Former AT&T executive joins leading mobile platform company to oversee service delivery organization

Boca Raton, FL– (PRWEB) August 30, 2011– 3Cinteractive®, a leading provider of cloud-based mobile software and services for the Fortune 1000, announced the addition of Ellen Roberson as vice president of service delivery. Roberson has 25 years of experience in the wireless industry, most recently serving as the director of mobile commerce at AT&T Mobility.

In her new role, Roberson will be responsible for leading 3Ci’s service delivery organization. She will oversee the company’s client boarding, client services and project management teams, ensuring the execution of world-class service to 3Ci’s customer base.

“Ellen brings a tremendous amount of experience and leadership to the 3Ci team. She’s one of the most well respected women in our industry,” said Mike FitzGibbon, 3Cinteractive’s co-founder and president, “Her influence will strengthen the delivery of service to our customers and will bolster the company’s long-term product and services strategy.”

Roberson had worked at AT&T Mobility since 2004. She was responsible for managing AT&T’s exploration into mobile payments and next generation mobile marketing. She also managed the third party premium content business. Under Roberson’s leadership, AT&T was recognized as one of the most progressive carriers in off portal.

Roberson has played a key role in leading the wireless industry to introduce new methods of engaging consumers by evangelizing mobile marketing, mobile advertising and mobile payments. She is actively involved in the Mobile Marketing Association and served as the chairperson for the Consumer Best Practices Committee. Additionally, she has been involved in leadership roles with several cross-carrier committees in the CTIA Wireless Internet Caucus.

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Boca Raton, FL, November 1, 2010 — 3Cinteractive®, a leading mobile platform company, announced that John Styers, the company’s vice president of corporate strategy and industry relations, was elected to the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) North American Board of Directors.

Styers, a career mobile evangelist both domestically and abroad, was a founding member of the MMA. He was also a co-author of the original Consumer Best Practices guidelines. His core responsibilities at 3Ci include managing various carrier and industry relationships as well as helping spearhead the company’s mobile health (mHealth) initiatives. Styers’ has a strong carrier background, extensive experience and deep industry relationships in all areas of the mobile ecosystem.

“I am honored to serve on the MMA’s North American Board of Directors with this great group of mobile industry leaders,” said Styers. “I am looking forward to again helping define the future of the MMA and shaping the direction this organization will take to better our industry.”

The MMA North American Board of Directors is comprised of individuals representing some of the world’s most prominent brands, agencies, advertisers, wireless operators, retailers, and software and service providers. The MMA global and regional board members work together to oversee and guide the Mobile Marketing Association and its industry initiatives across Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa, Europe, Latin America and North America.

“This is a very influential seat and in my opinion there is nobody better suited to be on this board representing our company and industry than John Styers,” said Mike FitzGibbon, 3Cinteractive’s Co-Founder and President. “His knowledge and passion for mobile is the perfect combination to help drive the appropriate policy changes needed to continue the advancement our industry.”

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3Cinteractive was honored to be a recipient of the South Florida Business Journal’s (SFBJ) 2010 Fast Tech Award, which recognizes the fastest growing technology companies in South Florida based on highest percentage of revenue growth over the past year.

At a breakfast ceremony on October 5th the South Florida Business Journal recognized 3Ci, which ranked second on the list of 25 with 137% revenue growth. This is the third consecutive year 3Ci has ranked in the top three of the Business Journal’s Fastest Growing Technology Companies list. In 2008, 3Ci ranked first on the list with 1,263.6% revenue growth. Processing over a quarter billion mobile transactions a month, 3Ci is well on pace for similar revenue growth in 2010. New initiatives in mobile health care (mHealth) and mobile web development (mWeb) are driving that growth.

“We are honored to receive this award from the South Florida Business Journal, the leading business publication in our market,” said John Duffy, 3Cinteractive’s Founder and CEO. “Our success is a direct result of our clients. We feel fortunate that some of the world’s largest brands such as ESPN, TracFone, Walgreens, and AT&T look to us to help solve business challenges.”

3Cinteractive Co-Founder and President Mike FitzGibbon was a featured speaker at the event along with IBM Chief Information Officer Pat Toole. Mike spoke about the importance of employing great people, coupled with laser focused planning as the key factors to 3Ci’s success. Check out what Mike had to say here.

Pictured, from left to right: Kevin Gale, Editor, South Florida Business Journal; Mike FitzGibbon, Co-Founder and President, 3Cinteractive; Mark Smith, Co-Founder and COO, 3Cinteractive: and David Clarke, Managing Partner, BGT Partners

By Jeff Ostrowski
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Photo: Thomas Cordy/The Palm Beach Post
Posted: 2:23 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 9, 2010

Many entrepreneurs aim to just survive the Great Recession. Not John Duffy.

His mobile marketing firm, Boca Raton-based 3Cinteractive, has found a high-flying niche in an otherwise-moribund economy.

Thanks to the growing importance of text messaging and smartphones, Duffy expects revenue to hit $40 million this year, more than twice last year’s sales. As most companies tighten their budgets, 3Cinteractive is hiring workers and plans to move into larger space in Boca.

In one indication of 3Cinteractive’s explosive expansion, the company ranked 28th on Inc. magazine’s recent Inc. 500 list of the nation’s fastest-growing privately held companies. 3Cinteractive’s sales soared 6,800 percent in the period covered by Inc.’s ranking, from less than $250,000 in 2006 to more than $16 million in 2009.

The five-year-old venture provides a variety of cell phone services to large companies. For example, when Walgreens texts customers to let them know their prescriptions are ready, 3Cinteractive makes the system work.

When staffing firm Interim HealthCare wants to alert workers about job openings, 3Cinteractive technology lets Interim text thousands of workers. And when prisoners make collect calls to their relatives’ cell phones through AT&T’s 1-800-CALL-ATT, it’s a 3Cinteractive innovation that puts the calls through.

Duffy, 44, and partners Mike FitzGibbon and Mark Smith co-founded 3Cinteractive in Delray Beach in 2005. They thought mobile phones were poised for an Internet-style explosion in business activity.

The trio later moved the company to Boca, and their instincts about the future of mobile marketing proved correct. The launch of the iPhone™ and a spate of Android® phones boosted the profile of handheld computers. Lucky for 3Cinteractive, the patchwork of mobile operating systems (including iPhone, Android and BlackBerry®) isn’t easy for companies like Walgreens and Interim HealthCare to navigate.

“If it was easy, everyone would do it,” Duffy said. “What we are good at is integrating complex pieces of technology.”

So far, Duffy said, there’s little competition in the mobile marketing niche, and 3Cinteractive quickly reached profitability. The company’s early backers include Miami Dolphins legend Dan Marino and former Apple Chief Executive John Sculley, who lives in Palm Beach.

While most of its 70 workers are in Boca, 3Cinteractive has an office in Uruguay, along with workers sprinkled throughout the U.S. and Europe. Duffy predicted the company’s staff will triple in the next few years.

Duffy hopes 3Cinteractive’s growth will spur the tech sector in Palm Beach County, although he acknowledges that it’s not the easiest place to run a technology company.

“There’s limitations,” Duffy said. “We don’t have access to some of the personnel we’d like. We struggle to hire database administrators.“

It would be easier to hire in Silicon Valley, Duffy said. Undaunted, he’s trying to incorporate the best of Silicon Valley start-up culture while rejecting the worst. 3Cinteractive’s dress code is strictly casual, and the office’s interior decor looks more like a contemporary art gallery than a typical cubicle farm. There’s a motorcycle in the lobby, a foosball table in the conference room, a collection of guitars in Duffy’s office and cubicles made of shiny metal.

But, Duffy said, he discourages the slavish devotion to work that became synonymous with Silicon Valley during the tech boom.

“We don’t like people working around the clock,” Duffy said.

This is the fourth installment of a series of weekly blog posts written by Jenny Walsh, intern and office mate of John Duffy, 3Cinteractive’s Founder and CEO . This series takes a look at the inner workings of 3Ci and mobile marketing from a fresh perspective.

The 3Ci semi-annual bowling night took place last week. It was a blast, partly because I easily beat everyone at bowling. Yes, Mike FitzGibbon, I’m talking to you. It was also fun to relax and really get to know people from the office. I met some of the engineers from Uruguay and Spain that were in town, and was able to pick their brains about what to expect from engineering school. I finally had someone on my side about selecting engineering as a career, but they did warn me it is not an easy road. I was able to talk to people I don’t really see a lot during the day and get their advice as I head off to college. Advice ranged from when not to schedule my classes (Friday mornings) to what courses helped them the most in their careers. I loved all the advice and hearing about everyone’s college experiences — some crazier then others.

Besides sharpening our bowling skills I asked Duff what, as a company, was the thinking behind doing something like a bowling night. Duff said it was about enjoying the ride and the importance of culture in a company. He said it was vital to have people that like each other and work together because the quickest way to fail is having a lack of teamwork where egos get in way of the ultimate goal. Jeff Michaud chimed in and said, “It’s about the name on the front of the jersey, not the back.” I really understand what he means after getting to see the 3Ci team at work. It’s easy to understand why the great culture here is a major component of what makes 3Ci successful and also why Duff would be so interested in protecting that and ensuring it continues.

South Florida Business Journal
Brian Bandell
Friday, July 9, 2010

After creating mobile communication platforms for major corporations, Boca Raton-based 3Cinteractive has targeted the health care industry as a promising market for expansion.

The company has a pilot program with Walgreens to alert customers via text message that their prescriptions are ready. It’s working on similar patient notification applications for physician offices and pharmaceutical companies.

3Ci has done mobile applications work for national companies including AutoNation, AT&T and ESPN, mostly with cell phone mass messaging, billing and reservations. Mike FitzGibbon, 3Ci’s co-founder and president, said it spent much of the fourth quarter of 2009 and the first few months of 2010 planning its strategy for the health care market, where inefficiencies abound.

Health care is one of the few employment sectors that’s shown growth over the past year. The combination of aging baby boomers and increased access to medical services through the health care reform law should continue to make technology services for this industry a big market.

When it comes to being interactive with patients, health care is among the least technology savvy fields, FitzGibbon said, but 3Ci aims to change that.

One of the main targets for improvement is cutting down on medical appointment abandonment, he said. “Each appointment is worth a specific dollar amount and staff time,” FitzGibbon noted. “That’s lost revenue.”

Instead of having nurses and office staff call patients, 3Ci has designed an automatic text messaging application that alerts patients about their upcoming appointments. FitzGibbon said it’s more efficient than making calls, especially since some people don’t answer calls when they don’t recognize the incoming number.

For pharmaceutical companies, 3Ci is working on a text messaging application that would remind consumers when to take medications or order a refill. The pharmaceutical companies could also use the application to text coupons to consumers.

Sunrise-based Interim Healthcare is using a text-messaging system designed by 3Ci to contact its home health care providers in the field through mass messaging. The company often uses it to offer assignments and call multiple employees to the office, said Linda Shaub, Interim’s VP of marketing. While it’s not in all 312 of Interim’s offices yet, those that are using it have found it useful for communicating, she said.

John Styers, VP of corporate strategy at 3Ci, said the employee text messaging application has also been used by hospitals, including Truman Medical Centers in Kansas City, Missouri, because it makes sure that requests for assistance reach employees quickly. 3Ci’s other mobile applications for hospitals are for patients: to give them health and wellness news, notify them of available test results and give billing information.

While 3Ci has many predesigned programs for health care companies, it also has the flexibility to customize programs to meet the needs of particular clients, Styers said. Most of the programs it is rolling out were developed by working with a few health care providers, and engineering solutions for them.

“We want to make mobile solutions easier to deploy,” he said “It’s getting the health care facility to crawl by implementing mobile solutions where they can see immediate results.”

South Florida Sun-Sentinel
Marcia Heroux Pounds
3:35 PM EDT, April 21, 2010

I recently received a text from a phone number I didn’t recognize, so I ignored it. But more recently, it worked. The text got my immediate attention because it was someone I needed to reach for a project.

How essential is texting for business? Texting may be the new lifeline to clients, customers and colleagues you need to reach — now. More businesses owners and professionals are using texting to reach people who are too busy to check e-mail or disinclined to answer the phone.

“It’s the fastest, quickest way for my clients to reach me,” says Fort Lauderdale career coach Debbie Benami-Rahm. When clients spot a job posting and needs her to review it, they text her with a link and she tells them whether it’s a match.

She sends “confidence boosters” via text before clients go on job interviews and later messages them to find out how the interview went.

Jason Welch, managing partner of R.I.C. Search in South Florida, says his recruiting firm limits the use of instant messaging. He may send a text to let a job candidate know he needs to talk to them or request they read a time-sensitive e-mail.

But some businesses find that texting is becoming essential to reaching their workers in the field.

At Interim Healthcare in Sunrise, nurses receive text messages letting them know about staffing opportunities. “They can send a text message in real time to potential candidates as opposed to picking up the phone and calling one by one,” says Mike FitzGibbon, president of 3Cinteractive, a Boca Raton firm that provides the texting system.

Without the texts nurses working in home healthcare might not know when a patient is being discharged from the hospital, might miss policy changes, and could lose a chance to fill an open shift, says Linda Schaub, who heads marketing at Interim Healthcare.

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