Industry regulation has long been a recurring theme within the pages of Comms Dealer, but this month self-regulation and energy management also come to the fore as Ultra Communications CEO Justin Hamilton-Martin fizzes with 'all out' ambition to grow the company two-fold within as many years.
Hamilton-Martin is not someone who sits on his hands. That would be wasting time, and for a man restless to achieve self-imposed personal and business targets, time and energy is a precious commodity that must be regulated effectively. "I have so many ideas for Ultracomms, and there is so much underway, I need to manage my energy," he said. "I learnt energy management the hard way and still keep an eye on how I channel my activity. Knowing how to pace myself is important. I also study continuously. Life-long learning and personal development are important to me."
Any business bereft of such energetic leadership is destined to wilt. Meanwhile, Ultracomms continues to flourish most robustly and the pressure is on to become the 'go-to' company for supercharging contact centre performance. "Ultracomms has been quietly successful in its first decade," added Hamilton-Martin. "Now is the time to take the company to the next level by putting more structure around sales and marketing. We are in the throes of implementing an aggressive marketing strategy, with a new website, proactive PR and other elements. We are also growing the channel and have already taken on a dedicated manager, Alan Quinlan, to lead that side of the business."
The Fareham-based company is in a positive revenue and cash position, so this is an 'ideal time' for the firm to enter an ambitious growth phase, pointed out Hamilton-Martin. "We have a healthy pipeline of new business opportunities that we are working through, as well as strong contract wins in Q1 2015," he commented. "We are also working with a number of representatives in the channel around our cloud-based contact centre platform (UCMS), and actively looking for more partners in that area. We are evaluating the potential around a white label version of our platform too."
Hamilton-Martin's first challenge after joining the company in October last year was building an understanding of the portfolio and how it is used by customers. He commissioned a piece of 'voice of the market' customer research that gave him, and the team, deep insight into how customers view Ultracomms' services, support and overall approach. The research reaffirmed the possibilities he had already witnessed. "I could immediately see the potential for Ultracomms," he added. "I have much experience working with hosted telephony, cloud-based services and the contact centre market. I was drawn to the innovative portfolio and the potential for growth, particularly around the future of omni-channel services. Ultracomms has an established track record and strong in-house R&D, so it's in a position to take advantage of some of the new market developments coming along."
This is not the first time that Hamilton-Martin has spotted a rare opportunity. After several years working for Esprit Telecom in various roles, gaining experience in telecoms and data networking, he saw the potential to bring those two elements together, particularly with the rise of the Internet in the late 90s. "I launched a successful telecoms company called 8el and have stayed in the industry ever since," he explained. "It's still a great place to be."
His experience taught him that no single company can take on all the competencies required within an omni-channel environment, therefore a collaborative approach has become imperative. "This will be a big cultural shift for many old school companies, and I'm not sure that all of them are able to make the transition," added Hamilton-Martin. "There is too much focus on proprietary and siloed approaches and 'them and us' attitudes. That's an old fashioned way of approaching the marketplace. It's in everyone's interests to engender a more collaborative and open way of working together. No company has the answer to everything. Let's appreciate that fact and work together more transparently and honestly."
Ultracomms' platform lends itself to working with third parties through its API, enabling strong integration with other apps, systems and platforms. "We see that as an important part of our future and we are actively looking for technology partners to work with us," said Hamilton-Martin. "Everything we are working on is very much influenced by customer demand. That's always been the Ultracomms way of working and will continue to be so, collaborating closely with customers to hear what they need and then develop answers."
Aligning the solution roadmap with customer demands brings an emphasis on the regulatory environment, particularly the more stringent PCI DSS requirements introduced at the beginning of 2015, and the anticipated tightening of rules around AMD (Answering Machine Detection). "This creates challenges for customers and opportunities for our channel partners to help address those pain points," added Hamilton-Martin.
"In the AMD space, we are launching a patent-pending solution that significantly reduces the amount of answering machines reached, while lowering the complexity and cost of keeping within Ofcom's abandoned call thresholds. We are also promoting our PCI on-site appliance that replaces erstwhile pause-and-resume platforms, enabling much simpler and more cost-effective PCI DSS compliance. This is a good example of the kind of product area where we see close collaboration with the reseller community paying dividends for everyone concerned."
Other services and products offered by Ultracomms include predictive dialling (guaranteed level of 99.5 availability), intelligent blending (automatic routing of calls according to real-time agent availability across inbound and outbound), UltracommsLive support for dialler managers, advanced call waiting, CLI, IVR, training and call recording.
Whether a reseller or a vendor, Hamilton-Martin believes that after confirming the quality of the product and structure of the commercials, the culture of the company remains the main criteria for the right partnering decision. "A key element of the Ultracomms culture is the thoroughness and professionalism that flows through everything we do," he said. "I want to retain that ethos and ensure that what we do is framed correctly in the industry big picture, retaining that collaborative approach and growing it into more of an ecosystem, with us, partners and customers all working closely together."