UC Insights 2018: Joining the Reseller Revolution: Insights from Daisy Group

Daisy Wholesale currently supply more than 1,500 UK resellers with top of the range solutions for communication, helping the channel to take advantage of the opportunities available in a world of digital transformation.

As the UC industry continues to adapt and evolve to the needs of new customers, and the solutions provided by innovative technology, the Daisy Wholesale group believe that they’re offering their partners the chance to embrace the future with confidence and strength.

As part of our Strategic Insights series for 2018, we spoke to the managing director of Daisy Wholesale, Terry O’Brien, and asked for his thoughts on the year that we’re leaving behind, as well as the years that lie ahead.

What Has Daisy Been Doing to Empower Partners?

As managing director of Daisy Wholesale, Terry’s job is focused entirely on making the channel a better place for partners. He told me that the wholesale business for the Daisy Group was built around 5 or 6 years ago, from the foundations of two telecom acquisitions, and an emerging wholesale platform that was being built from the ground-up within Daisy itself.

“We started to combine those three things together to eventually create the solution we have today. Our wholesale business has about 1,500 resellers, and Daisy offers a range of incredible cloud based telecom and IT services. We’ve gone from being a provider of mostly broadband and traditional voice to embracing everything from mobile, to complex ethernet solutions, and even cloud hosted voice services through BT.”

For Terry, the focus now is on taking the potential that Daisy Wholesale has, and ensuring that it’s easy and straightforward for resellers to access that broad range of services in a way that’s commercially advantageous to them.

“Increasingly, you’ll be seeing us move into providing a broader range of converged IT and Telecom solutions as we bring more of Daisy’s products and services into the channel. We’ve always delivered hosted voice, mobile, and so on, and we’ll also be looking at things like engineering services, cloud solutions, and how we can empower the channel in the future so that everyone can provision and access the skills they need for success. We also have short-term contracts, rather than long-term commitments, so that partners are free to manage their risk their own way.”

What Have You Learned or Seen in 2017?

2017 has been an incredibly complicated year for the UC world, with convergence and innovation appearing at all sides. I asked Terry what Daisy Wholesale had learned from this year, and how they’ll be moving forward into 2018.

“What I’ve seen, and continued to see now, is an acceleration of convergence within the channel. There are countless channel partners out there building businesses for the future as Telecoms blend with IT, and IT and telecoms blends with cloud. Businesses are acquiring new skills, both organically and inorganically, and attempting to get their head around what businesses should look like in the years ahead.”

Terry also noted that he had seen a significant amount of growth in the move towards cloud communications and IT services too, which meant that Daisy Wholesale partners had been starting to figure out how they can move away from traditional services, and start providing their customers with more flexible solutions.

“We’ve also seen more engagement in mobility, as partners embrace more mobile solutions for a different workforce.”

What Challenges and Opportunities Do You Predict for 2018?

According to Terry, Daisy Wholesale believes that the UC world will continue to see many of the challenges and opportunities they have faced this year, in the year ahead. Things will continue to accelerate in the age of digital transformation (DX), and partners will continue to build on reseller service that can provide a broader range of IT and Telco services to end users and businesses.

“No doubt we’ll see more IT and Telco services working together too, and that’s where Daisy can help, providing a broad range of capabilities and making new solutions more accessible to our partners. We can hold our channel’s hand through the transformation, and provide the skills, training, and knowledge they need to succeed.”

For Terry, AI and virtual reality (VR) aren’t a huge concern for 2018, “I think it’s very early days for things like that, and I think it will be a long while until resellers and partners will start truly embracing that technology.” However, Daisy Wholesale do feel confident about the growing amount of consolidation and development within the marketplace.

“We’ve seen a lot of consolidation, along with the emergence of new and exciting startups that seem to grow much faster today than they did in the past. I think this is a very interesting time for the channel, one of the moments in time that creates amazing opportunity for the reseller market. “

What Top Tips Do You Have for Channel partners?

For Daisy Wholesale, the existing partner community has begun to embrace new services, augmenting traditional strategies with new solutions like ethernet, mobility and hosted voice. At the same time, many new partners are IT VARS, looking to embrace new solutions for their customers.

“This is one of those moments in time where there’s going to be some huge opportunities in terms of digital transformation and growth for the channel, and people are very excited about all this. We’re all going through a change, and I sensed that change picking up momentum at the start of this year. I think people have begun to embrace that we need to act different, look different, and behave differently when it comes to serving our customers.”

Terry suggested this his job was about making the transformation experience as simple as possible for partners and resellers, to help them take advantage of the current marketplace.

“We’re all facing the challenge of moving customers away from traditional services into modern solutions today, but I think my biggest tip is that channel partners should see this as an opportunity, not a challenge. If you can embrace the change that’s coming, then you could be hugely successful. In fact, if I wasn’t working where I am today, I think I’d want to be a reseller. “

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