Selling telephony? Selling IT? Want to sell both?
There was a time when the two worlds were separate. Today, thanks to game-changing cloud technology, Managed Service Providers and Value-Added Resellers must have an offering which responds to all of businesses’ myriad communication needs.
That’s voice, messaging, email, web chat, social media, even video.
Then add the need to integrate it all with go-to communication and collaboration platforms such as Microsoft Teams and the like, and it’s easy to see why the changed face of the MSP/VAR landscape is more nuanced than ever before.
That said, increased revenue and profit opportunities are of course there for those able to put together (and support) a compelling, all-encompassing offer. All they must do is partner with a channel provider that not only intimately understands voice, but also Microsoft, and of course the reseller model on which it also depends.
“Five or ten years ago there was a clear dividing line between those who just sold and supported telephony and those who specialised in IT – now, it’s all managed by customers’ IT teams, with a different language being spoken and a different relationship required,” says Mark Herbert, Unified Communications and voice integration specialist at Dstny for Service Providers, whose award-winning Call2Teams solution is just part of a powerful wholesale ecosystem that delivers big.
“Critically, we’re now seeing the mainstream cloud IT providers such as Microsoft Teams offering users a voice service. That has had a major impact on the channel. There used to be reseller specialists in on-premise voice PBX products, and then others who played in the server and workstation services space.
Today, there is a new breed of partner which sits in the middle, and which has solutions and a level of expertise to capitalise on that new market’s huge opportunities.”
The continuing rise of Microsoft Teams in particular is at the heart of this new world’s potential to provide smart MSPs and VARs – no matter their size – with a business model upon which to build a thriving future.
“Our voice partners can enjoy significant success by wrapping their core services around Microsoft Teams,” says Herbert. “Teams offers a relatively competent phone service but still has deficiencies, so why not bring added value to it? The end user still gets that business-critical calling experience, but also benefits from access to all the other rich functionality provided by a powerful Unified Communication as a Service (UCaaS) solution. Microsoft is spending billions of dollars on marketing so why not benefit from that? It’s like standing on the shoulders of a giant.”
In the case of Dstny for Service Providers , its channel partners get a premium, margin-rich Teams voice-integration, that can be white-labelled and that is easy to sell and easy to support.
“Our solution takes away all of the need for specialist knowledge,” says Herbert. “Our software and its automation is simple enough for a competent administrator or even a sales person within an IT reseller to deliver it out to customers not within days but within minutes.
“It’s completely self-service, via an intuitive and easy-to-use portal. They don’t even have to raise a purchase order to gain access. They simply add a customer, add the required licences, and they are in business. We then just bill them at the end of each month.”
Support is there in abundance too.
“We literally have people all over the world who provide 24/7 support,” says Herbert. “We have thousands of public and private sector end-user organisations for whom the reliability of our products and solutions is critical. We understand their needs and their challenges, and we carry the efficacy and reputation of their businesses on our shoulders. As a result, we are able to provide our partners with complete confidence to deliver our service under their flag.
“From a product functionality perspective, we think we do a really good job too. We don’t want to leave any space for a competitor to emerge. Our partners benefit from that philosophy because we are constantly researching, developing and innovating.”
And culture, too, has an important part to play.
“We have always felt that the relationship we have with our partners is really important and should be as personal as possible,” says Herbert. “We like to get to know them. Our whole focus is on them and how we can make it as easy as possible for them to do business with us. It’s about being transparent, so there are no surprises. And, of course, we are extremely competitive and focused on them being successful.”
It seems the opportunities presented by the new, merged world of telephony and IT are many.
Now it’s time to capitalise…
To learn more about how Dstny for Service Providers can help you and your customers’ businesses leverage the game-changing power of its white-label ecosystem, click here.
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