Comms Dealer

If anyone still needs convincing that the old world order in comms is finished, they need look no further than the scale and scope of portal developments.

If any lesson can be drawn from the rate of portal development, it is that old ways of doing things are defunct. Since launching into the UK market in April 2014, plan.com has developed three versions of its portal and according to co-founder Keith Curran (pictured) version four will 'totally change the way partners do business'. "The portal powers everything we do so our investment from both a financial and time standpoint is huge," he said. "Rather than assuming we know what our partners need, we let them tell us. The more easily they can access and manipulate their business information with technology, the more efficient and profitable they become."

Portals have become a must-have and their evolution will bring about a polarisation in the market as portals developed by technologists in collaboration with their partners become poles apart from those that fail to give users a competitive edge, believes Curran. "Portals are about replacing outdated ways of doing business rather than simply reproducing them online," he said. "And the advanced intelligent portals of the future will use a combination of clever technology and algorithms to react with speed, detail and precision, giving partners a valuable advantage. An intelligent portal that can monitor and report the status of every SIM in real-time and automatically calculate the best position for partners and customers would take the whole experience to a new level. These will be the successful portals of the future."

With new products and features constantly coming into the market, there's little time for developers to sit on their hands. Voiceflex's team of techies are busy developing tools to automate as many of the firm's processes as possible. The majority of business it conducts is now done through its portal. "In the rapidly changing communications environment often it's the products that are the easiest to provision and configure that have the largest market penetration," said Sales and Marketing Director Paul Taylor.

Full automation of the provisioning processes, including real-time number and SIP trunk provisioning, have proved popular. "With our fraud protection application this makes for a self-service portal with true value add," noted Taylor. "And the simplicity of the portal reduces the need for extensive administration and training, allowing for a faster time to market for resellers who have 'get up and go'."

The API market will only go one way - up. "During the evaluation of new suppliers we always look for available APIs and integration opportunities. Automation is now a must, and this is reflected in how our customers wish to deal with us," added Taylor.

Jola has developed software to help partners differentiate their propositions. "Using our dealer portal a partner can be with a customer and build an online quote on their laptop or mobile that automatically checks the availability of Internet connectivity, sets up new numbers and arranges porting," explained Managing Director Andrew Dickinson. "The system then emails a dealer-branded proposal to the customer. Jola partners can also get a range of the connectivity options from every UK carrier in three minutes. The first supplier to meet and quote the prospect usually wins the business."

Jola wasted no time in applying its development experience to the mobile space. "Mobile Manager was only fully launched late in 2016 and already manages around 15,000 mobile data SIMs worldwide," added Dickinson. "Mobile Manager fully automates the SIM-only process and gives resellers management control over their mobile data estate. They can monitor individual usage, activate, pause and bar SIMs."

Marston's Telecoms developed its own mobile app last year, a move that enabled partners to manage services more efficiently by functioning as a self-service tool that can be accessed anywhere, at any time. "The app has greatly improved the nature of our reseller engagement," stated Rob Derbyshire, Head of Telecoms. "Through our main portal and mobile portal app resellers have access to everything they need, from ordering and provisioning through to booking engineers and billing, all in one place. This removes the need for calling multiple teams and waiting to speak to the right person. Everything can be done quickly, efficiently and from any location, which has made the lives of our resellers much easier."

As more hosted providers differentiate their services via portals the 'must-have' appeal of these tools will only grow stronger, noted Robin Hayman, Director of Marketing and Product Management, SpliceCom. "We matured our original IP PBX Management Portal to include Manager Assist, a set of wizards and tools for cloud, on-premises or hybrid deployments that include many features requested by our channel's technical specialists," he said. "These include bulk programming, simple wizards for larger solutions and complex deployments, and advanced diagnostic tools.

"Continuing our focus on portals, last month saw the launch of our new Administration Portal, allowing simple browser access to everyday programming features alongside those frequently used, but often slightly more complex tasks, such as Time of Day, Auto Attendant and Queue Messages etc. All aimed at making system administration simple."

A portal is no longer just a provisioning tool, it is an access point for multiple departments into a business, noted TelcoSwitch Sales Director Paul Gibbs. "Our portal is an interface between multiple departments from provisioning, to finance, to sales through to marketing," he said. "Future portals will have to adapt to how businesses report as well as how they sell."•

The Internet Telephony Services Providers' Association (ITSPA) has embarked on a two pronged project this year - to help unravel the tangled issues around number portability and to push the Government into more effectively combating toll fraud. Here, Chair of ITSPA Eli Katz outlines the big lobbying plan.

Last year was another busy time for the industry and also ITSPA on a regulatory front with a number of key issues coming to the fore, including merger activity (and blocked merger activity), the implementation of Ofcom's Digital Communications Review and the publication of the Government's Cyber Security Strategy - not to mention the referendum. This year promises to be yet another pivotal year for the industry, and ITSPA has already planned significant lobbying work on two key areas that will be led by dedicated task forces made up of members willing to devote resource and time to these efforts. This will accompany our other ongoing initiatives and usual events programme.

The first of these two key areas is what we refer to (for the purposes of this lobbying work) as 'business switching'. Industry is sadly already well aware of the myriad of ongoing problems and difficulties throughout the fixed line number portability system and the failure of the numerous industry led attempts to reform the system over recent years.

We have decided to refer to this problem as 'business switching' when engaging with policymakers to highlight the remarkable inefficiency of the fixed line porting system in the UK when compared to both international counterparts and the UK's system for mobile switching. As providers know, while mobile users can switch in an hour it can take fixed line business customers over a year. Often, porting issues result in consumers losing their telephony service or being denied from switching altogether, damaging the competitiveness of the sector. The scale of the difficulties means that providers are forced to devote an inappropriate amount of time and resource to resolve the problems.

In the opinion of ITSPA's Business Switching Task Force, the time for industry-led solutions has passed and the regulator Ofcom must now act to assist in reforming the system. ITSPA had hoped that the ongoing review of Ofcom's General Conditions, the main regulatory regime for communications networks and service providers in the UK, would include significant changes to GC 18, the General Condition which sets out porting requirements. However, this was not the case, with Ofcom instead stating that it is 'not proposing any significant change to the current rules'.

While many across the industry see a central call routing database as the ultimate long-term solution, ITSPA is emphasising to policymakers and the regulator that there are relatively easy to implement regulatory steps that could provide considerable and immediate improvements to the system. These include getting Ofcom to clarify the 'reasonable timescales' under which a port should be completed and then taking action if these were not complied with.

Our second key lobbying focus is cyber crime, specifically telecommunications fraud. ITSPA has long had concerns over the level of telecommunications fraud in the UK. Global estimates on the cost of fraud are $46 billion, which we equate to adding two per cent on average to consumers' bills. Other estimates put the UK cost at £953 million, equivalent to 2.4 per cent of total operator revenue.

However, despite the scale and obvious importance of the crime, telephony fraud did not feature as part of the Government's recently published Cyber Security Strategy. Ensuring that this issue receives greater attention from Government (including in the Cyber Security Strategy) and also from the regulator and law enforcement is a key objective of the lobbying work that ITSPA's Cyber Crime Task Force is carrying out.

In recent months, ITSPA has been involved in constructive dialogue with the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (including meeting the Digital Minister Matt Hancock MP) and Ofcom on both this issue and also that of number portability. We urge all members of ITSPA to get involved in both the Business Switching and Cyber Crime Task Forces. For further information please contact our Secretariat. •
www.itspa.org.uk

In philosophy 'Occam's razor' decrees that the simplest explanation is usually the right one and it's a principle that Paul White has applied to his business life when things get too complicated. The approach has worked remarkably well for him and his NTA hosted services business is now giving resellers a fast and easy route to riches.

White is a straight talking Essex born entrepreneur who lives two minutes away from NTA's headquarters in Harold Wood just a few minutes' drive off junction 29 of the M25. "Why complicate things commuting," he declares as we sit down in the shiny new showroom he has had custom built in a bid to convert more partners to his hosted telephony model. The 'keep it simple' theme continues to resonate as we discuss how his business has grown organically to a multi-million turnover concern just five years since he took a headlong plunge into building a VoIP telephony platform, adopting a 100 per cent channel only paradigm and developing a unique sales model.

"I believe NTA has many differentiators," he stated. "We have many models for our partners that are flexible, however the most profitable one for our resellers is that we sell on a channel/simultaneous call model so you do not have to buy a license per seat. This means partners are not restricted by a buy price per seat and so can be flexible on solution and price when selling to an end customer. Our resellers tell us their margin on our hosted platform is 80 per cent plus."

Support is also fundamental to White's simple channel philosophy. "You call us we answer, we don't just give you a ticket number and then call you back later in the day, tomorrow or never at all. I always say that if Carlsberg did support teams then probably we have the best. We have a great on-boarding process for all new partners. We offer sales and technical training courses that are run at our offices in Essex, but we can also offer these at our partners' premises depending on the number of staff that need training.

"We offer marketing collateral and programming guides for end customers which can all be white labelled in our resellers' logos. Our telephone account managers and tech support team offer fantastic support and our field sales team also offer hand holding at end-user customer meetings."

White is confident NTA will be the 'go to brand' in the hosted environment within a year, once more resellers see the 'White way' forward. "I really do think that when resellers see the difference between buying on a per seat basis and NTA's model it really is a no brainer," he commented. "Our resellers are now much bigger companies with bigger sales teams, and as we move forward I want NTA to become the company people think of when they are talking about VoIP, like the 'Hoover' of vacuum cleaners.

"PBX resellers find our product easy to sell as they do not need to work out how many cards they need, whether the cabinet is big enough or if they need a ring generator or VM card. Also it's easy to deploy, support and maintain with the tools that NTA provide to our partners.

"We are in a world where everything is becoming hosted. IT support and managed services businesses are encroaching on the traditional comms space as they see this product as just another peripheral. Most of our hosted partners have moved their business from other hosted suppliers. I can only think they are doing that because they want better support and bigger margins. It would be great to speak to new partners at the beginning of their hosted journey so they don't need to move it again. The amount of new resellers and dealers we have on-boarded in the last 12 months proves that we have got our model right. And I can also honestly say not a single partner has moved away."

White intends to keep ploughing profits back into NTA's channel development programme and he has a simple message for the economic doom-mongers. "2017 will definitely be another boom year," he said. "The UK is unique and resilient and full of entrepreneurial people. Our industry constantly reinvents itself, and I believe NTA will have its best year ever."•

Ericsson-LG champion Intellia has marched into Edinburgh waving the Korean vendor's flag. Its mission is to firmly establish the brand in Scotland's capital having secured a new operational base in the city, according to Directors Tony Whelan and David Fisher.

Intellia is a small company with big ambitions and by sales volume one of Ericsson-LG's larger dealers in Scotland. "After a long time being based in the Falkirk and Stirling area we have opened a new branch office in Edinburgh," explained Whelan, Business Development Director. "Intellia has many customers in Edinburgh but for a long time, with no incumbent dealer, I've felt the Ericsson-LG brand has been under-represented in Scotland's capital city. We intend to create a much stronger profile for Ericsson-LG in this commercially important part of Scotland; and use this office as a springboard to scale by around 20 per cent."

As well as promoting the range of Ericsson-LG iPECS on-premise and cloud solutions Whelan sees Edinburgh as a key market for the recently launched SO Wi-Fi product which is designed to increase customer flows by using imbedded Facebook likes and Trip Advisor reviews for customers who log on to the Wi-Fi.

Intellia has also shown great ambition in its adjustment towards VoIP and unified communications, improving its skill sets in these areas. "So much so, last year we won the iPECS Innovation Award from Pragma Distribution for a major multi-site business win," added Fisher, Technical Director.

Intellia has a stable group of employees, 600-plus customers and turnover in excess of £500k. Revenues are generated mainly in the SME sector, typically 10-25 users. "We offer a bespoke service with a close contact approach to customers," said Whelan. "We look for opportunities with any business or third sector organisations particularly where related services such as network cabling, lines, broadband or mobiles might be required."

While a big emphasis on cloud and UC are Intellia's biggest opportunities, along with the roll out of fibre, its main challenge is to increase its penetration into the market and be more aware and involved in opportunities that are currently missed. "Another serious issue is the ability to recruit suitable staff, but an Edinburgh location will help overcome this hurdle," added Whelan. "We also need to completely refresh the way we get our name out via website updates and improvements in how we connect with existing customers. There will be increased marketing, re-branding and a shift in emphasis from a local company to Scotland's capital Edinburgh."

Whelan's career began in 1984 as a seller of office equipment, moving into telecoms soon after deregulation. He took a five year break in the early 90s to study for a degree in Business Studies as a mature student, aged 30. With the degree under his belt, Whelan returned to the comms sector and worked as a freelancer contracting with others to do the install work. He was introduced to Fisher (who was then an engineer with 17 years experience at BT before deciding to set out on his own) in the late 90s through a mutual supplier and they began to work together on projects. "After about 18 months it became clear we were a good team so we formally merged our two small businesses into Intellia in December 2001 and as co-owners have never looked back," noted Whelan.

"I'd previously been looking for a dealership to improve our margins and at that time Ericsson-LG, then known as LG, was making a big push in Scotland. We've been an exclusive partner ever since. In 2005 we moved from our Stirling offices to a new home in Grangemouth after acquiring a 5,000 square foot building that we also operate as a business centre with seven tenants."

Opening an Edinburgh office has already boosted Ericsson-LG's profile in the city and Whelan is currently addressing key issues that must be overcome to take his strategy to a new level. "It's really about finding the right staff with a good baseline of skills, even if not directly related to the sector," he said. "We need to improve the way we handle information about customers and manage our growth within the constraints of the time and finance available to us. We are still quite a small company, so this isn't always easy.

"However, we will become a more all round company offering end to end solutions from network services to hardware including IT infrastructure and support. We're aiming to be around 50 per cent larger in terms of staff and turnover and want to use technology and better connected data about what we do to help us improve."•

Pictured above: Tony Whelan (left) and David Fisher

There is no going back on the rise of analytics, it's 21st Century and a widely accepted main feature of the digital revolution. On analytics the market has spoken, and we should remember that resellers will fail to meet customer expectations if they do not take heed.

One of the most significant aspects of customer analytics has been the speed of its ascendency and its emergence as a defining issue for companies such as TeleWare. The central task for TeleWare is to convert customer data into actionable insights and revenues. In meeting this challenge it has been assertive, even linking up with leading academics at Teesside University and enlisting the full-time services of an Artificial Intelligence specialist. Now, TeleWare is increasingly putting actionable analytics at the heart of everything it delivers. "It's all about providing the right information, in the right place and at the right time so that our partners and customers can deliver world class customer experiences," said Lee Mansell (pictured), Product Manager.

In a mobile dominated multi-channel world, establishing a single 360 degree, real-time view of customers and their interactions has never been more important. Therefore the role of analytics is massive. Emotion is the most significant driver of loyalty, so if a customer experiences something that triggers a negative reaction it needs to be identified.

"During calls a customer's emotion can be recorded and later analysed to help understand what triggered each response, enabling counter measures to be put in place," explained Mansell. "But it's not just about being reactive. Analytics can be used to predict what a customer is going to order and potentially deal with any account issues before a client has noticed. This kind of proactive customer service creates a more favourable view of a brand and increases customer loyalty."

Although analytics is rising, it's not about taking an all-new approach to the market. The conversation with customers in terms of promoting an analytics solution is, in many respects, the same as a traditional one. The key is to focus on the customer's desired outcomes and then look creatively at how an analytics-led approach can contribute. "Look beyond the glossy front end dashboards and establish solutions that deliver the customer's must-haves in terms of flexibility, automation, security and ease of implementation," said Mansell. "Look for vendors that can provide a rich service wrap to help you and your customers extract real value from analytics tools tailored to their specific business needs."

The one dimensional nature of traditional customer engagement is being replaced by a rising demand for more personal services via channels of choice, which can be disruptive to brands and requires a smart response. Reputation is influenced by a multitude of sources. Word-of-mouth and word-of-social-web can combine rapidly to create potent forces for good or otherwise. "The contact methods are all measurable, but the challenge is around consistency. For example, research shows that the same question posed to a company via chat, email or phone call will often produce a different response," added Mansell.

"It is vital to challenge conventional wisdom and be prepared to trial extensively, innovate and learn rapidly from early experiences in using these methods. Be prepared to be surprised. The way to monetise a company's data is for the results to be simple and provide recommendations where they should focus resource. The easier it is for a company to use the results to make improvements and increase profit the more valuable this kind of analytics would be to them."

The age of analytics is in its infancy but there is evidence to show that it has already changed the course of the comms industry. Communication, like computing, is going through a paradigm shift with analytics a prime mover for change. "Every forward looking business needs to manage the customer experience through insights into client data, but for resellers wanting to shape the future of customer engagement it's a case of going back to basics," stated Phil Reynolds, joint CEO, Oak Innovation. "What is the customer's business? Where are the touch points? What CRM do they use and how will the workflow include the analytical elements? With an affordable cloud delivery model the ultimate solutions will scale from a one man band to the likes of Amazon. It's an exciting time."

As we move away from call centres into the 21st century contact centre where agents are dealing with a range of multi-channel communications, Oak's analytics and media blending offerings have become relevant to today's customer experience, noted Reynolds. "It's also important to be engaging with AI and bots which service a continuing higher percentage of enquiries and improve the customer experience," he added. "The AI revolution will see more and more intelligent automated services dealing with customer interactions."

It's just as important, says Reynolds, to interface with all forms of media, especially social media where customer complaints tend to be posted and need to be monitored. Other media includes the traditional email, Whatsapp, Webchat, SMS and regular surveys. "It's not difficult to measure different methods of communication but it is difficult to create a unified valuing system," added Reynolds. "Is an email equal to a phone call? Is a webchat equal to a tweet? You can focus on the outcomes of every interaction, you can automate the customer survey, you can get a measure of the overall satisfaction and use this as a driver throughout the business."

Bringing more and more data together opens up the opportunity for ever more complex modelling which delivers more insight, which in turn highlights the key performance indicators that are more measurable and manageable. Not surprisingly, the analytics and reporting market has become hotly contested as comms companies jostle to understand their customers' journeys quickest to maintain an all important competitive advantage. "For example, we can alert a supervisor to calls in a queue that are leads created in Salesforce.com," said Steve Tutt, Marketing Director, VanillaIP. "The supervisor can then prioritise such calls to the top of the queue. The information has to be relative and contextual to have maximum value."

Customer-side analytics and call centre solutions go hand in hand, with more of the value proposition in the reporting rather than call routing. "We have committed considerable R&D in developing custom reports that measure every conceivable call handling parameter," added Tutt. "Relying on the native BroadSoft reports is not an option. In fact, we have hidden them on our platform unless a customer specifically asks for them to be available. We layer intelligence over the BroadSoft call centre solution. An example is our call centre Supervisor which can export a list of CLIs that were abandoned into the queues and assign them to agents for call back."

Analytics as part of the overall customer solution is key, but let's not overlook analytics for the reseller. "In the old PBX days there was a limited opportunity to up-sell customers," stated Tutt. "With cloud, the up-sell and cross-sell opportunity is massive, but you need insights into the user community to be able to execute. Our Uboss reseller reports show P&L, services deployed, how many users/services/handsets were deployed and when. For example, resellers can see how many of their customers are not using a specific service, run an export of all their contact details for an ecast campaign or attach a promo pdf that gets sent with the bill. This is the beauty of cloud and the opportunity for the channel to move beyond fire and forget models."

Customers have many unique identifiers now - CLI, email address, twitter handles and cookies on their machine that are best managed by the customer's CRM platform. "Our integration allows us to dip into the CRM, such as Salesforce.com or MS Dynamics, to profile any calls in a queue as leads or contacts," noted Tutt. "Such mashups of multi-vendor solutions add value to the customer because the UC platform is never going to replicate the CRM, but work with it."

Tracking and monitoring conversations are fundamental to understanding the full customer experience and incorporating call analytics to any Customer Journey Map provides business leaders with the assurance that their decisions are based on a more complete picture of their customers' behaviour. Tollring achieves this by delivering a single mobile-optimised portal as a cloud, hybrid or on-premise solution, with different views for different user types (supervisors, agents, managers, administrators etc). "A user interface is important to customers, along with being intuitive and easy to use," said Tony Martino, Managing Director, Tollring.

He sees most demand for analytics in business reporting for customer facing teams. "Typically, companies keep track of call centre analytics, but in our experience many organisations forget about what happens outside of the call centre," added Martino. "This could be communications within business departments (sales teams, finance teams, support teams etc) or communications that fall outside of call centre statistics, such as those that do not reach the call centre because the queue is full, those that are transferred out of the call centre or calls transferred into the call centre. The complete picture is essential to understanding the entire customer experience."

Statistics show that when calls are left unanswered, 56.7 per cent of callers do not leave a message and don't call back. When it comes to call analytics, the value of a missed call soon becomes apparent. "Understanding abandoned calls, waiting and unreturned missed calls are critical to monetising the value of a lost call," said Martino. "A big challenge is ensuring that the whole sales team understands the importance of selling the value, the marketing team understands the importance of promoting the value and the account management teams understand the importance of highlighting the value."•

The next phase of Invosys' growth strategy has begun with characteristic earnest and its business leaders have big markets to aim at and a model that must be admired.

The rise of Manchester-based Invosys must rank in the pantheon of comms sector success stories. The company was founded in 2006 as In Call Solutions by former Norweb high flyers and best pals Rob Booth and Peter Crooks, their catalyst being a gap in the market for an inbound services model that was cost-effective for SMEs. The partnership between Booth and Crooks works with not an inch of daylight detectable between them, always adapting the business structure and their roles to reflect the changing market, bringing growth through stability. Booth is CEO with a responsibility for strategy while Crooks takes care of the day-to-day running of the business as COO.

Since its inception as a virtual carrier and a challenger to its much bigger rivals Invosys has stolen a march with its simpler and smarter products. "We launched with a web-based portal to set up numbers and manage the calls to them, and we have built on this foundation over the years," explained Crooks. "In the early days the KPI we always used were the calls managed via the platform - one million minutes a month quickly grew to five and ten million. Each call and every second was generating income that allowed us to be profitable. Today, we deal in hundreds of millions and billions."

The company managed 100 million more calls on its platform in 2016 than 2015. Also on the up is staff numbers which have increased by 30 per cent, while turnover's up by almost 40 per cent. "Despite 2016 being our best year yet we forecast that 2017 will beat this success, driven by larger resellers, enterprise clients, and delivering more products into new and existing markets," stated Booth. "We see big increases in turnover being achieved through a combination of new products, new markets and acquisition. Inevitably, our team will grow and every single person will be developed to be the best they can be and given opportunities to push themselves."

In its approach to market and long-term planning Invosys is a model for other ambitious comms entrepreneurs. The company rebranded from In Call Solutions in 2014 to mark its evolution, with key developments being the launch of NumberManager in 2011 (its flagship portal for the UK inbound market) and a shift from TDM to IP technology which unlocked potential to scale via access to enterprise sized clients. Having steered away from its roots, Crooks sees the platform as key to growth. "We are now a technology-led company whereas our origin and focus initially was about being sales-led and the account management," he added. "Invosys is now a much bigger organisation with a technical outlook, and each day has a focus on platform technology, its maintenance and R&D."

Also crucial to Invosys' strategy is acquisitions. "We are pursuing an acquisition that will allow us to introduce more products and services into our channel, such as managed IT services or co-location in our data centre," explained Booth. "Our highest priority recently has been the acquisition of MergedComms and the consequent productisation and integration of a hosted telephony service that has great potential and will be promoted through our wholesale channel."

Hosted telephony and VoIP services will be the big growth market in the coming years, believes Booth. "We will soon be launching our own product to the channel which will stand out in terms of the technology, the features and the available options," he added. "It will be exciting to see how quickly we can grab market share. A variety of IP-based communication solutions and mobility convergence-type products are also on our roadmap.

"NumberManager will be updated with our own SIP and hosted products that will combine with the existing technology. The portal has also been successfully deployed to Australia and New Zealand, so rolling out our technology and products into other countries might also be feasible."

Growth has mainly been organic and this will continue as increasingly large resellers and carriers promote Invosys' products as their own to large enterprise clients, pointed out Crooks. "From day one, ours has been a wholesale-only proposition for resellers and carriers to use and promote, and we have 350 in the UK including some of the largest," he said. "The role of resellers will continue to be key in the channel. They are able to offer the end user best of breed solutions."

Invosys remains ambitious to the core and its lens is permanently focused on harnessing leading edge technology to maintain and develop its platforms and ensure that it remains at the forefront. "Technical staff now make up a third of our team and we only employ the best in the business who can sometimes be difficult to find," commented Booth.

What Invosys exhibits most, perhaps, is a business fit for purpose that will continue to walk the walk supported by a loyal base of partners and a like-minded and enthused team of employees. "We've worked hard to create a family culture where everyone is valued, regardless of their job title," commented Crooks. "This has paid off and our staff genuinely enjoy working here. We are open and honest, trusting, nurturing, empowering, determined, dedicated, hard-working and have plenty of fun. It is a successful model and every single person stands to gain."•

In the pathways of his career, 8x8 UK's Managing Director Kevin Scott-Cowell occupies a space somewhere between fate and self-determination. You decide. But his disposition to lead from the front in new technology areas and drive emerging markets is without question.

Scott-Cowell believes that the course of his life has been influenced, in the main, by fate. But self-determination, decisiveness, taking well-considered risks and immersing himself in dynamic environments that catalyse change all feature prominently in his career story. So was Scott-Cowell's destiny really on the cards, or did he himself create the conditions in which he has always thrived?

Rewinding the clock, his first job was not in telecoms, but automating processes for a glass manufacturing company where he also gained a scholarship. He then moved to Plessey to build digital PBXs and, in doing so, take on the mantle of a seasoned industry forecaster. "I knew at that point that this technology was going to be revolutionary, so I wanted to be part of something that would last," he explained. "Since then I've always been in the technology industry, primarily all things related to communications."

Scott-Cowell also played a key role in running and managing one of the biggest manufacturing sites for GEC Marconi Radar and Defence Systems. Here, he assimilated the importance of leadership, teamwork and the value of sourcing and retaining people with talent. With this experience under his belt Scott-Cowell put gutsy adventurism before caution and took his biggest risk, leaving GEC Marconi (where he worked with 3,500 people across a 35 acre site) to join a relatively small start-up with just 90 people - an environment where he could stand up and be counted. "I wanted to see the impact of what I was doing and it's much easier to witness this in a smaller company, which is incredibly rewarding," he added. "You feel more invested in what you do and that's important."

Having magnified the positive effects of his work on the wider business Scott-Cowell set about scaling up the impact of his efforts and ultimately helped to change the dynamics of a whole market. The influence of 8x8 on the UK comms space was first felt in 2004 when the company began its commercial life as Voicenet. Attracted by its pioneering pedigree, Scott-Cowell joined Voicenet in 2010, moving from TS Technology Services where he was Managing Director for five years.

"Voicenet was one of two 'first to market' service providers and launched a hosted service on its own platform," said Scott-Cowell. "We have operated as an independent pure play cloud service provider ever since. It's exciting to be at the forefront of cloud communications."

Voicenet invested in the BroadSoft platform in 2005 and claimed a market first with the launch of a feature rich hosted IP telephony solution for SMEs, dealers and white label service providers. Not surprisingly the company caught the eye of US-based cloud giant 8x8 which acquired Voicenet three years ago, a move that has significantly strengthened its presence and capabilities in the hosted and UCaaS space.

"Since our acquisition we have added the DXI purchase, bringing strong product management and development competencies," noted Scott-Cowell. "As cloud-based communications becomes the standard among UK businesses we're able to expand our reach further. We're now seeing many more mid-market businesses consider cloud as the norm. This is where we're focusing our growth."

8x8 is already in expansion mode and has opened new offices in Manchester, Romania and New York. The UK operation has exhibited strong 30 per cent growth during 2016 which is expected to continue. "We've got ambitious growth targets and we're asking our partners to join us on our exciting journey," added Scott-Cowell. "This won't be a short sprint. We've set our sights on long-term growth and we can't continue our rate of growth without the support of partners. Our success is entwined with the success of the channel so resellers will be key to our growth strategy in 2017 and beyond. This means continuing to invest in our partner programme, including training accreditations, marketing funds and PR support, as well as expanding our partner reach."

8x8 UK also has offices in Aylesbury and in October opened a new flagship office in the Relay Building in London, consolidating its two previous offices in the capital. "We may be a large international company but we try to breed a culture of openness and transparency," stated Scott-Cowell. "Apart from the meeting rooms our new London offices are completely open plan, as is the kitchen and breakout areas. We encourage everyone to come together for lunch or for informal meetings. If you're championing collaboration to your clients, you need to lead by example."

Collaboration is not about the simple replacement of phone systems, its purpose is to help companies move to a seamless communications system that enables employees to interact using whatever device they choose, pointed out Scott-Cowell. "What we call Enterprise Communications as a Service (ECaaS) brings all real-time communications and contact centre services together in one integrated platform that's user centric, 100 per cent cloud and mobile first, delivering continuous communications for distributed organisations and remote workers," he added.

8x8 has shown the way forward with innovation becoming a standard part of its strategic plan. "One of our biggest strengths is that we own and develop all of our technology," commented Scott-Cowell. "We are constantly innovating to build on our 125-plus patents, and as a result have been named a Gartner Magic Quadrant UCaaS Leader for five consecutive years. For partners and customers, this means they are always using innovative technology. It also means we can react quickly to developments in the market."

One trend that has moved to the forefront of Scott-Cowell's mind is the use of chatbots and AI as businesses attempt to scale their customer service channels. "While automation is important we don't see this as a threat to human agents," he added. "Companies will continue to invest in AI as a way to reduce easy-to-fix issues that would only drain the time of experienced agents. But there's no code at the moment that could allow a chatbot to deal with sensitive customer enquiries or emotional support.

"However, we're seeing wider adoption of call analytics platforms across businesses as a way to make better decisions based on Big Data. These platforms are now easier to deploy across any department. The data can be used to improve employee performance, sales campaigns, customer experience management and offers easily accessible insight into staffing requirements."

Demand for 8x8's technology will also be driven by a new National Productivity Investment Fund introduced by the Chancellor in his Autumn Statement. The initiative includes a £1 billion investment in the UK's digital infrastructure and according to Scott-Cowell this 'open door to the world of cloud comms' is going to drive an already accelerating market. "This will provide welcome relief for many remote workers and catalyse the adoption of cloud systems that offer access to sophisticated communications tools on the go," he said.

Resellers cannot escape the implications of the market trends discussed in this article. They must keep up with the times to be relevant and competitive. "Resellers need to constantly educate themselves to make sure that they understand the issues facing their customers and the products they can deliver," advised Scott-Cowell. "So we have created the 8x8 Academy to upskill our partners. For wholesale, dealers and affinity partners 8x8 has a laser focus on channel enablement."

We have seen that 8x8 UK is a modern business with deep roots. It has retained the flexibility of a start-up and aligns tightly with the dynamics of an evolving comms market, while unlocking revenue opportunities for channel partners via a combination of services and support founded on experience. The company, and its ethos, encapsulates much of Scott-Cowell's personal qualities, therefore its destiny was perhaps decided the day the company was founded. "I'm a great believer in fate, and everything in my career has led me to where I am now, a role that I'm fortunate to have," said Scott-Cowell. •

Resellers with great ideas on how to boost their Microsoft software business but lack the cash needed to turn their brainwaves into strategic action have received a welcome opportunity from Westcoast.

The distributor is on the hunt for clever ideas from its partners and has launched The Big Pitch, an initiative that gives resellers the chance to claim up to £10,000 of funding from Westcoast to be put towards marketing activities.

Ben Feurtado, Westcoast's Microsoft Business Manager, said: "We're looking for unique ideas that are going to turn heads and have an impact. Most of us know the pain of having a really promising idea, only for it to become a non-starter due to budget constraints. But with up to ten grand up for grabs, the Big Pitch can overcome that frustration.

"It's an investment that gives anybody who sells Microsoft a stellar opportunity to propel their business. We know we can count on our partners to come up with some cracking marketing initiatives."

To enter, resellers need to send their ideas and complete an application form by March 10th 2017. Westcoast will respond to all entries submitted within seven days, letting partners know whether they've been successful or otherwise.

Resellers contributing ideas must be prepared to match the amount of funding that is provided by Westcoast. All marketing activity needs to be completed by the 12th of May 2017.

Wetherby-based Vital Technology Group has brought in four new members of staff to bolster its business development and account management teams.

Ben Dean, Kieran Philipson and Brice Morrow join Vital's academy programme, while Adam Oddy brings 12 years experience in designing, delivering and supporting unified, hosted and mobile communications solutions for businesses.

Lee Evans, Vital's founder, said: "We've bolstered our business development team as part of our plans to accelerate growth and double our turnover in the next financial year."

Pictured (l-r): Brice Morrow, Ben Dean and Adam Oddy

Colt Technology Services is the latest telecoms and data services firm to add a network-optimised Microsoft Azure cloud to its portfolio in Europe.

Azure is being offered through Microsoft's ExpressRoute private networking offering via Colt's On Demand portfolio Dedicated Cloud Access (DCA).

DCA is designed to offer intelligent, secure and reliable private connectivity to the public cloud, allowing customers to bypass the internet.

DCA On Demand supports connectivity from the Colt IQ Network into the Azure cloud platform in real time, avoiding traditional telco service delivery processes, which 'could take days or weeks to enable new services', said Colt.

The Colt offering follows NGD's Cloud Gateway for Microsoft Azure ExpressRoute, which went live at NGD's Cardiff Capital Region data centre late last year. And IT distributor Arrow and data centre operator Equinix are also now jointly offering Azure services via ExpressRoute across Europe.

Clive Longbottom, an analyst at Quocirca, said: "As organisations are beginning to discover, the future is hybrid cloud. With different workloads requiring different platform capabilities, more organisations will be looking to specialised providers in which to house or run certain workloads. But being at the mercy of the public internet is not a good idea. The use of specialised and dedicated interconnects, such as Azure ExpressRoute, provide the means to create the required optimised overall platform."

With the new Colt service, customers can benefit from per-hour pricing plans, as well as more traditional fixed term contracts, it says.

The On Demand service is initially available at Microsoft's ExpressRoute locations in London, Dublin and Amsterdam, with future plans to enable existing ExpressRoute interconnects in Tokyo and Frankfurt, said Colt.

A brand new presence in Paris for Colt On Demand services is also planned in 2017. Rajiv Datta, Colt chief technology officer, said: "Public cloud services have long been associated with scalable, flexible capabilities, and our On Demand offering really brings the network into the cloud era.

"This addition to our On Demand portfolio underlines Colt's position of challenging the status quo of traditional providers with innovation and flexibility."

Mikkel Riis, senior product marketing manager at Microsoft Azure, said: "The cloud is driving transformation through new business models, easy global expansion and reach, and accelerated time to market. Collaborating with Colt to bring ExpressRoute to customers is a core part of these attributes and values."

Colt said it will announce the roll-out of DCA On Demand for other leading cloud service providers, to 'allow enterprise customers to enjoy a consistent experience across multiple cloud platforms'.

More than 5,000 enterprise buildings and 200 data centres globally are currently eligible for On Demand connectivity to Microsoft Azure, said Colt.