Innovative Software and Information Technology Stories: Carson Conant

Sullivan Alexander is a Contributor on the Price of Business on Business Talk 1110 AM KTEK (on Bloomberg’s home in Houston) whom you can learn more about at www.contureadvisors.com.

Sullivan recently interviewed Carson Conant, CEO of Mediafly, Inc.

About the interviewee:

Carson Conant is the CEO of Mediafly, Inc. which he founded in 2006. Overlooking Chicago’s Magnificent Mile, Mediafly has grown into a globally recognized enterprise software company that delivers mobile enablement solutions for Fortune 1000 companies and beyond. Following the efficiencies created by Software as a Services companies such as Salesforce.com and WorkDay, Carson has led Mediafly to pioneer the mobile generation’s version of SaaS solutions: Mobile Apps as a Service (MAaaS), which is now embraced by some of the world’s most respected companies.  When Carson is not traveling to be with customers, prospects, sales teams and shareholders, he lives in Chicago with his beautiful wife and two rambunctious children.

Describe the business model including (products or services offered, number of employees, location, type of customers you work with, etc.).

Mediafly is an enterprise mobility platform that transforms data and content into compelling mobile experiences and elevates business interactions. Our two cornerstone products are SalesKit and ProReview. SalesKit: Sell in style with your tablets and smartphones. Present with video, audio, documents, images, iBooks, and websites from your app. ProReview: The most effective, beautiful way to securely share and review pre- and post-production videos, dailies and rough cuts on any device.

What does this mean for my business? Quick access to the right content, at the right time, from any device. Empower employees to deliver interactive, dynamic content to audiences – the cure to “death by presentation. ”Enhance existing technology investments by providing employees a single federated view of all relevant content, across systems and platforms.

Our Mobility Manifesto: Mediafly facilitates intelligent access to data and content so that it can be used in context for the maximum impact on the target audience. Mediafly enables mobile engagement and increases the alliance between content creators and content consumers. Mobilizing content that consistent, compliant and compelling. Administrative controls allow for sophisticated reporting on content use, access, and security.

Tell us about one of the innovative solutions or services your company designed for a customer.

A CPG company wanted to gain greater insight and control over how products were marketed in the field through more effective communications with their sales representatives (reps) and distributors. The sales transformation would streamline all elements of the sales process, unifying the way the sales team approached the market with the ultimate goal to increase Share of Voice (SOV).

In support of the sales transformation, the company prioritized providing tablets to their reps. They needed a partner with an enterprise mobility platform and the ability to deploy quickly against an aggressive deadline, and contacted Mediafly.

What challenges did you face and how did you overcome the challenges?

Mediafly teamed with this CPG customer’s leadership and sales reps to determine how Mobile Apps as a Service (MAaaS) could best enable the sales transformation. The company needed to share documents, presentations, audio, video, and iBooks through one interface. Mediafly’s SalesKit met these needs and provided additional sophisticated reporting capabilities on content use.

What do you see as “hot button” issues in your industry, and what are the implications?

For many businesses, one of today’s preeminent challenges is not only creating the best content, but also getting it into the hands of the intended business user. Tools such as flash drives and cloud based storage solutions vary in reliability, and also lack the enterprise level security necessary for housing and accessing sensitive files. The biggest obstacle is that the B2B community now expects the slick and polished B2C type of interface to carry over into their mobile business apps. For everyone from salespeople to moviemakers, it is becoming more and more important to have access to the best content at all times.

What makes your business different from the competition?

We all remember when software as a service (SaaS) was considered a scary and taboo approach to enterprise software deployment. Today it is the new normal in the technology world. We see MAaaS as the same paradigm shift happening in enterprise mobile applications. In our initial MAaaS series post, we provided some baseline information around what Mobile Apps as a Service (MAaaS) is.

Mediafly provides Mobile Apps as a Service (MAaaS) that are:

Integrated: connect seamlessly to existing systems (CRM, CMS, ERP, etc.), providing a federated view of content across the organization.

Future-proof: platform- and device-agnostic, updates are pushed regularly (iOS, Android, Windows8, etc.).

Optimized: deployments in weeks, training in minutes/hours, and access to content instantly.

Contact information:

 http://www.mediafly.com