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A Comprehensive Connectivity Solution

Day in the life series: 5 a.m. to 6 a.m.

By Dennis Jones

ceo-comes-out-on-top

The CEO hung up the call with the words, “Well, I guess your call is probably costing us a fortune,” still ringing in her ears. She’d never scored such a decisive, tactical and strategic victory over her CFO in one conversation. Since she’d been on the job, it usually took her months of meetings, presentations and business plans to sway the CFO. But in hindsight, she’d been neglecting the power of the illustrative example.

After being marooned at the Prague airport, she’d taken the somewhat rash decision to take a train to Berlin and fly out of their international airport. That’s why her recent call with the CFO had lasted the span of a brief stop at some regional backwater in eastern Germany – geography wasn’t her strong suit.

She’d called, because she knew he’d be tempted to ignore her urgent emails. And when she had the germ of an idea, she wasn’t to be ignored.

Intemperate by nature, she’d gone ahead and called. He’d answered – somewhat reluctantly she could tell – and she rehashed the company’s need for an easy-to-use mobility solution that could get her team online quickly and eliminate the many hassles of connecting.

Unsurprisingly, he didn’t seem particularly enthused. But she proceeded with her monologue over the occasional audible interjection: things like, “What’s the business case?” “I don’t see the ROI.”

A few minutes in, he asked her where she was, mostly as a diversionary technique. Not sensing the trap, she quickly changed gears and regaled him with the story of her travel woes.

But in fact, the trap was on him. His cost-cutting instincts were so keen that he quickly realized that her call was probably costing the company a fortune. She wasn’t on Wi-Fi. She wasn’t calling from the campus in Prague. She was roaming internationally, an actual nightmare scenario. Had she been roaming the whole time? And who else was roaming promiscuously at Krempe? Who even owned the telecom budget?

Knowing the he simply couldn’t ban international travel at a multinational company, he knew she was right. Krempe needed a cost-effective, comprehensive connectivity solution.

See what happened next.