Empowering Businesses Through Technology: Alaine Fulton’s Journey with Safe Haven Solutions

Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX Studios, it’s time for Women In Motion. Brought to you by WBEC-West. Join forces. Succeed together. Now, here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: Lee Kantor here, another episode of Women In Motion and this is going to be a good one. But before we get started, it’s important to recognize our sponsor, WBEC-West. Without them, we couldn’t be sharing these important stories. Today on Women In Motion, we have Alaine Fulton with Safe Haven Solutions. Welcome.

Alaine Fulton: Thank you so much. Great to be here.

Lee Kantor: Well, I am so excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us about Safe Haven Solutions. How do you serve folks?

Alaine Fulton: Yeah, absolutely. So, Safe Haven Solutions, we are an international IT consulting company and manage service provider, and we specialize in cloud computing, cybersecurity, and global network solutions. So, we’re actually approaching 20 years in business next year, in fact. And we’ve worked alongside Fortune 500 clients such as Louis Vuitton, AT&T, Hallmark, and Wells Fargo. And, really, our goal is to help enterprises focus on solutions to help them reduce costs and streamline operations and, ultimately, increase profitability.

Lee Kantor: Now, can you talk a little bit about your journey? For being around in this space for 20 years, I would imagine in today’s world, every company is a technology company and would need services like yours offers, but maybe 20 years ago that wasn’t the case.

Alaine Fulton: Yes, 100 percent. So, I started my journey actually working for a direct carrier selling kind of basic network solutions, voice and data. As you know, the market continues to change. It’s always ever evolving. We had to kind of shift our focus. And, honestly, Lee, that’s kind of the fun part about what we do is that it’s not a static product. It’s not a static solution set. We have to constantly evolve with the times. So, it’s ever changing, and that keeps us on our toes from an education standpoint, always looking for the new and bright things that are going to stick around and improve businesses. So, honestly, it’s been a really fun journey. Things are constantly changing. And, yeah, it’s been a wild ride.

Lee Kantor: Now, I would imagine in working on a successful business like yours, 20 years in business, you have to kind of elevate the level of service you have to that trusted advisor, trusted partner status. How do you kind of work with your clients to create that type of a relationship where they feel like you’re part of the team and you’re watching their back?

Alaine Fulton: Yeah, absolutely. So, obviously, again, the velocity of innovation and technology is driving evolution in the marketplace. Today, yeah, we can all search on Google or work with multiple direct sales reps who are only siloed in their particular product or paid by their employee. But really having an experienced and knowledgeable, trusted advisor to guide our clients through a customized and proven solution, it helps enables our clients to manage, change, and plan for the future.

Alaine Fulton: So, ultimately, I like to tell our clients that we sit on the same side of the table as them, and that way we can help accomplish their outcomes and their main objectives. So, we really try to offer more of a niche white glove approach and just having the knowledge base of what we’re seeing out in the marketplace, what works and what doesn’t helps us to stay closer to the client understanding what their goals are and being in full alignment with them.

Lee Kantor: Now, can you talk about the types of consultations you’re having with clients, because I would imagine you’re seeing much farther ahead than they are because you’re immersed in this industry a lot more than they are, and you might see some trends ahead of time. How do you kind of communicate that information to your client so they can see opportunities earlier?

Alaine Fulton: Yeah, absolutely. So, I think there’s a lot of companies that are always focused on that bright new shiny object, and those are all great, but we need to make sure that we’re educating on the companies, on the solutions, make sure that they’re tried and proven. So, we try to walk clients through just understanding what’s out there, what we’ve seen that’s working, maybe taking baby steps.

Alaine Fulton: You know, I think a lot of these technologies, including AI and machine learning, those are kind of all the buzzwords today. Well, you can implement those into your corporate initiatives, but if your data behind the scenes is not consistent or not accurate, those tools can actually disrupt an organization. So, we try to take a step back, understand what infrastructure they have today, really what their goals are, and take baby steps as we lean into some of these tech forward solutions. We want them to work. We don’t need them to be disruptive in any sense of the means.

Lee Kantor: Now, are you getting kind of a lot of inquiries about AI and machine learning? Like, you know, I’m sure that they’re seeing headlines and articles and blog posts about this technology, and some firms might feel like they’re missing out or they’re behind, and they want to just understand where the opportunity is and how to get there.

Alaine Fulton: We definitely get a lot of questions around it. I think what we’re seeing the biggest success rate in this space with enterprise customers, really, it’s all about customer experience. So, for example, if you’re going to call in to a credit card company and dispute a charge and you’re having to go around in circles, and you’re finally at that point of representative, representative, companies are trying to really bring in a better customer experience, where when you call in, your account is tied directly to that account, you’re dealing with the same customer service representative.

Alaine Fulton: In this day and age, everybody wants faster, more personable or more accurate results when it comes to their buying decisions. So, there are proven technologies out there where AI can help. Now, on the flip side is there’s malicious hackers that are also utilizing this technology to get smarter about their attacks. It’s actually pretty frightening. And so, we like to have the discussions with customers in regards to their security posture and making sure that they are not being targeted by some of these hackers that have this technology as well. So, it’s kind of a double sided coin.

Lee Kantor: Well, I would imagine, and that’s where I’m sure a lot of your consulting takes place, because on one hand you’re trying to give the consumer the fastest, most seamless experience, but you also have to protect your client in terms of hackers and bad actors.

Alaine Fulton: Yes, 100 percent. And actually, I’d say probably about 80 percent of breaches are based on human error. Somebody opening the wrong email or clicking something wrong, or what have you, and so there’s a lot of just basic cybersecurity hygiene that we try to educate and implement with our customers that can eliminate a lot of this type of activity and protect their assets.

Lee Kantor: Now, who is that ideal customer for Safe Haven?

Alaine Fulton: So, we work with companies of all sizes. So, we can work with a five person shop. We’ve actually worked with several other WBEs in this space where we can help them procure simple things, like Office 365 licensing, primary or backup internet services, phone systems, again, security solutions like awareness training.

Alaine Fulton: We can also work with SMB, small, medium-sized businesses and enterprises in the sense of we’re seeing a continued emphasis on cloud and their architecture. So, there’s some organizations out there that still kind of have their own data centers and their own equipment and servers in-house, and they need an entire IT team to manage that. Or you have on the flip side, you know, companies that are fully using public cloud, which is your Google, your AWS, your Azure.

Alaine Fulton: So, from an enterprise standpoint, we help customers architect their cloud to a more hybrid approach. We can do disaster recovery solutions, virtual CISO, so really kind of run the gamut from a company size opportunity. Everybody needs IT to live and breathe and work in these days. And so, we have solutions across the board.

Lee Kantor: Now, are you industry agnostic or do you specialize? Because I would imagine certain industries have their own compliance challenges.

Alaine Fulton: Yeah, absolutely. So, I mean, from a compliance standpoint, that’s definitely a whole nother animal, right? I mean, we have clients, especially in the medical and the financial sectors where compliance is huge. It’s really, really important. You know, there’s always new international, domestic, even statewide driven mandates that are coming out that focus on PII, which is Personally Identifiable Information. So, we ask companies, you know, do you guys have policies and procedures to clear your name if there is a breach? Are these actually in practice today?

Alaine Fulton: So, from a market standpoint we don’t have a niche, but we do find that on our security side, that the companies with very heavy compliance PCI, retail, again, financial and medical sectors, we do a lot of cybersecurity in those areas.

Lee Kantor: Now, why was it important for you and your firm to become part of the WBEC-West community?

Alaine Fulton: Yeah. Great question. We have been in WBENC for, I’d say, about four years. Never really utilized it as much, except for the last two years we’ve really leaned in. We are part of the West, and Jaymee Lomax has just been a fantastic resource, the content and the events they push out. And, really, we love what she says, has to, women helping other women. And so, it’s so great to just have relationships with other female leaders. We’ve learned a lot in regards to growing our business, the success and the failures, and it’s been a really great resource for us, and we’re looking forward to leaning in a lot more with the WBENC community.

Lee Kantor: Now, is there a story you can share that maybe illustrates how Safe Haven worked with a client? Obviously don’t name the name of the client, but maybe share what the challenge was when they started working with you and how you were able to help them.

Alaine Fulton: Yeah, absolutely. So, we were brought into a large multinational pizza chain, actually, and their corporate office contacted us and they asked us to help them standardize basically their technology stack in all of their retail locations. This customer was 100 percent franchise-owned, and so a lot of these owners have an uncle or a brother that could help them with some of their equipment.

Alaine Fulton: But the messaging out to the end client constantly was different. And so, this particular company really wanted to unify the messaging, the branding, the promos that came out, making sure that their network was secure. So, they asked us to look at all of the services, including the internet, make sure that they had a backup. We implemented a phone system solution that has an auto attendant that has kind of same brand messaging. And that way, no matter what pizza shop a customer calls, it’s all unified and similar.

Alaine Fulton: So, they’ve been very happy. We worked down to the individual franchisees, help them educate them on the why. And we’ve even been able to pull up call reports to say this is a peak time for you, Mr. Franchise, maybe you should look at your staffing between 5:00 and 7:00 on a Friday night, we’re seeing X number of dropped calls or abandoned calls. And so, that reporting functionality has been huge, not only to the individual pizza owner, but to the corporate to have some of that data to really help them understand who’s calling in, and where, and how better to serve their clients.

Lee Kantor: Yeah, I think that’s really an opportunity for a lot of folks, because there’s so much data that can be captured if you don’t really have a partner or trusted advisor working with you to even become aware of it, and to know that it can be captured, and you can learn from it and take action on it, you’re really missing opportunities.

Alaine Fulton: A hundred percent. And the nice thing is that now those franchise owners, they only have one number to call, regardless if it’s their switch or their point of sale or their internet, they pick up the phone they call Safe Haven. We’re kind of that one throat to choke or back pat, I like to say, to help them from a support standpoint. So, they’ve really liked kind of consolidating vendors as well.

Lee Kantor: Yeah, to have that one point of contact that really sets you apart.

Alaine Fulton: Yes, yes.

Lee Kantor: So, if somebody wants to learn more, have a more substantive conversation with you or somebody on the team, what’s the website? What’s the best way to connect?

Alaine Fulton: So, we’re just at safehavensolutions – with an S – .com, or they can simply email info, I-N-F-O, @safehavensolutions.com.

Lee Kantor: Well, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing such important work and we appreciate you.

Alaine Fulton: Thank you, Lee. We appreciate you and WBENC as well.

Lee Kantor: All right. This is Lee Kantor, we’ll see you all next time on Women In Motion.