19 Jun 2017 Spotlight on CounterPath
This week’s Spotlight on Tech features CounterPath, a Vancouver-based leading provider of award winning, over-the-top (OTT) and Unified Communications (UC) solutions. With the rise of the “anytime, anywhere worker” CounterPath’s Bria powered by Stretto offers communications re-imagined. Read on to learn more about their culture, new product launches, and goals for the year.
1. Describe your company and your primary product(s) and/or service(s). CounterPath was founded in 2002 and is publicly traded on the NASDAQ: CPAH. CounterPath has 1000 customers with 20 million client activations. The Bria softphone client suite lets consumers and businesses make VoIP audio and video calls, send instant messages and manage their presence in an easy-to-use, seamless application that is both an industry and user favourite. The CounterPath Stretto Platform is a gateway, messaging, presence and provisioning platform that lets enterprises build flexible solutions to meet their unique communication and deployment requirements. Stretto is agnostic to existing networks providing the best user experience. CounterPath has a track record of innovation with a deep patent portfolio covering VoIP, Fixed Mobile Convergence (FMC) and Unified Communications (UC). We have a total of 25 patents granted and pending.
2. How many employees currently work at your company and where are you located? We currently have 100 employees and our head office is located in the Bentall Centre in downtown Vancouver. We also have offices in Chicago, Boston, Ottawa, Victoria and throughout Europe.
3. Describe the culture at your company. Our secret to success starts with our people. Across departments our teams are very smart, driven, and willing to share knowledge and mentor each other. Another key aspect of our success is that we are early adopters who are devoted to ensuring leading communications technologies. At CounterPath, we know how important it is to maintain a work-life balance. We allow flexible scheduling and trust our people to get their work done with no micro-managing required. We understand that freedom is the motivator that drives us to build cutting-edge communication solutions.
4. What does your leadership team (and company as a whole) do to support/grow that culture? At the end of the fiscal year we distribute the annual cross-departmental survey to gauge how well the company is doing with our core values. Management takes this feedback seriously and builds strategies to further improve the core values. We conduct our business and run the company with these values in mind and continue to strive to build upon them. They include: Strength in the team; technically, with high business acumen and ability to build strong relationships. Continuing to be passionate about customer success; after all, we have over 1000 happy ones. We also embolden our people to have the courage to be unique as no idea is a stupid one. Finally, we are proud of the great integrity of each and every member of our organization. These values are not just a human resources cadence, we uniquely integrate them in all that we do, resulting in extraordinary employee satisfaction and low turnover. Of course it is not all work here at CounterPath. We have a dedicated and passionate social committee that organizes all team-building activities including a Friday social that takes place on the last Friday of every month. The committee organizes several outings throughout the year, including an upcoming jaunt to the PNE. Most recently, we had the highest employee participation in the 2017 Sun Run since we first joined as a corporate team. The executive team fully supports and participates in our extra-curricular activities and is always open to new ways of engaging the team.
5. When your employees talk about your company, what do they brag about? CounterPath is truly the leading innovator for business communications technologies due to the strength of our engineers and the collaboration and relationships we have with our network of partners. We take pride in everything we do, but some of the key highlights that set us apart are: 1. Our unique unified user experience is our standard, resulting in seamless deployment and guaranteed user adoption. 2. Customers can implement their corporate brand on all tools creating differentiation and loyalty. 3. The power of our SDK (Software Development Kit) is that it allows our customers’ developers to implement and customize where needed. This is a unique offering for our industry. These are just a few exceptional offerings that make us distinguished industry leaders.
6. Describe your most recent achievement, milestone, reason for bragging rights. Amongst the many awards we have achieved over the years, our most recent honour was receiving the 2017 TMC Unified Communications Product of the Year for Bria X. Another recent milestone was launching Bria for Salesforce on the Salesforce AppExchange. Bria for Salesforce enables current Salesforce users to combine communication and collaboration tools within their Salesforce instances.
7. What kinds of people are you looking for? We seek people whose core values align with our company’s. We also love to see an entrepreneurial essence and people that adapt well to change and a fast environment. Don’t expect to be bored when you come to the CounterPath offices.
8. What is your company goal for the coming year? We are gearing our sales teams up to embrace the enterprise market. Traditionally, our business model was to sell our products through an OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) and this will continue as these partnerships are very important to us. But with the rise of the ‘anytime, anywhere worker’, there is an increase in the addressable market and a definite need for better communications within enterprises to unite their people and achieve their organizational goals. To learn more about CounterPath, visit CounterPath.com