Is the fourth time a charm? Cenoplex hopes so, appointing industry veteran Denise Archer to the position of chief partnership officer after she's already been involved in three previous successful ventures.
Archer's experience dates back to her time as senior vice president of sales and marketing at Appex, a wireless carrier service provider for roaming fraud control and billing and one of the first automated roaming clearinghouses in the United States. Appex eventually was acquired by Electronic Data Systems (EDS).
After Appex, Archer went on to Boston Communications Group Inc., perhaps better known as BCGI, where she helped in the development of prepaid cellular service. BCGI debuted in a successful IPO while she was there. (Note: This was before larger carriers caught wind that there might be something to this prepaid thing.)
Then Archer joined direct-to-carrier billing provider BilltoMobile in 2007 as vice president of carrier partnerships and media communications, directing mobile carrier sales, industry relations and development of strategic wireless industry partnerships. In 2010, BilltoMobile announced its first carrier deal with Verizon Wireless. Today, it has deals with all four of the big nationwide U.S. operators. She remains on that company's board of advisors, but after being on Cenoplex's board for a number of years, she's joined the company full time.
Cenoplex offers the ability to insert actionable audio messages into the call stream of a mobile phone. It's basically using the time between when a number is dialed and when it finalizes the connection – the 4-6 seconds that are otherwise "dead" airtime and people hear a fake ring while dozens of processes are happening behind the scene to get the call connected. Iowa Wireless Services (i wireless) already has implemented the technology in a trial and is a few weeks away from commercial rollout. The company also is working with an operator in Puerto Rico.
Operators can use the audio alerts to do a range of things – welcome new customers or send a bill pay reminder – but since the FCC wants carriers to notify customers about their data and voice usage before their bills skyrocket, Cenoplex executives say that's one of the great use cases for its technology. But they also acknowledge there needs to be an educational component so that consumers understand the messages are not interrupting a call or otherwise being a nuisance. Consumers also need to know the messages won't count against their monthly plan.
Cenoplex says there are myriad reasons a carrier might want to use the audio messages, including the notion that many consumers simply ignore the SMS messages that carriers currently use to keep their customers in the loop. Or if a customer travels to Canada, it would be good to give them a heads up about data roaming costs.
Cenoplex President and CEO Gregory O. Welch says he's aware of others trying to take over the white space on the handset and those offering self-care solutions like SNAPin (acquired by Nuance in 2008), but being in the voice channel means it's harder for end-users to bypass the messages they need to hear.
What does Archer bring? As she's done in the past, she brings a spark that will help accelerate growth, he says. Cenoplex has just under 30 employees and is expanding at its Austin, Texas, headquarters.
Robert Balascio, a former member of the Verizon strategy team and former chief information officer at Bell Atlantic Mobile, is on the Cenoplex Board of Advisors. He remembers the early days of roaming, when carriers initially viewed it as a low-volume, high-profit opportunity. He says Archer saw beyond that – and she held her own -- and more – in meetings with carriers.
Archer will continue to rely on her interpersonal carrier skills to advance the Cenoplex cause. Balascio has confidence in her, saying she knows not only how to make the pitch but respects the amount of time required to invest. "You can have the best solution, [but] it's getting the carrier's attention," he says.
Before the cellular industry, she was a recording artist and background singer for musicians such as Rod Stewart, Stephen Stills (of Cosby, Still and Nash) and Joe Cocker, but that lifestyle got tiresome. "I didn't intend to quit, but I fell into the cellular business and I was fascinated with radio... I really fell in love with the industry." And that, as they say, is how history was made.