DirectLink Bets on SmartBiz To Extend Its OMNI Brand to Local Businesses
Because Consolidated Business Services partners have a long history of marketing telecom cooperatives in the Pacific Northwest, we know what it takes to build a compelling brand and a differentiated product strategy. Representing DirectLink—a cooperative serving the communities of Canby and Mt. Angel in Oregon for almost 120 years—we’re driven by creating greater value for subscribers.
Through our partnership with Calix, we have built the OMNI brand of residential services, giving every subscriber the best Wi-Fi and managed services without needless upsells or hassle. Now, with the launch of Calix SmartBiz™, we can extend the OMNI brand to our small businesses with a tailored solution that fits their unique needs.
Reinventing DirectLink as a Broadband Experience Provider
At the heart of our transformation is our ubiquitous “OMNI” offering strategy. Starting with residential, we standardized on Calix Revenue EDGE™ to ensure an exceptional user experience. OMNI gives our members everything they need in a single, easy-use package. Every member gets home network security, advanced parental controls, and our OMNI-branded mobile app for self-service. We’re not nickel-and-diming—if we’ve got it, our subscribers have it. And we’re seeing satisfaction skyrocket. With the launch of SmartBiz, we can now bring the same, all-inclusive, OMNI experience to our small business community.
Extending Our Brand by Offering Premium Experiences for Local Businesses
Under the brand “OMNI Pro,” we’re leveraging the SmartBiz wifi solutions for small business to bring a robust set of managed IT services to our local small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs). With strong, established relationships within the business community, we’re confident that SmartBiz is a great fit—particularly for neighborhood coffee shops, restaurants, and boutiques. Business owners can immediately benefit from a level of sophistication far beyond what’s currently available, but they don’t need a dedicated IT staff to manage it. While feature rich, SmartBiz is simple to use via the OMNI Pro-branded CommandWorx app which, conveniently, has the same look and feel as the app many business owners are using to manage their home broadband services.
Branded guest networks, improved security for financial transactions at point of sale, and staff network management are just a few of the value-added features resonating with our early adopters. Just like with residential, we offer SmartBiz as an “all-in” solution, allowing different types of businesses to take advantage of the features that work best for them. And there’s never any upsell. DirectLink OMNI Pro subscribers get all the amazing capabilities of SmartBiz included in the price of their broadband service. We operate in a competitive market, so both pricing and differentiation are key. Our approach of simplified pricing, a robust service, and local support will become key attractors for us against some fierce competitors in the business segment.
Elevating Our Marketing Campaigns Will Help Attract New Businesses to OMNI Pro
Looking ahead, we’re excited to harness the full potential of Calix Marketing Cloud (Marketing Cloud) to build on the early success of SmartBiz. Having such a powerful marketing engine will help us structure our campaigns, measure success, and segment our subscribers.
We can use Marketing Cloud to identify new businesses in our area and target them with an OMNI Pro campaign. We’ve already switched to marketing technology providers that integrate with Marketing Cloud, reflecting the team’s confidence that it will drive our next growth phase. The data, insights, and resources available mean we can intelligently engage, prospect, and acquire subscribers—while outsmarting our competitors.
Our philosophy has always been to build the best network and then add as much value as we can for our community. Quarter after quarter, Calix delivers on this incredible roadmap for differentiated services that makes it easy for us to offer our members more and more. After 26 years in telecom, I’ve seen many transitions, but the kinds of opportunities arising today make this a golden age for broadband services. With our OMNI brand as the foundation and Calix as our go-to-market partner on a differentiated product strategy, these are exciting times—particularly for the communities we serve.
About DirectLink
DirectLink connects over 8,000 members to the world they work, play, and live in through high-speed internet, Wi-Fi, and voice services. The service area includes nearly 100 square miles in the Canby and Mt. Angel communities in the northern Willamette Valley of Oregon. The company has been nationally recognized many times over as an industry leader and is well known for being friendly, local, and reliable. DirectLink is a communications cooperative business model that began in 1904 and employs local people. Visit www.directlink.coop for more information.
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