Comms Dealer

Knight Corporate Finance is putting its financial muscle behind one of the fastest growing running events in the north west

The channel M&A specialist has secured lead sponsorship of the English Half Marathon Corporate Challenge and has put out a call to the ICT industry to enter teams in aid of Comms Dealer charity Sparks.

The Knight team of highly trained athletes, featuring Tom Jones (Guinness World Record Holder for the fastest marathon dressed as a musical instrument) and Paul Billingham (runner up in Little Houghton Junior School's cross country race back in the 70s) want as many channel businesses as possible to enter and challenge them in the Corporate Challenge League table.

"We're proud to support Warrington's largest participation event, and hope many other organisations in the channel follow our lead and get involved, " said Knight CF Director Paul Billingham.

"Promoting physical activity and teamwork is more than a 'nice to have', it's a necessary step towards a cohesive, resilient and fit workforce and mass participation sporting events are a terrific way to help businesses meet and create long lasting relationships.

"The Corporate Challenge connects companies with each other and companies with their employees."
?"Sparks has a big profile in sport and is a wonderful charity raising money for research into childhood illnesses which will resonate with business teams who all want their families to be healthy and happy. We hope to get lots of teams running in Sparks vests and supporting the cause."

Teams entering will receive media exposure in advance of the September 18th event, brand coverage on the day and exclusive pre and post-race hospitality.
?Full details of the event can be found at http://ehm.contest-sports.com/corporate-challenge/ or email run@knightcf.com.

If you would like to sponsor the Knight team and donate to Sparks you can do so  here: https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/KnightCorporateChallenge

SoftBank has acquired chip designer ARM Holdings for £23.4bn as the Japanese telecoms giant bolsters its presence in the growing Internet of Things sector.

The deal will see heavily-indebted SoftBank pay £17 in cash for each share in ARM, a 43% premium to its closing price last week, marking the largest ever purchase of a European technology company.

Masayoshi Son, the founder and chairman of SoftBank, indicated earlier this year that he was thinking big and had a $40bn war chest.

Japan's third biggest telecoms company wants to become a 'global powerhouse' and this acquisition is part of its bet on IoT and AI.

Content Guru will renew its support of the European Contact Centre and Customer Service Awards (ECCCSA) for 2016, sponsoring the event's Large Contact Centre of the Year category.

Now run in association with the Call Centre Management Association (CCMA), the annual awards ceremony will take place at the new venue of London's Hilton Park Lane Hotel on Monday 21st November.

British television journalist, newsreader and television presenter, Fiona Bruce, will take to the stage as the evening's host, presenting a total of 18 awards across the evening's three main categories, including the Innovation, Technology & Effectiveness, Customer Service Team and Contact Centre Awards.

Martin Taylor, CMO of Content Guru, commented: "The contact centre industry is at an exciting juncture as the notion of the traditional call centre continues to decline and adoption of the multi-channel customer engagement hub gathers momentum.

"These Awards always provide a window into not only the innovative ways in which contact centres are deploying the latest technologies to enhance the customer experience, but also into the finest examples of the human element that is still at the core of many a customer interaction."

Ingram Micro UK is increasing credit limits and extending terms for more than 1,500 SMB customers.

Tony McMurray, Finance Director, said: "By granting and extending credit terms to a large number of SMB customers we are expressing our commitment to their sustained growth and continued success.

"We hope that this scheme combined with other newly launched initiatives demonstrates our willingness to work with our customers to achieve mutually beneficial results."

Edinburgh-based Commsworld has made great gains in the Scottish legal market and is claiming to provide 20% of the country's top legal entities with network and comms solutions.

Commsworld CEO Ricky Nicol said: "Fast and secure communications are vital for the smooth running of legal practices and the privacy of their clients.

"Our market share in this profession is indicative of the growth we're seeing throughout the whole business.

"The resurgence of personal communication along with a growing appetite for a service that fits each specific business has helped us expand as we diversify our services."

Vodafone UK's remodelled partner programme puts a spotlight on capability and customer experience rather than volume and kicks into action early next year.

"We've been readying ourselves and our partners for the launch of the new programme with convergence capabilities and customer experience at its heart," stated Nick Birtwistle, Partners and Alliances Director, Vodafone UK.

"We've invested time and resources in the tools, training and marketing materials to support partners as we move to a capability model."

The existing Platinum, Gold and Silver designations will be replaced by capability tiers called Approved, Specialist, Advanced and Total Communications.

"The new programme, unlike the old model, is converged and open to all Vodafone Partner Services (VPS) partners, both fixed and mobile," added Birtwistle.

Vodafone UK has also adopted a more regional focus, reflecting a wider move to a regional business support model in its direct enterprise channels.

Jan Collins, Kathryn Platt and Oliver Lofthouse are now heading up Vodafone Partner Services, which continues to be overseen by Birtwistle.

"We know that SMEs want a relationship with a local supplier or partner," said Birtwistle.

"Businesses today need to be ready for anything. They need to be agile, they need to respond quickly to changes in their own industries and they need to be able to meet their customers' demands.

"There is an increasing uptake of UC and converged communications among UK businesses, along with demand for cloud, hosting and IoT services.

"Communications, and particularly total and converged communications, has a big role to play in helping UK businesses to tackle these challenges, which is why capabilities are vital for our partners and a key focus within our own business."

Not all partners will be skilled in UC, prompting Vodafone UK to create a suite of training and certification materials.

For the first time partners will be able to gain Vodafone certification across the Vodafone fixed, mobile, converged and cloud portfolio.

"Because of the scale, our training and certification programme is the result of 12 months work and provides over 150 hours of learning materials," added Birtwistle.

"Our partner programme is also designed to be future proofed. For example, we can build in new capabilities, products and services as they are developed and become available."

A staff BBQ hosted by Nimans raised £3,000 for Macmillan Cancer Support and included a wet sponge throwing contest that saw Sales and Business Development Director Richard Carter get a soaking.

Head of Sales Operations Mat Weall and Investors In People Manager Sue Goldfine were chefs for the day, feeding 150 staff at the firm's Manchester HQ.

John McKindland, Nimans' Head of Solutions Sales, has kicked off a fund raising campaign in aid of OUCH, a charity that helps Chronic Cluster Headache sufferers such as himself.

McKindland ran the Hull 10k on Father's Day and completed a similar event in Leeds. He has also signed up for the Bury and Sheffield 10k events this year.

"I have had a big lifestyle change over the last five months," he said. "I'm nearly two stone lighter, stopped smoking and decided to take up running again at the age of 50.

"OUCH is a charity that supports Chronic Cluster Headache sufferers like myself, a charity that has supported me over the last 13 years so this is my way of giving something back for the help they have given me.

"I just want to thank everyone for their support (moral, financial and humorous!). I finished the Leeds race with a personal best time and have so far raised around £600 thanks to the generous support of work colleagues which has exceeded my expectations."

If you would like to support John please visit: http://www.virginmoneygiving.com/JohnMckindland

Vodafone UK celebrated its 2016 Partner of the Year award winners at its annual partner conference at The Vox in Birmingham.
 
This year's winners are:
Total Communications Partner of the Year - Onecom
Fixed Partner of the Year - italk
Platinum Partner of the Year - Qualitel Voice and Data (part of Elitetele.com plc)
Gold Partner of the Year - Rock Networks
Silver Partner of the Year - Trinity Maxwell
One Net Business Partner of the Year - 4G Mobile and Data Ltd
 
Nick Birtwistle, Partners and Alliances Director at Vodafone UK, said: "We know that many of the UK's SMEs want to work with a local communications partner, which is why our partner channel is such a crucial part of our own business."
 
At the conference Vodafone announced more details about the new Partner Programme, due to go live early next year, with a focus on capability and customer experience.

A new suite of training and certification materials were unveiled to enable partners to make the journey to selling unified communications without having to invest in training themselves.
 
A new marketing toolkit was also launched, giving partners access to a range of marketing materials and tools.

Birtwistle added: "This is biggest level of investment we've seen in our B2B indirect channel, which combined with the launch of the new capability tiering allows us to emphasise our focus on delivering customer service."

Vodafone Partner Services has also adopted a more regional focus and recruited Jan Collins, Kathryn Platt and Oliver Lofthouse to head up Vodafone Partner Services in their own regions, overseen by Birtwistle.

ICT distributor Intelisys Global is ramping up its European and UK channel expansion programme with a London launch event on July 19th.

The Californian giant is aiming to establish an elite network of telecom sales and consulting professionals in Europe to sell telecom, connectivity and cloud services to business customers around the globe, with dedicated support in the UK.

"As telecoms providers and other service providers increasingly develop more mature end-to-end service portfolios, there is significant opportunity for end customers to procure services direct and the aggregation of these multiple provided services via a community of interest has enabled Intelisys to become the market leader in this space," said Stephen Hackett (pictured), Intelisys Global's lead in the UK.

"We view Europe as a sleeping giant in terms of our new channel model and the opportunity for the introduction of this two-tier services distribution model is hugely exciting."