Comms Dealer

The gulf between go-getting comms resellers and their more static counterparts is widening. Most industry players accept that they need to engage in product and service diversification to prosper, and business success is naturally drawn to those, like Calteq, that press ahead with these progressive strategies, according to co-founder and Director Mike Stephenson.

Stephenson co-founded Calteq with Nigel Willets in 2003. Their intention was simple - to provide great customer service with a product offering to match. "During our previous years working for shareholders we learnt the importance of taking time to understand a client's challenges and provide a bespoke solution rather than the all too familiar 'one size fits all' approach often taken by larger corporates," noted Stephenson.

Stephenson's pre-Calteq experience enables him to deal with large customers and carriers, which has been intrinsic to Calteq's success as a provider of tailored solutions to sizeable multiple site customers using Tier 1 carriers. He first entered the comms industry in 1987 as a telemarketer for sales appointments at Solutions Telecom, a telephone system dealer. After securing a number of successful appointments he was promoted to a sales role selling systems and smart boxes using Mercury Communications. He then moved to system manufacturer Tie Communications and in 1992 joined Telia UK as Sales Manager. Breaking away from this role Stephenson co-founded IDN which floated on AIM in 2000 and was sold to Redstone Telecom in 2006. During this period Calteq was established.

Today, the company has three offices, one focused on mobile, the other data services while the head office operates as an administration centre. From these secure footholds Calteq targets large multi-site customers, in particular those using traditional voice services such as ISDN30 and are ripe for migrating to hosted and SIP solutions, supported by mobile and data products. "While it's still not for everyone, with ISDN30 heading towards end of life we want to drive this message to our customers and offer them a smooth transition," said Stephenson. "We are always looking for products that can be sold into our customer base. These currently include IoT and M2M solutions which have opened up new markets and opportunities."

To expand its product and services range Calteq purchased a small, but specialised, data company two years ago. The acquired data products and Cisco expertise allowed Calteq to offer data services to its customer base, which is now a thriving part of the business and generates almost £1.5 million annual turnover. The acquisition also enabled Calteq to approach SIP and hosted IP at a much higher level, with good success having sold 2,000 hosted seats already this year compared to 400 at the same time last year.

Calteq's focus on data solutions includes private WAN, colocation facilities and advanced data products such as Sophos firewall deployment. "With security front of mind among all of our customers we are developing our portfolio to include solutions that both alert and protect from call fraud," added Stephenson. "We have also refocused on mobiles using Vodafone and O2 and achieved a 200 per cent increase in mobile connections over the last 12 months. Combined billing and account management have been critical to this growth."

Stephenson cited one company as a good example of its broad solution portfolio in action, the Timpson Group which consists of Timpson, Max Spielmann, Snappy Snaps and others. "We provided landlines, mobiles and data connections which are currently being rolled out via a private WAN to 1,500 branches," he stated. "This has saved the customer a huge amount of money and introduced a streamlined route for new shop openings and fault reporting. The core solutions include additional support products such as conference calling, automated fraud detection, automated fault logging and comprehensive engineer support for installation of lines into all of the main supermarket chains in the UK."

To bolster its sales and support capabilities Calteq has invested significantly in up-skilling its call centre and sales channels, empowering them to sell more advanced data products and supporting solutions. This approach also feeds into the company's culture which Stephenson describes as 'innovative, supportive and hard working', and he welcomes a melting pot of new ideas. "We encourage the team to input ideas because they are our greatest strength, whether it's going the extra mile in our 24/7 customer service operation or developing solutions to protect our customers from fraud," he explained. "We also like to have fun and always reward great work."•

Comms and IT marketing specialist Blabbermouth has rolled out a 'Transformation Initiative' designed to optimise the sales and marketing performance of businesses in the channel.

Blabbermouth's MD Elizabeth Sparrow (pictured) said the initiative responds to a lack of integration between the sales and marketing functions of many businesses, stunting their ability to realise their full selling potential.

To put things right, Sparrow said Blabbermouth's business transformation process begins with a company health check, strategic planning, discussions about the true nature of a company, its identity, growth ambitions and long-term goals."We then put in place a joined up marketing campaign to deliver new opportunities," she explained.

"But this is only part of the solution. No department should operate in isolation, especially sales and marketing which go hand in hand."

Blabbermouth plans to position businesses for growth by preparing them for seamless customer acquisition, and the man at the centre of the company's new campaign is incoming consultant David Sparrow who joins from TalkTalk Business where he was Head of Corporate and Enterprise Sales and played a leading part in the creation of this high performing division.

Previous roles include notable stints at reseller Freedom Communications, Virgin Media and T-Mobile. His main purpose is to help sales and marketing leaders escape from the straitjacket of siloed working by creating more scope for professional chemistry between departments.

"Business assessments can often be complex and sensitive," he commented. "But we provide a tactful and uncomplicated review of capabilities, processes, structures and strategies within the sales department before establishing best practices and integrating these with the marketing effort.

"Our aim is to assist a variety of businesses with their growth plans and help them unlock new market potential and large flagship opportunities.

"The best businesses are those rooted not in a fractured departmental mode of operation but in a unified framework based on joint targets, measurements and processes that maximise on the benefits of sales and marketing integration."

Blabbermouth's auditing and assessment know-how also enables it to report back on the complete customer journey.

Each of UC's incarnations have been stepping stones towards the ‘third phase of convergence', according to Six Degrees Group's (6DG) Strategy and Marketing Director Campbell Williams, who says it's high time we all went ‘UCeamless'.

The traditional language of Unified Communications signifies an environment where users collaborate on any device, any where. But the shift away from this application-centric realm of communications towards a more platform-centric one indicates a trend towards greater levels of integration as the technology blends invisibly into the background of everyday corporate life, while collaborative outcomes move to the fore.

According to Williams, customer demand is driving this convergence of UC, a new incarnation of the category, where the channel delivers UC software on Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) cloud platforms. "Frost & Sullivan noted that the need to support a growing mobile workforce alongside the ability to gain faster access to advanced features and capabilities are a strong driver for the market," stated Williams. "Customer demand and feedback are now at the forefront of UC&C development."

The UC discussion has shifted more towards people and the human factor rather than technology, device and location. This is a trend Williams has witnessed across ICT as a whole. "As customers insist on more from their technology, be that comms, compute, or cloud, IT has become more specialised and there has been an increase in demand for highly skilled people behind these systems," he stated. "ICT now needs people with specific and focused experience, especially in relation to cloud technologies.

"Businesses have experienced a shift in resources away from traditional IT teams, who as one IT leader put it, ‘don't have the manpower to baby sit hardware any more'. This change means that IT teams need to understand both the scope for technology to deliver the infrastructure and services their business needs, and how to use it when it's in place. IT teams also need to translate business planning and strategic product and service objectives into real world delivery, and overcome long standing barriers between IT and business."

IT leaders also need to understand that UC is more about the technologies while collaboration signifies the outcomes. "UC can do justice to the ongoing evolution of technology and services in the marketplace today," commented Williams. "However, to enhance customer services and business processes, collaboration is more important than all of the technologies available in the marketplace.

"I don't necessarily disagree with the premise that the industry has entered a post-UC era. I think of it as a third phase of comms convergence. Over the years the comms industry has seen a huge number of changes. When VoIP emerged over 15 years ago, many industry players dismissed it as a fad. Now, we don't even know we are using integrated VoIP systems. This shows how far we have come.

"VoIP was followed by ‘Voice over IT', which delivered PBXs using standard computer platforms. Despite the obvious appeal of this type of convergence many commentators were sceptical, arguing PBXs would always need turnkey hardware. Now, I believe we are entering a third phase where customer demand is at the forefront and organisations look to converge their communications and deliver cloud-based UC software on IaaS platforms."

Successful UC players, noted Williams, display flexibility and shy away from selling off-the-shelf solutions. They differentiate themselves by adding customisation and building APIs into customers' key business systems. Because of this, Williams believes that the term ‘UCeamless' is perhaps more suitable than plain UC.

"Traditional fixed line and IPT sellers will need to have a converged mobile strategy, and quickly," he added. "In the mid-market there has been a large focus on SIP and hosted IPX migration, but the mobile costs have always been associated with an independent mobile operator or service provider. The BT/EE tie up should, in time, start making more customers look to consolidate their mobile and voice to one supplier. So there is a great opportunity for the channel to increase the wallet share of their existing customer base."

Following the recent launch of 6DG's UCaaS solution with Avaya, the company plans to bolster its proposition with the CCaaS (Contact Centre as a Service) and VaaS (Video as a Service) add-on applications. "These will increase the functionality of our UCaaS platform and enable customers to pick and choose from a wider range of features," commented Williams. "We also plan to invest in further expanding our international foot print, closely aligning the next phase of our UCaaS offering with the growth plans of our customer base."

A 22% increase in SV9100 sales secured Trust Distribution the NEC Top UNIVERGE SV9100 Distributor award at the vendor's EMEA Partner Conference 2016 staged in Venice.

Terry Ambrose, joint Trust MD, commented: "Our double digit growth can be attributed in part to the wrap around resource that we have built into the brand. We have sales account managers, a fully trained technical team, two brand managers and regular marketing updates that deliver vital information, along with commercial and technical assistance to our customers.

"This means that they can confidently go out and sell the platform in the knowledge that they are kept abreast of all the latest NEC news and that they will be supported in a a pre and post-sales capacity." 

Yealink has announced enhanced interoperability with Microsoft Skype for Business for three new desktop phones - the entry-level T40P, the Gigabit phone T42G and the Gigabit colour phone T46G.

These models join the T48G which was already qualified for Skype for Business.

Yealink Vice President Stone Lu said: "Each solution is designed to integrate seamlessly with users' workflows and to enhance their productivity."

The phone series supports Skype for Business server functionality including features like conferencing and boss/admin as well as flexible switching between Skype for Business desktop clients and Yealink phones with the wireless Better Together over Ethernet (BToE) function.

Active Digital won two national awards at the UK Employee Experience Awards 2016, held on Wednesday 4th May at the Park Plaza Riverbank in London.

Active Digital won its first awards in the 'Business Change or Transformation' category and the other, which was sector specific, for 'Technology and Telecoms'.

Managing Director Richard Groves stated: "At Active Digital, we understand that a happy, empowered and motivated workforce is a productive one. There is clear research that proves highly engaged employees converts to happier customers. Deploying our new employee app was a team effort and employees were able to share their input to make this a fantastic tool within their work."

International workplace technology firm Condeco Software has acquired myVRM, a New York-based software company with workflow automation expertise in video collaboration, content sharing, unified communications, virtual meetings and analytics.

Condeco provides integrated hardware and software solutions and the myVRM platform streamlines the process of setting up audio, video, content sharing and virtual meetings.

myVRM's platform currently integrates with Microsoft, Google, IBM, Cisco, Polycom, Pexip, Vidyo and others systems, creating a simplified solution which will accelerate Condeco's speed to market and drive greater adoption among users.

Paul Statham, founder and CEO of Condeco, said: "For over ten years Condeco has strived to be a people-centric company, developing advanced workplace technology which makes a difference to people's working life. This new combined offering will offer business value to our clients and be a great addition to Condeco's enterprise solution.

"This move will provide the scale to underpin our continued global expansion, which has seen us achieve over 40% growth in 2015."

Ken Scaturro, president of myVRM, added: "The combined platform will enable users to engage in much more complex scenarios, and will give organisations simple and intuitive end-to-end management of people, processes, real estate and technology. We share Condeco's vision of the workplace of the future and are excited to join their team."

Channel Telecom is set to launch Nimbus UC, a new white labelled hosted platform to be unveiled on June 15th at a location in London.

Channel Telecom MD Clifford Norton said: "The move towards cloud-based technology is nothing new. It has been happening for some years now but it has been a while since something came along and shook things up. That is exactly what we are hoping to do with Nimbus UC. 

"Partners will be impressed by its capabilities but more so by its pricing, which gets increasingly competitive the bigger the customer. We have managed to lower costs, increase profit margins while maintaining the features of a premium product."

SMART Technologies, a provider of collaboration solutions, has signed a distribution agreement with Midwich.

Midwich will support SMART's new go-to-market model and will be ready to ship in mid-June.

Following its recent partnership announcement with Westcon, SMART Technologies is establishing itself more strongly in the channel.

Along with extending the reach of these solutions, this new agreement will allow SMART to work with the channel directly, offering account management and marketing services to each individual partner.

Jane Ashworth, UK Managing Director, SMART Technologies, commented: "This is another significant step forward in the re-invigoration of our UK channel presence.

"With this new addition, we will be poised to quickly gather pace and accelerate our new channel strategy.

"Working with partners like Midwich is vital to reach organisations looking to capitalise on software and hardware for collaboration."

Richard Bovingdon, Head of Interactive Sales, Midwich, added: "SMART has developed an all-in-one solution that's ideal for today's classroom, alongside a range of other products that have valuable roles to play in both business and education.

"SMART is working with us not only on products, but also on education and enablement."

Openreach is inviting all comms providers to take part in consultations to 'agree and scope' the process of giving them access to its dark fibre network.

The move follows Ofcom's Business Connectivity Market review of the UK's £2bn leased lines market in which it called for Openreach to open up its dark fibre to competitors by October 2017.

Openreach says it has already invited comms providers to take part in initial discussions and 'a small number' have asked to join the Dark Fibre Industry Working Group facilitated by OTA2, the independent organisation tasked by Ofcom to oversee co-operation between communications providers.

Openreach has now opened up the consultation to the entire industry as Mark Logan (pictured), Director of Fibre Products at Openreach, confirmed: "We are pleased to invite all interested parties to join us for a series of regular update calls on the negotiations currently taking place," he said.

"This is to ensure that anybody not taking part in the industry working group is kept up to speed with the discussions and with Openreach's obligations on dark fibre services as laid out by Ofcom."

The calls will take place on June 17th, July 21st, September 5th, October 17th and December 5th. To take part in the events comms providers need to register on the Openreach website.

The move has been welcomed by resellers who have been pressing for Ofcom to put more pressure on Openreach over connectivity issues.

Neil Barrell, MD at Telecoms World, stated: "Having access will help us and hopefully bring costs down.

"Companies need fibre broadband, especially those in business parks that may have good transport links but poor access to data."

David Donnelly, Director at Midland Networks, believes that in the medium-term access to the dark fibre network will help all resellers install more products to a wider audience.

"But, in terms of being competitive it will be advantageous to the customer more than our industry," he commented.

"It may well prove to be another race to the bottom in terms of pricing rather than using the additional margin to improve customer satisfaction."

This news follows Ofcom's first significant review of the telecoms sector for a decade announced earlier this spring.

Ofcom's CEO Sharon White, alongside the Communications Minister Ed Vaizey, is pushing for a Digital Britain built on fibre.

White said: "The UK must do better at rolling out superfast broadband and 4G. Openreach must open up its network of telegraph pole and underground tunnels to allow others to build their own advanced fibre networks, connected directly to homes and offices."

Meanwhile, under White's leadership Ofcom is also taking a harder line with BT on its service levels and has demanded that Openreach fixes faults within five hours and reduces install times to 40 days.

However, many comms providers are urging the regulator and Government to go further.