Ben Curry Email & Phone Number

Powder Springs, Ga, Us

Kennesaw, Georgia, United States

• Successfully renegotiated pricing with a large telecom vendor, reducing annual costs over $1.4 million, thereby optimizing expenditure and aligning with competitors' rates.• Implemented an innovative in-store calling program integrated with OKTA for tracking lease agreements, resulting in meeting key metrics for new lease agreements within a 2-month pilot and initiating plans for a broader rollout, effectively streamlining operations and reducing sales agent headcount.• Successfully transitioned to Genesys Cloud phone system for 5 remote contact centers, maintaining budget constraints through strategic negotiation, and deployed Zoom Phone for corporate office employees, enhancing flexibility and extensibility while meeting organizational needs within existing financial parameters.• Successfully resolved issues of mislabeled caller ID numbers impacting revenue for an outbound call center by implementing a caller ID reputation service, resulting in a 10% increase in contact rate and annual cost savings of approximately $95,000 through optimized number rotation strategies.• Implemented Advanced Call Recording with sentiment analysis and AI, enabling our Quality Assurance team to review 100% of customer interactions without hiring additional staff, effectively streamlining workflow and ensuring thorough monitoring of calls through automated tagging of relevant interactions.• Developed and implemented the first Software and Hardware Asset Management system in collaboration with Information Security, ServiceNow support team, and Procurement, enabling more efficient identification of impacted assets during security incidents and vulnerability assessments, thereby enhancing overall incident response capabilities.• Successfully negotiated with a large broadband aggregator for a 5% reduction in new speed tiers, maintaining or reducing overall costs for retail stores while extending the renewal term, aligning with budgetary requirements and optimizing expenditure.

Kennesaw, Georgia, United States

• Led regular meetings with the Infrastructure Engineering team to prioritize and remediate security risks for external facing assets over a 1-year period, resulting in a significant increase of over 100 points in the BitSight security score to 680, demonstrating enhanced security posture and risk mitigation efforts.• Collaborated with a cross-functional team to proactively address the challenges posed by COVID-19, swiftly implementing necessary configuration changes such as VPN support and security measures, enabling 900 users to seamlessly transition to fully remote work within just one week, ensuring business continuity during unprecedented circumstances.• Effectively migrated over 1000 applications and services from an on-prem data center to a robust colocation facility, utilizing a phased migration approach and third-party assistance to identify dependencies and cloud hosting candidates, resulting in improved reliability, scalability, and minimal downtime, completed within an efficient 8-month timeframe.• Collaborated with the Construction team to strategically plan and implement data networks, phone systems, and WAN requirements for three new office locations, facilitating seamless phased moves for all teams while consistently meeting project deadlines and budgetary targets.• Worked with various departments to devise a comprehensive solution addressing both technological and cosmetic upgrades for Aaron’s aging retail stores, incorporating innovations such as kiosks for lease applications, video wall technology, and expanded wireless coverage. Following a successful 3-month pilot, the initiative resulted in increased customer footfall, a shift towards a younger demographic, and the expansion of the GenNext footprint, consistently surpassing existing stores in customer count and lease agreements.

Kennesaw, Georgia, United States

• Successfully renegotiated the VoIP provider contract, removing exclusivity clauses, extending the relationship for two years, and co-terming all store contracts, resulting in strengthened partnership, improved contract management, and increased flexibility for potential vendor changes, while achieving a 5% reduction in pricing.• Implemented OSPF with ECMP to optimize the utilization of backup data circuits within the WAN, resulting in increased throughput and efficiency without requiring additional expenditure on capacity expansion, thereby enhancing network performance while maximizing cost-effectiveness.• Migrated Hyper-V clusters to VMWare ESXi with the assistance of a third-party, resulting in a substantial improvement in server uptime from approximately 93% to 98%, significantly reducing the need for after-hours troubleshooting and enhancing team morale by minimizing stress on on-call engineers.• Implemented SD-WAN technology in retail stores to prioritize traffic and enhance failover capabilities, resulting in significantly improved internet bandwidth usage during peak times and negating the necessity for bandwidth upgrades, and optimizing network performance and resource utilization.• Awarded Servant Leader Award by Aaron’s Tech, as voted on by Sr. Technology leadership.

Kennesaw, Georgia, United States

Kennesaw, Georgia, United States

Kennesaw, Georgia, United States

Atlanta, Georgia, United States