Comms Dealer

MDSL is celebrating its 20th anniversary this month and has come a long way since it was founded in March 1995 by CEO Ben Mendoza. The company now employs 200 staff in offices around the world including the US, UK, France, Japan, Sweden and Hong Kong.

MDSL's solutions are developed in-house and address the Telecom Expense Management (TEM) and Market Data Management (MDM) markets.

Its Technology Expense Management platform allows customers to add support for emerging technology costs such as M2M, colocation and cloud services as well as general purpose IT equipment and services.

Mendoza said: "After 20 years in business, we are really proud that 98% of MDSL customers choose to renew their contracts, often for a longer period than the original term. The majority of our customers have now been enjoying the benefits of their MDSL solution for at least six years."

Tech Data Europe has joined Microsoft's Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) program enabling the distributor to consolidate monthly billing for CSP subscriptions plus other cloud services and catalyse sales of Office 365 and Windows Intune subscriptions.

Tech Data Europe will offer additional services to resellers including support with Office 365 migration.

It follows a similar deal in the US over the last six months and Tech Data Europe's appointment as a 2-Tier Cloud Solution Provider completes the portfolio of Microsoft cloud products it offers to the channel.

CSP will be integrated into Tech Data's StreamOne Cloud platform. This will enable resellers across Tech Data's European footprint to access this service as part of a progressive rollout expected to conclude within the next eight weeks.

By Anton Le Saux, Head of Connectivity and Partner Sales at O2 Telefónica UK: A recent report by Accenture states that the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) is set to drive revenue growth.

According to Paul Daugherty, CTO at Accenture, 'companies that understand that every business is a digital business are using this technology to create product-service hybrids that provide new growth opportunities and pave the way for pioneering the next generation of industrial products'.

Despite being called the Industrial Internet of Things, is it really any different to the Internet of Things (IoT) that has been providing a service for consumers and businesses for some years now? Industry reports widely predict expansion for M2M and IoT, with rapid growth expected in 2015 as the technology is already in use by a number of businesses. In fact, even SMEs are starting to adopt M2M solutions.

M2M and the IoT have evolved so much that we recognised the need for standardisation to allow the sector to develop in a more controlled manner. Our Global Partners Programme (GPP) has enabled a structured environment for manufacturers and technology companies to unify processes and improve quality control. Given that this technology has grown to the extent of requiring this sort of initiative, it is surprising that it has suddenly acquired a new label to differentiate it from the IoT of consumer-driven technology. Is the 'industrial' label really only a demonstration of how the IoT is beginning to impact additional sectors and more businesses?

In reality, the IoT bridges both consumer and industrial activity and differentiating the two will be virtually impossible as they are, by nature, irrevocably interlinked. (anton.lesaux@telefonica.com
partnersdigital.telefonica.com)

Powerdial Services reached a low point in 2008 but the transformation that followed has brought the company to a much happier place.

During a period of business remodelling one determining factor stood out - the leadership of Managing Director Paul Farn who devised and implemented a watertight turnaround strategy. Now he's stepping up the company's ambitious growth campaign.

Powerdial was established in 1993 and operated successfully until 2008 when it was sold to a UK listed company. But the parent organisation had significant debts and was placed into administration in late 2011. Powerdial, as an asset of its administered parent, was put up for sale and attracted several bids. "Myself and two high net worth partners bought the company as an ongoing concern," recalled Farn. "My partners are still involved in the business on a week-to-week basis. One owns an asset management fund in New York with 70-plus companies and the other is a former global head of corporate law at one of the top five law firms in the UK. They bring a wealth of experience to the business."

Seaham-based Powerdial began life selling small key systems to companies with up to 50 users. Today the firm delivers much larger solutions to customers such as Dickinson Dees with 2,000 users across five locations and the Ministry of Justice which has 3,000 users covering 20 locations. "We have turned the company into a service driven ICT provider, encompassing all of our traditional technologies and augmenting those with new technologies that we see as a synergistic addition to our clients' ICT and business application strategy," added Farn. "We are now well positioned as an ICT services company with over 20 years experience of delivering solutions to our clients. These customers are located as far apart as Aberdeen to Angola and Manchester to Munich. Whether a five user to 3,000 user solution we deliver the same results."

During the primary period of restructuring between 2012-2013 Powerdial had static revenues of approximately £1.5 million, but Farn forecasts strong organic growth as demand in UC markets increases and the company's new portfolios start to ramp up. "We are currently on target to hit £2.5 million in the current year based on healthy order books and big increases in contracted revenues from managed services and applications," he said. "We aim to hit £6 million revenue in 2016/17."

Key points of focus for Powerdial in its core markets are around the UC piece. "We are constantly being asked about hosted voice, digital signage, hosted desktop and hosted video," said Farn." We can deliver these solutions via the cloud or traditional CPE vendors such as Avaya which has launched a hosted portfolio. We are seeing most demand in video, BYOD and mobility, and we are investing significantly in those areas in terms of sales and technical training as well as branding and support.

"We also see massive potential in the digital signage space. This market has grown to $20 billion inside five years and has double digit CAGR for the coming five years. We are well supported in this space as my partner in the US has one of the largest digital signage companies in north America in his asset management fund. We also partner with BCS Cloudmedia. We are currently working with several international companies on 'point of contact' solutions including a 73 site motor reseller. We are also focusing on business applications and VM solutions. In that space we have recently deployed a call recording solution incorporating speech analytics and workforce optimisation using VMware."

Trend alignment is now more critical than ever, according to Farn. "The UK communications industry has changed more in the last three years than in the last 30, and we must change with it," he said. "We spend time researching market trends and aligning ourselves to areas where we see sustainable long-term growth. Over the last 18 months we have incorporated managed cloud services into our value proposition meeting demands from our clients. We are now strongly positioned to scale that growth area to match the market demand. It is also worth noting that while we see faster growth in cloud spend, it still only represents less than 10 per cent of the overall market spend on ICT."

Having rationalised the supplier base and customer value proposition Farn set about focusing on core markets such as UC and formed strategies to move into the aforementioned high growth emerging markets. "Everything we have expanded into is synergistic to our existing propositions and can be included in a customer's UC strategy," he said. "Our customer proposition is based around offering a consultative approach aimed at improving their UC strategies and driving costs out of their P&L."

The profile of Powerdial's customer base has naturally changed in line with its propositions. The company has strategically positioned its solutions portfolio in the mid-market space as this sector responds best to new technology. Also, the cycle of first appointment to sale payment is significantly shorter in the enterprise space.

Now that Powerdial's core solutions have been enhanced with business related applications, Farn, where possible, sticks to a policy of offering customers at least two choices of solution. "For example, we have clients with CPE video conferencing equipment but at the same time demand is growing for hosted video with desktop applications," he commented. "From a voice perspective we still see growth potential in CPE solutions as well as hosted, although the demand for hosted is growing faster in certain verticals."

Farn's background in finance and advertising gave him insights into how a business should operate fiscally. His working life began in 1976 as a trainee accountant at the National Coal Board. Eight years later he sold advertising in newspapers and in 1987 moved into manufacturing and was appointed Managing Director of a company making stainless steel components for the food and drinks industry. Farn managed and grew the business significantly and opened a wholesale and distribution warehouse in 1990.

"I sold my stake in all of those businesses and joined Powerdial in 1998 as Sales Director, working for a long-term friend who founded the company," he said. "The advertising role taught me that sales is really all about activity, creativity and mental toughness. The manufacturing business taught me how to operate profitably at high volume and low margins, while the distribution and wholesale businesses taught me about logistics. These experiences helped me appreciate the value of teamwork, and I understand the plus and minus points of every role inside our business."

Farn's immediate and mid-term objective internally is to build on his hand-picked team. "Without them my planning would be meaningless," he said. "It is important to recruit wisely and correctly as we need the right people in the right roles. When recruiting sales people we test every candidate in literacy, numeracy and Belbin tests. I have learned that effective recruitment is one of the most important cornerstones of any business. We cannot have square pegs in round holes. Within 18 months we aim to grow our headcount to 30-plus."

Powerdial's recruitment-driven expansion, underpinned by a clear strategic vision and a highly effective customer retention and satisfaction programme, will push revenues to circa £10 million within five years, hopes Farn. "To achieve this objective we have written a well thought out business plan and had it vetted by two of the best names in the industry as well as our three shareholders," he commented. "It is a solid plan with built-in sensitivity and accounts for all eventualities. We have our P&L firmly under control and have established the right partners and solutions in markets that are growing."

It sometimes comes down to leadership when tackling the many vested interests in the channel, according to Cerberus Networks Director Bob Hendy, whose mission is to help resellers confront, manage and profit from change.

A buoyant comms market is a sign of prosperity so must be good news for resellers. Most remarkable is a big surge in the uptake of VoIP, which is both welcome and disruptive, yet many resellers remain firmly wedded to old world technology, according to Hendy. "Clients are adopting VoIP in droves," he said. "Cerberus provides SIP and WLR3 BT telephony services, but in 2014 we saw a complete collapse in demand for ISDN in favour of almost 100 per cent adoption of SIP or hosted PBX for new telephony services. As a Microsoft hosting provider we are a great believer in UC, but still we find the more traditionally minded businesses preferring to play it safe and opt for a traditional voice-only comms infrastructure, even when based on VoIP. In our ideal world everyone would switch to a fully fledged UC platform and be enjoying next generation 21st century communications."

The attraction of well connected cloud comms will not pass and it is clear to see where Cerberus has hitched its wagon. Key partners in the connectivity space are BT Wholesale and Virgin Media, combined with systems from Cisco, Juniper and Fortinet to provide managed WAN and security solutions. In the cloud space Cerberus' key partners are Microsoft, VMware and Citrix. "We currently provide hosted computing services to the application hosting and enterprise markets based on technology from VMware," said Hendy. "However, the rich feature set is often not required by value conscious SMEs so we will shortly be rolling out a new value-focused variant of our MyCloud Computing service in Q2 this year to address this."

The widespread adoption of cloud services is disrupting reseller business models but Hendy has nevertheless seen many adapt to the new climate. "For resellers who want to build their expertise in this new landscape we offer a white label product that helps them better serve their customers," he said. "As we continue to put the right tools in the hands of our partners we know we are enabling them to succeed in a competitive and evolving marketplace. Resellers need to focus on building a strong portfolio of services underpinned by affordable and flexible connectivity to deliver on the promise of reducing complexity."

Cerberus is 're-targeting' channel partners this year and is bullish about the portfolio of services it offers to resellers for connectivity and cloud services. "We know we can compete against anyone on a like-for-like basis for broadband and Ethernet services, and for our IT VAR/MSP clients we offer a full-range service including hosted office applications, hosted computing, hosted desktop and online backup/DR," explained Hendy. "This makes us a one-stop-shop for many potential partners looking to consolidate and simplify how they provide a wide range of cloud services, all the time integrated with connectivity to get the best experience and most flexible and elegant solution designs."

When Cerberus was established in 2006 it brought together a team of colleagues from ISP Mailbox Internet and the networking VAR Topology. Both companies had been acquired as part of a consolidation process and Hendy found that some customers and staff were not well served by the new management. "We saw an opportunity to build a new business," he commented. "The initial mission was to provide managed Internet, network and security services to SMEs. The first turning point for the business was partnering with what was then BE Unlimited for our ISP services in 2006. This was a small provider at the time with a limited channel. Cerberus recognised the power of the unlimited ADSL2+ services that BE was offering and built a reseller channel around these services, providing resellers with ordering and service automation and wholesale access to a stand-out broadband product."

The next major development came in 2010 when Cerberus built its own network for the delivery of broadband and cloud services, still using O2 Wholesale's ADSL2+ products for broadband access (after BE Unlimited was acquired) and a new cloud computing platform. "Our vision was to deliver connectivity and services on a converged, integrated infrastructure to enhance the customer experience of both," added Hendy. "When O2 Wholesale left the broadband market we formed a partnership with BT and have a fresh and attractive portfolio of FTTC and ADSL services delivered on a unified platform."

Together with a refreshed portfolio of cloud and communications services Hendy sees this development as a new phase of the company's journey and a 'great platform' for growing the business. "We currently employ 30 staff across two offices," noted Hendy. "We aim to grow our headcount by 20 to 25 per cent this year. Likewise, while 2014 was a static year for us due to the changes we had to accommodate with O2 Wholesale leaving the market, we foresee growth of 15-20 per cent in 2015/16, building on our new broadband, Ethernet and cloud services."

An important component of Hendy's strategy is making services highly accessible and manageable for customers using the firm's portal tools. "We will continue to focus on this, making sure that partners have on-demand access to as many provisioning, order management and diagnostics tools as we can," he confirmed. "For many partners this is a key capability as it puts them in the driving seat when it comes to dealing with service requests and troubleshooting, shortening the time to resolution dramatically."

Cerberus has invested heavily in building its new network for the delivery of broadband and Ethernet services, as well as hosted security and tailored WAN solutions, extending its capability and expertise in this area. The company also created a 24x7 helpdesk team to deliver the levels of support that users expect of business-grade, mission-critical services, around the clock.

"We understand well the needs of the channel and the extra demands on these clients from their customers," said Hendy. "This is why we are continually developing our service management tools to make sure we offer as much control to resellers as possible backed-up by a 24x7 responsive support team."

In the year ahead Hendy's priority is to evangelise the new services in Cerberus' portfolio and the tools to manage them easily and efficiently. "This starts with our new broadband portfolio and the new management technologies we provide to partners such as QoS and TR-069 automated router provisioning," he added. "We also have a new generation of cloud services being delivered in calendar Q1 and Q2 of 2015 including online backup/DR services as well as our cloud computing platform."

Turning back the calendar, Hendy's first job in IT was with AppleCentre Kensington in 1998. He worked in the Apple channel for a number of years before moving into broader networking and security infrastructure with Topology. "I went from selling laptops to celebrity clients to designing and maintaining complex network and infrastructure solutions to businesses throughout the UK in a few short years," said Hendy. "It was a steep learning curve but taught me many important lessons that are still relevant today. During that time I saw the industry move from selling huge quantities of hardware at high margins to a focus on value add services and the cloud."

Hendy counts himself lucky to have developed long-term working relationships with 'great people who never stopped learning, who deliver on their promises, and who grow and adapt as the industry changes'. These are essential qualities in a competitive and demanding business, believes Hendy, and are a reflection of the core values of Cerberus.

"It's fascinating to see how technology has continued to up-end established business models and create new ways of working across so many industries," he said. "We are at the beginning of another big disruptive change as smaller companies take advantage of the confluence of connectivity and hosted technologies."

It is one thing to recognise change, it is another to be comfortable with it, and another again to make it your purpose. "I have learned not be afraid of change," stated Hendy. "While it is often disruptive, learning to manage the process and communicate decisions is key to taking people with you and discovering the positives. As long as you act with integrity and your decisions are based on the available information, you have a good chance of succeeding."•

There is always a moment when resellers who want to enter new, bigger markets, crave an opportunity to do so. Therefore it should come as no surprise when those operating in the call management space swoop on Oak's new three pronged channel expansion strategy.

Oak already boasts 1,000 reseller partners based around the globe, but the company has ambitious plans to double that number within a year. It's busy working with manufacturers and distribution partners to multiply its partner base, with online training programmes and on-site tuition for larger resellers key components of a broader go-to-market campaign that is primarily founded on a trio of developments. "This year sees a big change for Oak, probably the biggest change in our history as we move forward on three fronts," explained Phillip Reynolds, founder and Joint CEO.

"We'll work hard at retaining Oak's position in the SME segment with our Advance call recording, reporting and integration product group; and also move ahead with our new Evolve contact centre reporting solution on multiple platforms; and our new Clarify mid-market voice and data recording solution. This is not a marketing exercise, this is new software written by Oak's development team on both sides of the Atlantic."

It is worth noting that Reynolds wrote one of the first, if not the first, PC-based call logger in the world back in 1985. Fast forward 30 years and he is still blazing a pioneering trail, this time side by side with his son David who operates in North America. "We have teams on both sides of the Atlantic so we can jump on new technology waves that appear in North America and be ahead of the curve in the UK and Europe," explained Reynolds. "But the biggest challenge for Oak, as for any business, is getting the best staff. We find that 'home grown' works incredibly well and many of our 50 staff have been with the company for 10 years or more."

Oak is also investing heavily in OCP (Oak Communications Platform) which will underpin its future products. OCP is a high performance, high availability platform that integrates at the deepest level with switches, delivers real-time reporting, has advanced features for call recording, and is designed for hosted cloud and CPE-based solutions. The web interface has already gained a reputation in the industry as a benchmark for quality. This is just one of the innovations that secured Oak a top industry prize late last year. "The pinnacle of my and my son's career was Oak winning the Comms National Awards Best Call Management Solution 2014," stated Reynolds. "We must be doing something right."

But what does this all mean to a reseller? "It means that they get to keep the SME products that they know and love with Advance, they can sell larger more sophisticated call recording solutions generating higher profits with Clarify, and with Evolve they join Oak in the next big growth area which is formal and informal contact centre reporting," commented Reynolds. "Oak's investment always has the reseller at the core of its planning."

The biggest growth areas for Oak are call recording which continues to grow steadily in the SME space but is growing faster at the mid-market level of £20k to £40K, while contact centre reporting for all businesses is performing well. "Demand for ever increasingly sophisticated solutions at affordable prices is driving news sales," added Reynolds. "We deliver on value to the SME market but with the addition of more exceptional technical staff we are delivering the same value to the contact centre sector as well as the voice and data recording market."

Call management in the 21st Century has little in common with the call loggers of yesteryear that offered just historic reporting. Modern solutions provide live reporting, real-time call recording with PCI compliance, real-time screen popping of client records and detailed analytics that promote business improvements. "Productivity and performance is also driving new business sales," commented Reynolds. "Customer service is at the forefront of every business owner's mind. The channel are experts in this area. They've been talking the talk and walking the walk for many years. But the world has never been so competitive, never has there been so much demand for technology that delivers better customer service."

Oak's purpose has always been to change the landscape of call management by delivering technologically advanced solutions that meet customer service requirements at dealer affordable pricing. Now the company has taken its mission to the next level with its OCP communications platform which Reynolds claims will 'revolutionise the industry in 2015'. "This is a platform with best of breed technology at every turn, a platform that is modular, that enables resellers to pick and choose what they require for each sales opportunity, a platform that can be CPE or hosted, and a platform that can be deployed in the cloud," he enthused.

Nobody can deny Oak's leading role in advancing the potential of call management, but according to Reynolds the surface has barely been scratched. "With some countries dropping ISDN the move to SIP must be globally assured," he commented. "This means every customer on the planet should have call recording as standard with every single sale. We should also consider all businesses as a contact centre because the technology is now affordable across the board. Resellers can now approach mid-market voice recording opportunities with our support."

The social sphere is spinning into UC's orbit but how far it will gravitate is open to question.

The social sphere is spinning faster with employees communicating internally and externally of their organisations, and with the social networks available today these communications are multi-channel - people straddling their home and work offices and mixing their business and social comms. The best UC products are integrating into this mix, helping people to work with whoever, wherever they are on whatever platform they choose, according to Rob Keenan (pictured), Head of Portfolio Management, Northern Cluster at Unify.

"UC has been moving into the social sphere for some time," said Keenan. "We've seen UC elements embedded into social networks such as LinkedIn and Facebook albeit in basic chat and messaging forms. The reverse is happening with UC too. New systems are now moving from purely traditional comms methods to more social-based conversations. Unify's Circuit platform is an example of this."

Traditional UC uses point-based communications where click-to-call and scheduled conferences have definitive start and end points. This has been dubbed UCv1. But things have moved on. The focus of UCv2 has shifted to dynamic and persistent conversations between people who not only work in traditional team structures but also teams where people are mobile.

"Such flexibility is akin to a social network - an easy tool that works across any device and can help people work with one another as if they were together in the same room," added Keenan. "Externally, people liaise with others outside of their organisation all the time, yet they still want to work with the same tools they use internally. This is where UCv2 can help by enabling and empowering people to work quickly and easily together, all from one social interface."

Unify is seeing far more interest in this area, driven mostly by Twitter use. Many forward-looking organisations now realise their customers and audience are using Twitter more than they use the telephone, send emails or send traditional mail. A reputation built up over many years can be lost in 24 hours due to the transparency and immediacy of social media. But it can also be used as a positive tool.

"Every organisation should be embracing social," added Keenan. "Not using it to its full potential is a trick missed. Resellers should assess how social media could affect a client's customers: Are they using it to communicate with them already? What's the balance between social, email, telephone and chat? Many organisations have an employee dedicated to social media, but their domain is often outside of the contact centre. By integrating the two an organisation can respond, market and help their customers far more quickly, easily, and often more cheaply than traditional voice options."

Social media integration not only creates big opportunities for companies it also brings new challenges, pointed out Giuseppe Fragale, Head of Microsoft UC Technologies and Services at SIPHON. "Business goals such as improving the quality of customer care or augmenting collaborative culture are certainly to be applauded," he said. "However, resellers must be aware that these desirable outcomes cannot be achieved solely with technology.

"We are talking about the way people work day-to-day, about how employees interact with one another internally as well as with their suppliers and customers, so the best solution can only be achieved by placing a strong emphasis on the user experience. In turn, this can only be done effectively by investigating and then making appropriate modifications to all the relevant processes in the company's value chain."

On the question of whether UC is heading social, Giuseppe is less certain. "It's doubtful whether this is actually the case," he mused. "In fact, the opposite may be true. These two paradigms, UC and social, have different customer segments. The social paradigm has given rise to new customer needs. Some of these needs are addressed by ordinary UC services. By comparison, UC applications have a different scope and serve different customer requirements.

"While some social applications such as Facebook are working to incorporate voice within the existing services offered to customers, it's worth noting that social companies are considering doing this with single standalone UC services, rather than the entire UC service-suite."

Giuseppe cited examples of such developments. WhatsApp started out as a simple IM chat and file transfer application. In late 2013, the former start-up added its voice-as-a-message feature which allowed voice messages to be recorded and sent peer-to-peer. In February it was reported that WhatsApp had begun beta testing Internet calls with some users. It's no coincidence that WhatsApp is owned by Facebook, Giuseppe pointed out.

"Viber began as a free VoIP call application and has since added some advanced IM features that are more typical of an innovative UC offering such as Lync 2013/Skype," he added. "Now, Microsoft is attempting to integrate a social application platform (Yammer) with a UC platform (Lync/Office 365), a collaboration platform (sharepoint/Office365) and a messaging platform (Exchange/Office365)."

SIPHON's approach takes into account the processes as well as the technologies being used. "By giving consideration to both, SIPHON can support resellers to find the optimal way of achieving UC integration with social platforms," added Giuseppe.

In the main, UC systems are alive with real-time communications and are therefore a natural fit for real-time social interactions, according to Darren Standing, Head of Products and Marketing at Solar Communications. "Social media integration in UC and contact centre deployments provides another channel to engage with customers in a forum that suits them," he said. "Integration of social channels into UC systems becomes vital for shifting between channels easily and seamlessly. It allows you to respond appropriately to particular issues, even if it involves moving the conversation to a different channel such as a voice call. However, for resellers the maturity of a customer's social media engagement is key. Bringing social into a UC environment when a customer's social media strategy is not mature is likely to result in difficult UC deployments."

It is also important for customer-facing departments to adopt social channels to meet customer demand and respond quickly to issues, pointed out Standing. "Social media is a valuable knowledge base for customer service, marketing and other customer-focused departments, and early notification on twitter of customer dissatisfaction needs to be delivered to the appropriate resources within a business. They won't want to use separate systems to do this."

The use of social internally is prevalent so organisations are wanting to set up UC with more than just video and voice. "Whether that's using Salesforce Chatter, uploading photos from smartphones or Instant Messenger, social is becoming an integral part of the communication structure," said Spencer Bradshaw, Head of Solution Architect Practice, EMEA, ShoreTel. "Increasingly, we're also seeing businesses wishing to extend their collaboration tools used inside of the organisation to other businesses, or indeed the buying public in a B2C world."

Deploying social UC tools 'for the sake of it' isn't the answer. Resellers need to review the business requirements. They also need to understand their customers' customer. "It comes down to the expectation of the end customer," added Bradshaw. "If an organisation is trying to attract and engage with a younger audience, social could make more sense for customer care. However, this has to be part of the overall business strategy and not just a bolt-on solution. Once you've looked at social and how it is aligned to customer needs as well as your business strategy, you also have to commit 100 per cent."

Sometimes the hardest part is for businesses to accept the fact that there are aspects of social media platforms they cannot control. "It's a different ball game for customer care here," noted Bradshaw. "Our aim is to help resellers and their customers understand the implications of social and what businesses are trying to achieve. Looking forward to the launch of our new platforms at our Partner Conference in April, we will introduce a fresh approach to many aspects of UC and contact centre."

Any company must have a professional interest in gaining and keeping customers, but the best have an interest in upholding customer care at their heart. Koris is a shining example of such an organisation, according to Sales and Marketing Director Craig McCalley.

It is instinctive for Koris to put customers front and centre - no matter what - a policy that is paying off in bucket loads, according to McCalley. Little of this comes as a surprise to scholars of customer care, but the Koris philosophy adds a new dimension to client satisfaction and retention, and the statistics speak for themselves in loud volume. The company hasn't lost a customer to a service issue for over eight years, and there is unlikely to be the tiniest deviation from this established formula.

In 2007 four directors and the senior team of an acquired company set up Koris, a fresh business with a sharp focus on its 'serviceFirst' ethos. "From the outset Koris has been passionate about customer experience," said McCalley. "There have been no sharp turning points in our development, more a continuous elevation of service that revolves around customer retention, growth of customers, revenue, profit and the development of dedicated, valued staff. Just saying you have good customer service is not good enough."

So true. Small wonder Koris' turnover of over £4 million generates profitable year-on-year growth of 28-47 per cent. Its circa 30 headcount services a customer base of 200 user companies and global organisations with thousands of employees. "Our business will continue its profitable growth at the current rate reaching £10 million turnover in the next three-five years," added McCalley.

Underpinning this growth is the firm's much praised ServiceFirst approach, enabling it to build a strong maintenance and managed service base that is responsive, proactive and takes ownership of all issues. "Organisations no longer need to tolerate poor service," added McCalley. "Customers are also far more educated about their requirements so we ensure that all staff from sales through to engineering provide added value."

We all understand that offering an outstanding customer experience leads to profitable growth, but only with the right employees on board. "Our biggest challenge is the time it takes to find the right staff," added McCalley. "We want people who are not just capable but also have the right outlook. Finding engineers with our passionate ServiceFirst desire can be tricky. It is easy to find qualified and experienced engineers but more difficult to find them with the right customer service attitude, mainly because of the way they have been previously managed and targeted."

Upholding the ServiceFirst ethos is Koris' primary occupation but sticking to core values and 'what we are good at' is an equally important modus operandi. Not for nothing did Koris scoop a brace of important BT Business Partner Sales awards - Growth Partner of the Year 2014 and Acquisition Partner of The Year 12 months earlier.

"Koris made a strategic decision to partner with a core group of key vendors enabling us to ensure we have the highest level of skill, technical expertise and experience," said McCalley. "We are a voice and data managed service provider, so we focus on providing solutions that enable customers to increase their revenues and reduce costs. Koris reduces and manages risk for multi-site organisations that may also have disparate or remote workforces."

In terms of LAN and WAN the company partners with Cisco for hardware and BT for circuits. Mitel is the preferred option for addressing opportunities in IP telephony and contact centres, an eight year partnership that delivers over 35 per cent growth year-on-year. "Koris' early investment in Lync catalysed our fastest area of growth, in particular high availability voice and integration into legacy systems," commented McCalley. "So much so that many partners outsource this element to us due to the complexity of the solution. This investment has given us not only the platform but also the experience that our competitors find difficult to compete against."

There is more to Koris' knack for achieving notable successes: McCalley's experience is the ultimate sign of a Director whose clarity of vision defines his leadership approach. McCalley's 20 years experience in the IT and telco industry began at a comms distributor in telesales. He moved to a small start-up and progressed from internal sales to Sales Director achieving £18 million turnover. This business was later acquired by Azzurri.

"I have been lucky to work with some great people in start-up, VC backed, AIM listed and LSE global organisations," commented McCalley. "This gave me a deep understanding of business types and their different situations, including M&A, start-up, turnaround and growth. My current role will continue to focus on developing our successful sales team while ensuring ongoing customer satisfaction and profitable growth."

Ask any reseller what determines success and he or she will reply that it comes from true business partnerships, not from product alone or price driven sales, according to Steve Harrington, Sales Director at tIPicall.

What matters most is partnerships and leadership, along with seeing the way ahead with both eyes fixed on growth, product and partner development. The idea of prioritising price as a telling factor between good or bad partnerships is implausible, especially in the vibrant SIP market where tIPicall is achieving great gains, a point Harrington is keen to underline. "Within 12 months we want to be recognised as the SIP and hosted supplier of choice for international services in the UK," stated Harrington. "Within five years we intend to be in the full-time top three SIP suppliers overall in the UK."

Over the last 12 months Harrington has witnessed significant changes in many areas of the SIP and hosted market. And one of the biggest growth areas for tIPicall has been international numbers. "We have sold thousands of new numbers from all over the world, from Nicaraguan 0800 numbers to US landline numbers," he explained. "The take-up has even surprised us and we are excited about the growth of this part of the market. The international SIP product set will be our key driver and differentiator for the next 12 months at least. We are engaging with partners who have a real client need for these services, and we are providing training and sales support so they can get to grips with how it works and the key benefits."

Harrington has been in the business for long enough to allow insightful market assessments and sound strategic judgements. "There are two main trends showing up in the market," he said. "The first is the additional value add services on SIP trunks, the other is the globalisation of SIP itself. In terms of adding value we have improved and introduced new functions and services to our proposition. For example, we partnered with Juniper Bridge for out-of-hours support, offering free 24/7/365 support to all of our customers. We also added a Disaster Recovery product set to SIP that is free. We can now automate inbound failover calls to other IP addresses or numbers and automatically move them back once service is restored."

Another big development is the globalisation of SIP. Traditionally only the global carriers have been able to offer truly multi-national telephony-based services spanning different continents. "However, the mass adoption of SIP and our particular carrier set-up has enabled us to develop a rival product," added Harrington. "The ability to provide local breakout SIP in 14 countries will drastically change our business. Our specific abilities in this area have allowed us to engage with large resellers who use us for traditional UK-based SIP trunks and hosted PBX services. Presenting international numbers on outbound calls seems to be hitting the spot."

Currently, 80 per cent of tIPicall's business is UK-based but Harrington predicts that by the end of the year at least 40 per cent of revenues will come from international customers with a multi-national presence. "Presently this service is available in Europe and the US, but we are already planning Far East expansion and Australia later in the year, and maybe even Brazil," he added. "This is truly exciting for our resellers who can finally play on the same stage as the big international players."

tIPicall's capabilities have come on by leaps and bounds which is a sign of its attraction for larger resellers as the company's name in the market has grown. "Comms Vision was significant for us and we have already engaged with several key partners because of that event," explained Harrington. "It is becoming increasingly apparent that large resellers are looking for more than one supplier for every product set, and as SIP has grown the dominant players no longer have a free ride as the only choice."

tIPicall is always on the lookout for financially stable partners who want to sell its services, but it rejects more partners than it takes on. The strategy is to look towards larger resellers where the company can often add the most value. That said, tIPicall's dealer base is expected to grow this year with many IT companies entering the SIP and hosted space.

"Some of our partners have their own networks and just want to send us calls and get numbers," commented Harrington. "This is a big growth area and as the larger traditional resellers are looking to set up their own SIP infrastructures we can help them with carrier services. But many partners still need a hands-on approach to the installation and management of SIP and hosted services. We have to be flexible enough to cope with individual demands as every partner is different."

Nurturing higher growth levels from within the existing partner base is down to efficient processes and tIPicall's new portal. "We fully believe that we can double the business with only two more staff," said Harrington. "We are all about being efficient and process driven. Our new ordering and trunk management portal will assist greatly with this and our resellers welcome the hands-off approach. They will still need us for account management and second line support, but normal day-to-day activities should be web-based and not human-based."

It could rightly be argued that toll fraud remains an issue without a comprehensive industry-wide policy, but the bullet has to be bitten and developments around fraud also feature prominently in tIPicall's itinerary as it seeks to lock horns with this anathema. "We have seen the market play catch-up to this very real threat," said Harrington. "Hourly, daily, weekly and monthly alerts and cut-offs based on spend are part of what we now provide as standard. Integration with the telecoms fraud database is also a new option where known numbers and IP addresses can automatically be banned. The fight against fraud never ends and we know all the serious players in the industry are working together to help minimise the risk for everyone concerned. We are very much part of this and our Managing Director, Guy Miller, is on the ITSPA board."

tIPicall also plunged into what has become an obsession for channel education and training. No one can argue against the value it places on market education nor quarrel with measures to combat bad practices. Rallying to the cause Harrington said: "Education is key. There are still many organisations that sell SIP purely on price. This must change if they are to survive and grow. It is our role to help them understand best practice.

"Basic SIP training is not so important as the market is maturing. However, the intricacies of what SIP can bring and the new value added services means that a new level of training is required. Our World SIP and international numbering products require training from a sales, operational and technical point of view and we will keep this up until all of our partners are comfortable. If they don't understand the product they won't sell or support it properly and everyone loses. Our training is effective and we still have people coming back to us months or years later wanting to engage because they were at one of our training sessions. Training allows us to understand who our partners are and what they need from us."

Philip Carse, Analyst at Megabuyte.com, reports on the recent performance of leading companies in the comms space during the last quarter.

The UK Telecoms and Networks peer group has risen in share price terms by 7.2% over the last quarter, ahead of the 4.0% rise of the FTSE over the same period, but under-performing the Megabuyte Taylor Wessing (MBTW) 11.6% rise. Key share price performers include BT, off the back of its EE deal, and Gamma, off solid trading. Hot topics this quarter, aside from Quad Play manoeuvring by the big consumer players include hosted unified comms growth and two M&A deals for Daisy.

BT received a warm welcome for its M&A initiatives with the shares rising 17% over three months as it confirmed a £12.5bn bid for EE and raised £1bn in new equity. Sky and TalkTalk also enjoyed a good three month share performance (+10% and +8%) but the shares have under-performed over the last month, with TalkTalk talking down full year EBITDA and Sky paying 68% more per game for Premier League football (versus 18% for BT).

The best share price performers over the last year have come from the business comms community, led by Gamma's 37% rise since the October 2014 IPO, Redcentric (+31%), Adept Telecom (+24%), COLT (+17%) and Maintel (+18%). The worst share price performers have been business comms firms Coms plc and Pinnacle, down 76% and 43% respectively. Gamma issued a strong trading update, leading the company's broker to forecast £172m revenue and £22.9m EBITDA for 2014, giving growth rates of 16% and 33% respectively. The company has secured market leading growth from new services as well as growing its reseller base. CEO Bob Falconer told us, for example, that SIP trunks grew 45% and hosted voice (Cloud PBX) by 86% during 2014.

The strong growth in hosted voice is also demonstrated in results from two US-listed UCaaS pioneers, 8x8 and RingCentral. 8x8 grew revenues 26% to $41.4m and professed itself 'thrilled' with the performance of its UK subsidiary (the ex-Voicenet); while RingCentral grew 36% to $62m though, in contrast to 8x8, is still unprofitable and cash consuming. The growth in hosted Unified Comms was a key driver behind Living Bridge's recent investment in IP Solutions.

Accounts for the year to March 2014 from another Living Bridge investment - wireless ISP Metronet - confirm the very strong performance highlighted to us at the June 2014 SBO, with revenues up 49% organically to £11.6m, EBITDA up 30% and positive FCF. Contact centre and unified comms specialist Sabio delivered another year of double-digit revenue growth of 23% to £34.4m and EBITDA increased more than fourfold to £2.2m.

Three of the major players in the smaller end of the business market recently released somewhat contrasting results. Vitruvian-backed Universal Utilities/Unicom reported revenues up 3.1% to £69.1m, with the usual exemplary cash flow. The move to IFRS boosted already industry-leading EBITDA margins by a fifth, to 40%, though with a compensating increase in capex.

XLN reported a 2.1% dip in revenues to £63.8m, but EBITDA margin expansion. The company characterised the period as one of lower spending on sales and marketing, which both depressed revenues and boosted EBITDA. Chess grew revenues and EBITDA 10-11% to £48.8m and £12.2m respectively, while last June's Avenir acquisition will take revenues to over £70m in the current year.

Daisy reported that half year EBITDA fell 7.1% to £25.8m on revenues down 2.5% at £169.6m, while Azzurri reported revenues down 5.9% at £104.5m and collapsing EBITDA margins, with cash flow also impacted by yet more exceptional costs. However, the worst may be over for Azzurri following two balance sheet restructurings.

Contact centre and hosted voice provider Callstream Group (formerly Bluebell Telecom) reported revenues down 10% to £11.9m and slight margin declines, though we estimate a flat underlying performance factoring in the August 2013 sale of 3,000 customers to Adept Telecom. Accounts to March 2014 for low cost broadband provider New Call Telecom, which operates the Primus brand, showed the impact of investment by Jerome Booth in July 2013, with revenues growing 21% to £19.0m with substantial EBITDA losses. The company has also been busy on the M&A front, with an emerging markets focus, buying 75% of messaging provider Nimbuzz and 100% of wholesale voice carrier Wavecrest, though some of the reported deal valuations seems rather high to us.

The main M&A event of the last quarter was BT confirming its planned £12.5bn acquisition of EE, followed by a £1bn fund raise to help finance the deal. Away from BT, there were two deals apiece for Daisy and TalkTalk, including one between the two involving the sale of some of TalkTalk's off-net base to Daisy for an undisclosed amount. Meanwhile, TalkTalk also acquired Tesco's OTT video service Blinkbox.

Newly private Daisy also acquired the UK business of Damovo, a provider of a full range of IT services to 250 public and private sector organisations in the UK. Damovo adds about £1.5m, or 3% to Daisy EBITDA. Damovo's non-UK/European business was acquired by ex-Daisy shareholder Oakley Capital, with Daisy CEO Matt Riley becoming Executive Chairman of the business to lead a roll up.

IS Research publishes www.megabuyte.com, a company analysis and intelligence service covering over 200 public and private UK technology companies. philip.carse@megabuyte.com