Last week channel partners, suppliers and the new owners of thevoicefactory took their seats at the Principality Stadium, Cardiff. The chatter is all around who the surprise guest speaker will be. Will it be a rugby player with a motivational speech or someone from the height of technology with something to wow everybody?
Nope, it’s Nev Wilshire from the BBC’s, The Call Centre! The call centre manager turned motivational speaker is well known for his antics on BBC Three and his success has opened new doors into keynote speaking. Nev’s presentation focused on keeping staff motivated in the call centre with a theme of “Happy People Sell”.
Whilst portrayed as a bit of a jester in the workplace on television, Nev explained the method behind his madness. For example, when he was filmed riding into work on a horse, it was in fact a charity day and he had come as John Wayne. However, sensible, business focussed Nev didn’t last the entirety of the presentation and proceedings finished with a classic rendition of Mr Brightside by The Killers in C-sharp – a personal favourite of The Call Centre.
New Owners
The day kicked off with Paul Harrison, MD of thevoicefactory introducing the event and then swiftly afterwards he introduced the new owners – Evolve IP CEO, Guy Fardone and colleagues had travelled to Wales from Philadelphia especially to meet the partners that have made tvf the success it is today.
Unified Comms Market
Rob Scott from UC Today presented an overview of the Unified Comms and Contact Centre markets with key takeaways around the importance of collaboration and GDPR for channel partners and service providers.
The adoption and demand of services such as Slack, Microsoft Teams and G Suite should not go ignored by traditional hosted voice providers.
Neither should the imminent introduction of GDPR. Businesses are still unclear on what they could and should be doing to adhere to the new “Right to be forgotten” regulations and there is a clear gap in the market for a vendor or reseller to make a statement and be at the forefront of GDPR leadership.
Microsoft Continue To Dominate
Unsurprisingly, Microsoft was a hot topic throughout. Even Cisco name-dropped Microsoft in a positive light as the power of Skype for Business and Teams continues to dominate the Unified Comms market. The collaboration saga well and truly continues.
Andy Williams of Cisco provided an update on the Cisco portfolio post BroadSoft acquisition and Spark/Webex rebrand. (WebEx Teams is the new name for Cisco Spark)
thevoicefactory Partner Ecosystem
Aside from collaboration, exhibitors included Akixi, Mondago, Ascom, Dubber, Polycom and Nuvias who continue to bolster thevoicefactory’s BroadSoft offering. Their network of reliable partners has built the solid BroadSoft ecosystem that attracted Evolve IP. In mid-April, Evolve IP announced that it had acquired thevoicefactory.
The attraction to thevoicefactory is clear. Based in Cardiff with offices in Fordingbridge and Orlando, thevoicefactory has 28 employees and services 65,000 hosted voice seats through its strong partner programme. With 50% growth in FY 17/18, including a 2,700 seat Hotel and Leisure deployment, it was only a matter of time before a buyer came knocking.
Evolve IP is one the world’s fastest growing cloud companies providing enterprises with analyst-acclaimed cloud communications and cloud computing solutions.
Guy Fardone, CEO and Co-Founder of Evolve IP of the cash injection and confidence to “leave the guys to it” in a welcome message at the start of the day.
Through this acquisition, thevoicefactory partners and their clients will gain access to Evolve IP’s award-winning intellectual property and service delivery capabilities including: Web-based call management, an advanced omnichannel contact centre, single-sign-on authentication and identity management, and a worldwide team of custom application developers.
The future certainly looks bright for thevoicefactory partners and their clients with extra resource and technology at their disposal. That coupled with the Cisco acquisition of BroadSoft could leave to a real powerhouse in the Unified Comms market.
The Evolve IP Group are one to watch as they continue on their international expansion.
