Employee Spotlight: Gene Cheatham, Senior Solutions Architect

“I managed multi-million-dollar telecommunications systems as a teenager.”

As Arelion increasingly serves enterprises through carrier-grade connectivity solutions, we’re highlighting Gene Cheatham, Senior Solutions Architect, Channel & Enterprise, for our latest employee spotlight. Arelion’s wholesale DNA and culture of customer excellence are unique advantages in the enterprise market, but our people are the driving force supporting enterprise customers every day through global connectivity solutions.

Q: Can you tell us about your background?

I’ve worked at Arelion for five years, first as an Enterprise Sales Engineer and currently as a Senior Solutions Architect. I also previously worked in security, routing and sales positions at other telecommunications providers. My connectivity career started in the Navy. I managed multi-million-dollar telecommunications systems as a teenager, which sounds unbelievable in retrospect. The military provided me with a foundation of curiosity, attention to detail and an enthusiasm for learning that still fuels my work.

Q: What does Arelion’s culture look like on the inside?

Arelion hired me to lead its enterprise market expansion and gave my team free rein to build our enterprise strategy from scratch. The opportunity to build something novel still permeates Arelion’s culture. Trusting our employees makes them feel valued and empowered, with this sense of pride translating to our culture of customer excellence. A Net Promoter Score of 72 and a customer churn rate of 1-2% over the last years are virtually unheard-of metrics in telecommunications. These strengths directly result from our culture and comprise Arelion’s core value proposition.

If I had to summarize Arelion’s culture in two words, they would be “transparent” and “authentic.” We do what we say we’ll do and don’t do what we’re not meant to do. We stick to our unique strengths as a global wholesale connectivity provider. Now, we’re leveraging those strengths to serve enterprises.

Q: What is your day-to-day experience?

Every day offers an opportunity to learn something new, so my day-to-day experience is always engaging. Since solution architecture encompasses the full product suite, our department collaborates with the entire organization, from IP and Optical Engineering to Marketing and Network Development teams. But our daily work remains fluid instead of cumbersome because Arelion’s culture is open, not siloed. This approach cultivates a collaborative environment based on transparent communication.

Q: What are your department’s goals? How will you achieve those goals?

My department’s key goal is to collaborate closely with the Sales organization and expand Arelion’s enterprise market presence through best-in-breed connectivity solutions. This means supporting Sales throughout the entire process, from presales consultation to service delivery. Onboarding new Channel partners that help Arelion build trust within the Channel community is also vital to my department’s goals.

It’s hard to win customers but even harder to keep them, so we must provide end-to-end support and unparalleled expertise to secure customer loyalty and forge strong relationships. These strengths are our differentiators in a competitive landscape and are critical to long-term revenue growth. As a subject matter expert with a sales background, I help technical people improve their sales skills. We recently conducted courses on strategic selling for all of Sales Operations to equip our employees with resources that help them serve our global customers.

Q: Anything else?

It sounds hyperbolic, but joining Arelion is the best career decision I’ve made. Many employees can’t believe how great our culture is when they’re first onboarded. I’m proud of the progress we’ve made on our enterprise market journey, but we’re just getting started. We still have work to do by leveraging our global network to serve enterprises on a broader scale. That opportunity drives me every day to empower enterprises through customer-focused strategies and carrier-grade connectivity solutions.