One of the most valuable lessons that I learned in my MBA degree in Global Management was that managers don’t have to possess complete expertise in all of the technical skills required for a project that they are managing. What they do have to know are the right questions to ask. TechCrunch’s feature “Twilio Releases OpenVBX, An Open Source Google Voice for Businesses” captures this point to the tee. Twilio‘s new OpenVBX release functions with a drag and drop interface for creating advanced telephony services for businesses. Nonetheless, their primary target is still to enable developers to use their platform to build customized cloud telephony systems for their clients or businesses, by using Twilio’s telephony APIs, like text to speech, voice transcription, voicemail forwarding, and SMS messaging.
As a marketing manager, or an employee of a marketing agency, you don’t have to know how to write code in order to take advantage of the strides in the world of cloud telephony.
What you do have to know are your marketing goals, which target audience you are attempting to reach, and a basic understanding of different ways that marketing campaigns can take advantage of phone systems (such as voice broadcasts for product recalls, doctor’s visit reminder calls, and voting by phone. Then, when you read an article like TechCrunch’s coverage of Twilio’s OpenVBX, you can shoot an email over to your developers and discuss different ways that you could use this new platform, or comparable services, to implement your marketing goals.
You can include this quote from TechCrunch in your discussion with developers:
Twilio has always been focused on catering to developers, and OpenVBX isn’t any different. While the product will obviously appeal to businesses, Twilio is encouraging developers to take the technology and make it their own by integrating tweaks and plugins. For example, an enterprising developer could tweak OpenVBX so that it’s perfect for restaurants, and then resell it as their own service. Twilio still gets paid through their per-minute and phone line charges, and the developer can charge a hefty premium on top of it.
Related posts:
- Twilio’s Simple Platform for Phone Call APIs
- Ifbyphone Acquires Cloudvox, Changes the Game of Cloud Telephony
- Marketing and Ad Agencies use PMI to Transition to Cloud Telephony
- New Screencasts Teach the Basics of Cloud Telephony
- End of the Year Thoughts about Cloud Computing… and Cloud Telephony
