting up to that position is a tough, tough lifestyle. Alex Laporte: Yes. Yeah. It's Emily McNulty: Yeah. Yeah. Alex Laporte: long hours, working holidays, Stephen McDonnell: Yeah. Alex Laporte: lots yeah, yeah, no, totally get it. Emily McNulty: Yeah. Well, I think too you've you've definitely forged your own path in terms of pursuing a different industry. But on top of that, like we talked about it at the top, like you you're able to balance it a little bit and still stay involved with the something that you love deeply and obviously it's been a really big part of you who you are, which is really cool. Alex Laporte: Yeah. Emily McNulty: so Alex, I know too in your your career history, like or your career journey, you spent nearly 20 years like working your way up through operations, through service delivery. customer success. Did you always like know that you wanted to be in leadership? Was it the competitive aspect? Like what what drove that that escalation? Alex Laporte: Yeah, so I think the competitive side of me is someone who likes to take the lead when it comes to executing a task or completing an an objective. I think an example of that when I was captain of my collegiate tennis team at Kenyon, you know, taught me that, you know, leadership is about setting your team members up for success. My number six player in my singles lineup was just as important as my number one player to achieve that objective of getting that number one, getting that one singles point. And so, you know, I've been the type of person where, you know, to get things done, you really need to grab the bull by the horns, develop a plan, and put your team in roles where they can be successful. That's where I really excel. you know, lastly, I very much consider myself a servant leader. My success is predicated on my team's success. Emily McNulty: And I you know I'm I'm a competitive person too. So is Steve. But the playing on a team and growing up on a team and understanding that each team, you have different roles for that team, it just applies so well to to business. Alex Laporte: It does. Emily McNulty: so I I appreciate that. There's always always room to grow, always time to grind. So I know too, we we called it out in in your intro that you worked at Vonage, who is in our realm at Will Mac. And so you led a a pretty you led a pretty substantial team and then you grew that team at at Vontage. So what what did that teach you about like implementation, customer success, any like baseline foundational elements that that you pulled from that experience that that kind of inf influences how you how you lead today? Alex Laporte: Yeah, so I think the biggest thing that Vonage taught me leading a large organization was that leading at scale teaches you that process and consistency matter just as much as talent. You know, so you can't rely on heroics from your best people to hit targets every month or complete your implementation objectives. You need repeatable playbooks, clean handoffs from sales to service delivery to customer success. And you really need that upfront project governance. You know, the other thing that it taught me is that implementation is really where the trust is won or lost with the customer. I've always been a big believer that detailed preparation leads to flawless execution, and that leads to an exceptional customer experience. Emily McNulty: sees yeah. Stephen McDonnell: How was your time at Vonage? Obviously it's a interesting company. Erickson Alex Laporte: So Stephen McDonnell: acquired them out and a lot of changes have been going on there. We hear ups and downs. What what how was your time there? Obviously it was good from a professional standpoint, taught you a lot. but what what do you think of the company itself at this point? Alex Laporte: So I think, you know, Vonage is in a prime position to combine both its API and its application product offerings to prevent a c to provide a customer a unique solution that no one else in the industry can provide right now. you know, my time at Vontage was you know eye-opening for me professionally. We went through several acquisitions when I was there, including the acquisition of New Voice Media, which is an embedded contact center within Salesforce. And so I was responsible for integrating that business operationally into the Vontage way. then post Erickson acquisition, we underwent some significant change as well that we had to manage through. So I would say, My key item that I learned was that managing through change can be difficult, but it's a necessary tool for your next step in success. Emily McNulty: And and that goes Steve's question kind of transitions us nicely into the fact that telecom and UCAS, the landscape itself has shifted dramatically over kind of your your tenure being in the industry from on-prem to cloud to AI, you know. Like did your philosophy on customer success implementation did it evolve or change as kind of the technology itself evolved and changed? Alex Laporte: Yeah, so if if you look at sort of legacy on-prem UCAST, CCAST deployments, you really look at it as a one-time event, right? You installed the solution, you handed over the solution, and your success was measured by uptime. So now the landscape has shifted and the definition of done has changed, right? So adoption is now a continuous motion with customers. And with AI layered on top, you know, it's really critical to serve as a trusted advisor to a customer on AI solutions that are constantly learning. So my philosophy really has shifted from deliver and support to deliver and drive customer adoption so they can realize the value. Emily McNulty: what keeps you motivated and like invested in this space? Alex Laporte: So I think the first, and this is probably the biggest one, I like being the person a customer trusts when things get hard. Emily McNulty: Mm-hmm. Alex Laporte: So watching an account go from skeptical to advocating for you really has kept me in this for almost two decades and pulled me toward Wilmac. you know, I think the second thing is just how the technology keeps changing underneath you. So you're always learning. I'm learning something new at Wilmac, which I'm super excited about. And I like that discomfort. Emily McNulty: I was about to say that I think that competitive side comes out and that answer for sure. you want to prove to them that that you're trustworthy, like you said, and that you can do what you said you were you were gonna do. and that, like I said, lead it leads us nicely into kind of our second theme, which is about joining Wilmac, how you've been here, what less than a month, and I'm already forcing you on the podcast. I think your first day I knocked on the door and I was like, So, would you like to be on the Wilmac choir? but so Alex, you just joined us as our VP of implementation and customer success. What originally attracted you to this role at this stage in your career? Alex Laporte: So after running larger organizations at Vonage and Nextiva, I really wanted to get back closer to the building. Emily McNulty: Mm-hmm. Alex Laporte: You know, at this stage in my career, I believe I know how to scale a post-sale organization, you know, the playbooks we need to implement, the metrics, the overall governance. And I wanted to apply that somewhere from the ground up. you know, Willmax focus in customer interaction technology in industries like financial services, healthcare, and public safety was the other piece. these are like the type of accounts where implementation and customer success can be the differentiator. I'm a big believer in customer experience, and Will Mac is a big believer in that as well. Stephen McDonnell: Yeah, I think and especially the industries that we play in tend to have some difficult implementations. just the type of companies that are our customers will will lead it that way. And it's one of the reasons why we obviously brought you in is is to kind of really hone our implementation process down and get it to a science and making sure customers think of Wilmac as a partner and a trusted partner instead of just a vendor that's trying to implement something as quick as possible. but with the industry specifically that we play in, are there specific challenges that you've seen that that you're gonna try to address? Alex Laporte: Yeah, so I think the biggest challenge right now that we need to address is really helping understand the customer business well enough to make sure that we're setting ourselves up to be successful. And so there are two areas that I'm working through right now with the team. One is defining our implementation playbook for both our continuity replay and continuity WFM product sets, and really defining what that journey looks like for our customers. The second is aligning that journey with our internal tool set and how we manage that implementation end to end. And we're working through a specific adoption of a tool set within our customer. CRM to manage our customer implementations moving forward. Stephen McDonnell: and the other interesting thing, we have products that we've reselled, we have products that we built ourselves, like continuity replay that's fairly mature, and then we have products like continuity WFM that we've built ourselves that are we're just kind of getting out there to the market. Is it exciting having your hands in so many different types of products, or is it is it tough to get your head around? What are your thoughts on that? Alex Laporte: So I I think like it's an advantage, right? So, you know, the biggest opportunity we have is in my mind, proximity to both the customer and the product roadmap. So like at a large organization, right, feedback from a customer conversation into the product roadmap might take quarters, right, to influence decisions. Here we can clues close that loop loop in weeks. In addition to that, I think that being vertically focused also means we get to be more specialist, like with our continuity WFM product, rather than generalist. and bigger competitors really can't match that depth in my opinion. Emily McNulty: And you kind of alluded to it with the pace at at which we work and can turn things around. But like Wilmac is definitely a little bit it's a different type of company than what you've worked at in the past. what stood out to you about the size and the culture of of Wilmac now being here for or going through the interview process and being here for about a month? Alex Laporte: The speed, honestly. you know, in a larger organization, a good idea can take months to move through all the different layers before making an impact with the customer. Like for example, here I can see a gap in our onboarding process on a Monday and have a fix piloted, you know, in a few days. Right? I also notice that the culture is generally people is genuinely people first rather than just saying it. So like we make a lot of decisions with employees in the room that help influence those decisions in the right way that impact the customer in a positive manner. Emily McNulty: you joined us at an exciting time with our products starting to mature. Consuming WFM is starting to take off and gain more traction. Our AI agents are being built out every day. You've been able to work with Bob and the dev team and get visibility into that. I guess like first month in, what's your first impression? Alex Laporte: Yeah, so my first impression is that the foundation is strong. You know, like what Steve said, what strikes me is how good the product already is. And how much room there still is for us to tell that story to customers through implementation and our ongoing customer success motion. You know, continuity replay, in my opinion, is a really robust vendor new vendor neutral archiving platform for all of your customer interaction data. Again, very robust, very mature. Continuity WFM, you know, provides a custom-built workforce management tool for your staffing, intraday management, time-off bids, and seat level coverage. On top of that, we're also layering AI into these products to improve efficiency and ease of use when utilizing. So super excited about what I'm seeing so far from our development and engineering teams. Stephen McDonnell: Yeah, what what do you what are your thoughts on the AI? Obviously ever you know, you're coming from two companies that are I would I would call SaaS companies first and then obviously with AI everyone's trying to get their hands on something and build a bot or build a copilot within their systems. You know, with us, Archie, we're really trying to be AI native to continuity replay and and make it standalone. Mac is still kind of that co-pilot with WFM. but have you gotten your hands much on our AI software that we're we're trying to get out to our customers and and what are your thoughts in general on where AI is going in the industry? Alex Laporte: Yeah, so I think about it in two ways, right? There's AI as a tool for us internally, using it to develop implementation plans or address, you know, potential risks within accounts. And we're using that ourselves. to remove friction and busy work from our teams so they can spend time on relationship building and project management. But then you have AI that's part of the product experience itself, to your point, which changes what implementation looks like, right? Because we're configuring something that needs to keep learning. And what I've seen with Archie and Mac is that we're very much at the stage where we can leverage those tool sets to make Our customer experience much more seamless and efficient when using continuity replay and continuity WFM. Stephen McDonnell: obviously been here a month now? You you spoke a little bit. Internally we use AI a ton at Wilmac. Our you know, if we're gonna build it for our customers, we gotta be using it. So pr for our audience, I think Emily and I have been pretty clear, but internally all our employees utilize it, Emily McNulty: Practice paperage. Yes. Stephen McDonnell: different models. we have, you know, an AI kind of hub that brings all our systems together. what is your first impression of that? Were you a big AI user beforehand, Alex? and how has that been jumping into internally as far as AI use? Alex Laporte: So th from an onboarding standpoint, the AI infrastructure we have in place right now has been extremely helpful. So I have past experience leveraging Claude integrated with different tool sets. We have that here at WillMac, and it has been absolutely incredible digging into data within Salesforce, within Fathom, with our own internal project management tool, Auto Task, as well as SharePoint. And so I've been able to ascertain, you know, project implementation summaries and key takeaways, leveraging our AI tools. Where in the past, you know, that would have taken days of research for me to determine what a next step would be with a project related to a specific account. So super, super impressed by what we're leveraging internally from an AI standpoint. Stephen McDonnell: Good. Emily McNulty: Yeah it Stephen McDonnell: We'll continue to do that. Alex Laporte: Yeah. Emily McNulty: Yeah, it's it's funny, like you you talk about the onboarding piece. And I'm like, all right, reflecting back on when I started here five years ago and how you just have to pick through everything. And Steve and I have talked about this AI use case before too on the podcast, where like, wouldn't it be nice if you could just prompt AI and ask it for something and it could just level it up to you versus you having to dig through folders or allocate that documentation, especially now you called out fathom calls, like the ability to just home through the insights those transcripts provide from our project meetings, from sales calls, all that sort of stuff. It just it's it enables us and empowers us so much more than than it did before. so yeah, I I liked that use case. Stephen McDonnell: Yeah. I don't I don't know if we've ever called out Fathom, and they are not a sponsor of our show, although we would be up for it. Emily McNulty: They can be if they want. Stephen McDonnell: Exactly. Alex Laporte: Mm-hmm. Stephen McDonnell: but Fathom has just been an unbelievable tool for for our Emily McNulty: Yeah. Alex Laporte: I agree. Stephen McDonnell: whole organization. It started as a sales tool, and it basically is is just a bot that hops on a call. with you and your customer or you and your partner, whoever it may be, and records it all and analyzes it, summarizes it, takes out action items, throws it right into Salesforce for our sales reps. and we can access anyone can really access any single call, whether it's a project call or Gary White on a call with T D Bank, and we can just go into Claude and access that easy. Fathom spending great Emily McNulty: Yeah, for sure. And I mean the Alex Laporte: Hundred percent. Emily McNulty: marketing side, I'm totally selfish when I talk about this, but how much it informs our content creation, what customers are asking for. It just it enlightens us every day. So a great fathom. If you want to be a sponsor and you're listening to this, thank you for listening. Let reach out, please. Alex Laporte: huh. Emily McNulty: so Alex, we're we're on the topic of AI. you talked about it a little bit how from how you're using it from that perspective, how it's evolved in the industry, like in implementation and customer success specifically. Like AI, it feels like is changing how people are supported and their expectations around how they're getting supported. So how have you thought about that shift? Are you seeing it? Alex Laporte: Yeah, so you know, I think what it to me, what a great impl AI implementation looks like in twenty twenty six is it's where it's nearly invisible to the customer's day-to-day operations and it ends with the customer actually using the AI solution and the way it was designed to be used. you know, the shift is early in my career It was an off-the-shelf solution that just worked and it was delivered on time. Today the bar now includes adoption and time to value baked in from day one. So you're only done when the customer's team is confident in getting measurable value out of it, not just when that solution is up and running. Emily McNulty: Yeah. And so that that takes me back to what Steve alluded to before in that industry partner versus vendor conversation. It's come come up more prevalently, I think, recently, because we've been having conversations with public safety leaders, but they've brought up okay, industry partner is someone who's who's with you. They're asked they're sitting with you at the table asking you what challenges you're facing. How can we solve those challenges? And then a vendor is more of a set it and forget it. how do you think through kind of that industry partner? positioning and and your role in particular. Alex Laporte: In my mind, it's pretty simple, right? So a solution provider waits for the customer to tell them what's wrong. An industry partner understands the customer's business well enough to flag a risk or raise an opportunity before the customer even asks. So, in my role, that means my team needs to know our customers' businesses, not just our own product. Emily McNulty: It goes back to that trust that you called out to Alex Laporte: Yeah. Emily McNulty: a skeptic for skeptic versus an advocate. so Alex, coming, I guess, from larger organizations and now into one that's vertical AI, it's it's very specific. We're serving a very specific market, solving a very specific need. So like what do you think the opportunity is for more of a small or agile companies to win on customer success? Alex Laporte: Yeah, so I I think I mentioned this earlier, but r really it's the the closeness that we have to our customers and to our product, right? You know, at a large organization it's very much bifurcated from customer success from the product roadmap. And so we have the ability here to influence what our product roadmap looks like, especially as it pertains to Archie and Mac. You know, larger companies really are more generalist and here we can actually be specialists for our customers. Emily McNulty: I got one more question for you really. Like as you Alex Laporte: Sure. Emily McNulty: as you settle into your role at Will Mac, like what excites you most about where implementation and customer success are are going, where they're headed? Alex Laporte: I'll leave it with simple statement. So I think we have the chance to make implementation and customer success a real competitive ad advantage in how we win and how Emily McNulty: Mm-hmm. Alex Laporte: we handle our accounts. And so what excites me the most is, you know, I wanna go to Steve and say, you know, we're a growth engine for you from a revenue standpoint versus a cost center. and we're not just judged on retention and satisfaction. You know, we wanna be directly tied to expansion and revenue r and net revenue retention and the product roadmap all in one. Stephen McDonnell: Revenue generator instead of a cost center. I like that. It's a good good Alex Laporte: Yeah. Stephen McDonnell: way good way to end it there, Alex. I also Emily McNulty: Yeah. Stephen McDonnell: think it'll be interesting, since we really caught you, you're not even a month in here, to do this a year from now, maybe eight months from now and and see where you're at and what you've learned. but Alex Laporte: Yeah, that would be that would be great. Stephen McDonnell: appreciate you hopping on and doing this so early in your in your tenure. Emily McNulty: Yes, you're a trooper, Alex. So I I really Stephen McDonnell: Okay. Emily McNulty: appreciate that. but Alex, as as we start to wrap up, are there any initiatives or programs that you're working through at Will Mac or the a message that you want to share with our audience before before we wrap? Alex Laporte: Yeah, the main thing I can share right now is that we're rebuilding our onboarding and implementation playbooks from the ground up. it's still early days, but the goal is that every new customer has a clear, predictable path from signed contract to implementation. I'll have more to share on this the further we get into it, but be on the lookout for an announcement from my team. Emily McNulty: Yeah, mark it up. We'll have you on the the Wilmac wire again in the future. And we'll we'll Alex Laporte: Yeah. Emily McNulty: be asking about it, I'm sure. but very excited for that. And Alex, we appreciate you joining us and just being a part of the Wilmac pack. We're really excited for you to be here. For our listeners, if you would like to connect with Alex or follow what he's doing at Wilmac, you can find him on LinkedIn under Alex Laporte, and that's Laporte with an E at the end. We clarified that upon The start of this episode. wonderful. And then last but not least, we encourage you to check out the Will Mac website, WillMacTech.com. It has more information on the different services and operational components that we have to our business. You can read more about Alex and what he's doing on the leadership team there too. Other than that, Steve, you got anything to add? Stephen McDonnell: No. Thank you, Alex. pumped to have you on on the team and again, thanks for hopping on this so quickly. Alex Laporte: All right, way to go, team. Thank you.