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."