Telcordia Impact Players:
Cathy McMahon
Cathy McMahon is a builder.
She doesn't erect office blocks or shopping malls, and she doesn't wear a hardhat. But she's a construction worker, nonetheless. As Telcordia's Executive Director of Product Management for Hosted Solutions, Cathy figures innovative ways to build new products – often using existing technologies and resources as her raw material.
A prime example of her handiwork: Telcordia's hugely successful Wireless Number Portability solution. Cathy played a leading role in building a partnering relationship that enabled the sale of Telcordia’s WNP service to more than 100 wireless carriers, eventually wrapping up over 90% of the US market. Without that key relationship, they would have realized only a tiny fraction of that success.
Cathy's ability to see the potential around her serves her well in her current position. As a key member of a small startup team, drawn from across Telcordia's various departments and disciplines, Cathy helps in both analyzing customer situations and designing highly-focused solutions.
"The depth of expertise from which we can draw is pretty amazing," Cathy says. "We're able to tap into so many brilliant people at Telcordia. These are people who have really written the book in their respective fields. They offer an incredibly broad knowledge base which allows them to collaborate on creating end-to-end solutions."
Perhaps few people offer more depth and breadth of Telcordia experience than Cathy herself. Having been with Telcordia and its predecessors for more than twenty years, she has spent years working in both services and software systems, with projects that span intelligent networks, Y2K consulting, WNP, and more. This long and varied tenure has allowed Cathy to really get to know both Telcordia's technology and, just as significantly, its people. Now she has an opportunity to put all those connections to good use by building powerful matrices between Telcordia's people, partners, and resources.
Recently, Cathy was a key member of a team that had a chance to shine during an intense, quick-paced product launch. Their job was to develop a hosted version of the ISCP prepaid wireless service for small Mobile Virtual Network Operators who, previously, had not been in a position to purchase and host their own system. As the project progressed, Cathy managed a variety of partnering relationships and worked to gear the solution and services toward this new set of customers.
By working closely with such partners and drawing upon existing ISCP resources, Cathy's team was able to complete the project within a truly head-spinning timeframe. "We were able to go from initial investment to product launch in less than nine months," Cathy says. But she's quick to add that the Telcordia team didn’t go it alone. After all, building a successful solution means forging strong and lasting lines of communication with the customers who will use it.
"As we always do, we spend a lot of time with the customers, from the earliest stages through and continuing after the launch," she says. "We really have to partner with customers in a fundamental way, in order to design solutions that work how they need them to."
In her work with people both inside and outside of Telcordia, Cathy truly embodies the Elementive™ approach of openness and flexibility, a corporate philosophy she sees extending well beyond mere PR and marketing.
"With Elementive, I've seen Telcordia truly becoming more open to partnering. Without this, we wouldn't be able to try new things or to deliver within the shortened time-to-market that is required these days."
Whatever those "new things" in Hosted Solutions may be, you can bet Cathy and her team will be working in the center of it, building new solutions that help their customers build stronger businesses.