By Business & Finance 
Pictured: Rory Whelan, Head of Marketing at IP Telecom
Rory Whelan is Head of Marketing at IP Telecom, an Irish VoIP provider delivering business solutions and customer support since its inception in 2010.
What was your first job? Outside of summer jobs as a kid, after college I became the first in-country marketing specialist in Ireland for the Tax and Audit company Arthur Andersen. It was a great place to work, with some of the best people globally and companies. What pushed you to pursue a career in this field? It was college, the extra-curricular side, running societies and events – at the time there were few full time marketing roles in Ireland, so I had to hold out for the right role – so many companies had no marketing focus, it’s amazing how times have changed. What would you regard as your greatest achievement to date? Whilst at RTÉ, I introduced a sales extranet between the TV Advertising Sales department and the ad agencies. This centralised all communications and sales/sponsorship opportunities into the one hub and contributed to a major uptick in sales that year. And then at Channel 6, I designed what was possibly the first VoD space online in the country, it wasn’t exactly Netflix, but people could catch up with their shows online. Career wise, would you do anything differently? No, I’ve moved industries a few times from Professional Services, then to Television to Telecoms but have brought learnings from all sectors across. I think it’s important to move around and learn as you do. In one sentence, how would you define success? Success is being able to sit back at the end of the week knowing that you’ve made a positive difference for our customers. What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever been given? “You have two ears and one mouth for a reason.” Listen twice as much as you speak. How do you motivate yourself and your staff? It goes back to that definition of success – “have I made a positive difference this week?” Also, here at IP Telecom we bounce ideas off each other, embrace change when it’s coming, look to the future in terms of the way we want to work and all this while ensuring we don’t do the same thing day in, day out. How do you handle adversity? The laws of physics apply in this case so for every negative, there is a positive – search for the positive in any situation, but always learn from the negative. How do you relax? Reading and music mostly, but I’m fortunate to be a short drive from the coast so a beach walk is always a pleasure. What are your aspirations for the future of the business? IP Telecom has a great, collaborative, approach to helping our customers’ business grow through communication solutions. The way we work in business is constantly evolving and as systems evolve, we embrace a fully integrated approach to business. Communications through the voice interface is becoming more important than ever. When you combine voice, automation and AI, you have something truly revolutionary – and IP Telecom is very much part of that revolution. There’s exciting times ahead and my job is to help showcase what we can do to help our customers – and potential customers – achieve amazing things.
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