CRN Channel Awards Australia: Finalist Q&A with Frank Skiffington, Head of Australia and New Zealand at Zoom

Frank Skiffington talks about being a finalist at this year's CRN Channel Awards Australia.

As the Head of Australia and New Zealand (ANZ) for Zoom, Frank is responsible for strategy and execution to drive growth, deepen customer and partner engagement, and accelerate adoption of Zoom as an AI-powered system of action across the small and medium-sized business and enterprise segments.

With more than 25 years’ experience leading high-performing international sales and channel teams, Frank has a strong track record of helping organisations transform how they connect, collaborate and deliver meaningful outcomes. Throughout his career, he has successfully developed scalable go-to-market strategies and created channel-first business models to deliver sustainable growth across the UK, ANZ, Asia Pacific and the Americas.

Prior to joining Zoom, Frank held several senior leadership positions with leading telecommunications and technology companies including Secureco, Cogent and Mitel, bringing deep global and regional expertise spanning unified communications, SaaS and managed services.

Frank is based in Sydney, Australia.

What prompted you to enter the CRN Channel Awards Australia this year?

The past year has been an important one for Zoom’s channel business in Australia. We have been strengthening our partner-led approach and working more closely with partners to take a broader set of collaboration, customer experience and AI capabilities to market.

Entering the awards gave us an opportunity to reflect on that progress and recognise the work of our local team and partners.

What would you say is your company’s proudest achievement over the past year?

I am particularly proud of the progress Zoom has made in evolving from a product that people primarily associated with meetings into a much broader, AI-powered system of action.

Locally, we have begun translating that evolution into a bigger opportunity for our partners. We are helping them move beyond individual communications products and have more strategic conversations with customers about their workflows, employee experience and customer engagement. Establishing the foundations for that next phase of partner-led growth has been an important achievement for our team.

What lessons do you think the industry has learned over the past year and what changes do you think it still needs to make?

The clearest lesson is that AI has changed what customers expect from their technology partners. Customers no longer want another isolated tool or a generic AI feature. They want help applying AI to real business problems and redesigning the way work gets done.

That creates an opportunity for the channel, but it also requires change. The industry needs to continue moving from transactional selling towards deeper advisory capabilities. That means investing in AI literacy, workflow expertise and the ability to connect different technologies around a measurable customer outcome.

What do you see as the main opportunities for the industry in the coming 12 months? How do you plan to capitalise on those opportunities?

One of the biggest opportunities will be helping customers turn their everyday conversations into action. Meetings, phone calls and customer interactions contain valuable context, but much of it is still lost or followed up manually. AI can help organisations surface insights from those conversations, identify what needs to happen next and support teams in moving work forward.

Partners will play a critical role because they understand their customers’ existing technology environments and business processes. Our focus will be on working closely with partners that want to build those capabilities, investing in enablement and developing joint go-to-market opportunities. By combining Zoom’s platform with our partners’ expertise, we can help customers achieve practical value from AI while creating new, sustainable sources of growth for the channel.

What would winning this award mean to both your teams and your customers and partners?

Winning would give us a great opportunity to celebrate what our team and partners have achieved together. Our partners bring the customer relationships, industry knowledge and technical expertise that turn technology into something genuinely useful. The award would recognise their role in helping customers improve how their people work and how they serve their own customers.

Be part of the celebration that brings the industry’s brightest talent together. Join us at the CRN Channel Awards Australia and experience an unforgettable evening of recognition, networking, and inspiration.

Tables are filling fast – secure yours today and don’t miss the chance to be in the room where excellence is celebrated.