Success in the channel is essentially about having agility, the power to adapt, innovation, determination and becoming a standard-bearer for impeccably high service, according to Mike van Bunnens, Managing Director at Comms365, who says there's never been a better time for resellers to assert their growth agendas based on these solid principles.
The genesis of Comms365 is a classic example of how an agile start-up can swiftly nip past well rooted industry megaliths afflicted by inertia. And having gained experience in software, managed services, telecoms and the Internet, van Bunnens soon developed the view that businesses were disadvantaged by the extended period of time it took the larger players to react to their needs during service delivery and post-sale. "I saw an opportunity to build an ISP with an agenda to be different," explained van Bunnens. "We set about educating customers on how they should procure mission critical communications more effectively."
It was back in 2008 when van Bunnens established Bedfordshire-based Comms365 alongside Director Shaun Nicholls and two other business partners who had the knowhow to fast track the fledgling business. But future success was by no means a dead cert. "The first years were tough," explained van Bunnens. "We made a decision to invest in building our own network without having the customers to use it. We spent significantly on equipment, space and power and initially saw little return. Slowly but surely, customers found us and through sheer determination and many sleepless nights we began to attract businesses that believed in our ability to deliver solid, dependable services."
Those early clients were the building blocks of a strong and loyal customer base, and Comms365's decision to build its own network soon became the driver for a growing number of business wins from customers attracted to the firm's ability to demonstrate end-to-end control of its services, as well as offer bespoke solutions. "The great thing about our business is that we don't actually have a typical customer," added van Bunnens. "We work with companies of all sizes. Some with one person and others with 80,000 people."
Comms365 has grown between 50-80 per cent year-on-year and last year the company achieved almost £2 million turnover. van Bunnens expects to add another £500k this financial year and he is particular proud because the company remains debt free. He attributes much of this growth to Comms365's collaboration with partners who have helped to generate large sales. "The channel is key to our future growth," he added. "Our key partners are other ISPs, solution providers, SIs, IT support companies and pretty much any company that offers communication solutions.
"We offer the usual ISP services such as ADSL, FTTC and Ethernet via our channel, but what sets us apart is our mobile data solution. This is available as either a reseller or wholesale model and we can offer partners a quick way to add this rapidly growing service to their portfolios. We will also build our channel by encouraging partners to harness the fast expanding M2M/IoT market. Our products are positioned to cater for the exponential increase in data that will be generated by this burgeoning technology."
Not surprisingly, the addition of mobile data solutions opened the door to new opportunities soon after Comms365 was formed. "We were asked to help a large retailer with a mobile data solution and almost immediately afterwards we were approached by a large international carrier that wanted to interconnect with us and sell our mobile data solution. Things snowballed from that point onwards."
The company is especially interested in partners that work in specific vertical markets, particularly construction, energy and healthcare where speed of delivery and remote access are key components of the complete solution. "We see resellers as underpinning our success," commented van Bunnens. "Our solutions are all designed to be adopted by the channel and we will continue to invest in developing rich toolsets to make selling our services easier. We aim to attract partners who wish to work with a company that is in this industry for the right reasons."
Comms365 employs 15 staff and has a number of contract team members. The firm operates lean processes, proprietary internal systems and a management portal called CommsPortal which simplifies its data services and gives customers and partners a granular level of hands-on management. A move to bigger premises this month will increase the firm's capacity to service the channel and also attract local people to work for the company.
The decisive move to new premises and the revving up of channel activity has raised a number of questions about the future direction of Comms365. Most notably, the rise of cloud services is a key ingredient in the mix. van Bunnens commented: "We constantly ask ourselves - are we an infrastructure provider or a one-stop-shop? Do we get involved in application development or reselling ourselves? Do we have the requisite skills to become a fully blown ASP or do we concentrate on what we do best, creating unique data services and managed services? We know that ongoing innovation will help us to grow and diversify, but it must be done in a controlled manner."
One recent example of Comms365's controlled development style was the introduction of more vertical specific products such as its Continuum bonded service. "We went back to the drawing board, worked with customers and designed and built our own solution," explained van Bunnens. "We then productised it, offered a number of sales options such as purchase, rental and emergency deployment. The initiative has been well received, attracting great customers and we picked up awards and nominations."
Because most of the services offered by Comms365 are not mainstream it has become known as a niche provider. For example, mobile data is different to fixed line data, it has a different set of challenges around support and diagnostics. It is not an exact science and this scares many companies from getting involved. "If we can remove that unknown and make it easier for partners to take a service from us and successfully integrate it into their own portfolios, then we have succeeded," added van Bunnens.
A resilient comms strategy should be top priority for all businesses, according to van Bunnens. "Communications underpins every company so why cut corners and implement consumer attitudes to Internet, phones and business critical infrastructure?," he asked. "Most businesses spend more on postage or stationery each month than they do on their communications. This is crazy. SMEs have no comprehension about the financial impact that service outages can cause, especially as they become more and more dependent on cloud applications."
Managed services such as those provided by Comms365 plug the SME technology gap. Mobile data, for example, can be complicated but customers appreciate the consultancy, advice and guidance offered by Comms365, through to configuration, deployments, site surveys and monitoring, in addition to the actual network piece. Another growth area noted by van Bunnens is short-term rentals with rapid deployment. This is what he calls 'comms in a box'.
With growth markets on his mind he urged resellers to get into the M2M space. "We can help partners sell and support M2M," added van Bunnens. "Resellers with M2M opportunities sometimes seek out the cheapest price to make the most margin, only to find that managing the service post-sale is time consuming and the margin soon disappears. We offer the right level of consultancy to deploy a sensible and manageable service."
Comms365 is on the road to becoming one of the channel's top managed mobile data service providers offering 'home grown must-have' solutions that companies would find it 'difficult to do without', believes van Bunnens. "We re going to get there through hard work, agility, determination and listening to our partners and customers," he added. "This way we identify what is really needed and create solutions to real world problems."