Rampant claims to market differentiation are often ballooned out of all proportion according to TeleWare's CEO Steve Haworth who punctures the 'trusted advisor' bubble and points to the substantial stand-out factors that really matter in today's fast-evolving marketplace.
Every industry spawns its hype and comms is no exception. The trick is to create substance, and resellers can only do this by sharpening their focus on what they do best and then strive to do better, according to Haworth. "Stop wasting time worrying about what everyone else is doing and make sure you execute well," he stated. "Create a specialism or halo proposition that helps you to stand out. Too many ICT suppliers claim to be one-stop-shops and 'trusted advisors'. These labels are no longer differentiators."
Haworth aims to help resellers step closer to their goals with a boost fuelled by the benefits of analytics. "Right now we are adding multi-mode, multi-media and analytics to all of our products to help drive greater insights across the business and bring more revenue opportunities to our partners," he explained. "The intersection of mobile, cloud and Big Data to enhance the customer experience, governance and compliance are important drivers. We have invested heavily in gaining new data capture and analytics capabilities to take advantage of this area as we see it exploding over the next few years."
While highlighting the lack of market differentiation, Haworth does not lack the ambition to elevate TeleWare's partners above the crowd. "Part of our proposition is to help partners stand out and differentiate themselves," he stated. "We have to challenge ourselves to do the same. We live in a world of over-supply in so many areas. How and why you do things is just as important as what you do."
In more detail, TeleWare routes, records and analyses communications to improve customer service, governance and compliance. The company focuses on markets that require the agility to cope with flexible customer demand, where a high proportion of employees are mobile or distributed, or have specific regulatory requirements. Retail, leisure, finance, healthcare and utilities are particularly strong markets for TeleWare.
The firm finished last year with over £10 million in revenues and has a headcount of circa 80 staff. "We set out a growth plan to double revenue over a three year period and we hit our profit target within the first six months of this year," commented Haworth. "We have invested more in our new products and services as well as partner recruitment, and have some exciting products coming to market this year."
Haworth wants to build a dozen 'great partnerships' over the next two years, to jointly focus on creative propositions that differentiate partners and drive their value. "We want to find partners who share our values and vision and believe in the power of communications to drive business performance," he commented. "Our partners are likely to come from different areas so that they can work together. Some might be the more traditional communications players while others more Microsoft and IT, although these are merging fast. New areas for TeleWare are the creative digital agency or data analytics driven partners who can drive additional value from the data that communications provide."
That said, Haworth still sees a place for the more commoditised products and services delivered easily and with APIs for partners to create 'great solutions'. But he believes that these solutions have more value when integrated with other technologies and made easy to buy, sell and service. "This is where we see real value in a distribution partner," Haworth said. "Our current priorities are recruiting partners who will get the most benefit from our new products and services. We see Microsoft as a key partner in this space and helping other partners to leverage these technologies, complement them and integrate with other platforms is where we are spending much of our time."
Adaptation is the most potent of survival methods, but managing change is never easy. "The shift to the cloud was a particular challenge," added Haworth. "We have always focused on great software but the cloud requires a different mind-set and business model. So we have expanded our services to make it easier for partners, while remaining focused on the areas that have made us a great company. We have also witnessed massive growth in mobile and communication recording and see these areas as huge opportunities for partners.
"Finding partners who have a strong knowledge in specific markets, and helping them to develop more differentiated offerings that drive greater value is where we see our future. We leverage and build upon the great work of others to help partners hit their own goals. For example, by adding value to their cloud strategy and integrating third party cloud services where required, or building secure private services for industry verticals such as health and finance."
Transforming the TeleWare business into a Software as a Service operation is perhaps Haworth's crowning glory. "This is my biggest career achievement to date because I underestimated the challenge and didn't expect the undertaking to involve every aspect of the business, from people to technology to finance. Many of our partners are doing similar transitions in their business models. I still come across people who see this as a small change in product portfolio rather than a business transformation."
Despite Haworth's years of industry experience, business transformation does not get handed over on a plate. He began his career selling ERP software to large enterprises. "We used TeleWare to provide flexible input via phones in offices and mobile phones for engineers," explained Haworth. "I then set up a company selling mobile gateways to corporate customers. They were spending 20p per minute to a mobile and 80 per cent of their bill was from calls to mobile phones. The recurring revenue model got me hooked, so when the opportunity came to work for TeleWare I jumped at the chance."
Geoff Haworth formed TeleWare with a business partner in 1991. The company began as an R&D project looking into the art of the possible following the release of Digital Cards that connected computers and telephones. "Our first real customer was British Gas via Siemens to help extend the capacity of a phone system and support flexible working," said Haworth. "They bought into the ideas and capability more than a deliverable, but we had to deliver something convincing to win the business. TeleWare grew through a great relationship with Siemens in the 1990s."
TeleWare's biggest challenges and opportunities have always been around technology developments and partnering. "The step from being totally reliant on Siemens and signing partnerships with BT and others created an interesting challenge as we had to learn to manage multiple partners," added Haworth. "As most partners were larger than ourselves they tended to require a level of up-front resource. This was an exciting challenge. In terms of technology, we have seen the migration to the Internet, mobile and the cloud as huge shifts, but the latter was perhaps the greatest challenge as it required a change in business model."
There is now a copious literature on the whys and wherefores of changing business model and it is the knowledge gleaned from the experience of pioneers such as Haworth that will make the process more bearable for those who follow in his footsteps. "Focus and timing is critical," he stated. "When we first moved into the cloud we wanted to do everything. We were driven to move fast but, at times, ahead of the market. We spent much time, effort and money educating the market rather than being laser focused on the biggest issues that we could address, and accepting that fast growth in revenue during the initial phases of launch is not the best KPI. Setting out the next most important goals and doing everything you can to get there is something I learned later rather than sooner. It really does make a significant difference."•