“You can’t be great at everything, which is why you have to partner with those who make you stronger,” Mattias Ohde, CEO, Soluno BC, shared, opening up about the necessity for companies to partner up to create more trustworthy solutions for end-users. Partnerships can profit every aspect of a business including sales execution. And depending on the partner, if they’re a pure reseller channel or a more strategic wholesale partner, he said they’re all as critical when it comes to getting unified communications technology into the hands of contact centers and those who find themselves working from home.
There are two other dimensions to partnerships on the functionality and platform side of things. Ohde maintains, Soluno doesn’t want to take software and resell it, they want to develop something novel and something they believe in. The company’s portfolio is broad, and one of the most comprehensive cloud PBX offerings in the European market, which comprises solutions for Mitel and Microsoft platform users.
Along with a variety of third-party apps, this, he said, is what makes up Soluono’s breadth of solutions. The third aspect of partnerships lies in the operator faction. Ohde said there’s a need for connectivity, but knows that Soluno may not be the most suitable fit in each region. As such, the company has a vast network of mobile operators across Europe.
“We already do this in the Netherlands together with our T-Mobile partnership, as well as in Sweden, but we work with more than 20 different mobile operators across Europe.” Some are large telecom providers, ones that operate on a global scale – some are smaller players.” Voxbone, GTT, and HFO in Germany are a few of the operators Soluno partners with, along with ‘Trust’ in the UK, which tackles telephony on a local scale.
Which kind of partners does Soluno work with? Ohde told me, that depends on market conditions. Many companies in Germany have only started replacing PBXs, “In a market like this, we need more traditional telephony partners.” In the Nordic region, where the market’s more mature, Ohde said, the focus is not only on selling cloud PBX services. “You need to bring innovation to the table, like collaboration integrations, mobile work solutions, or even help improve contact center operations, but more’s needed.”
This is how the cloud market operates today, and knowing where you fit in will remain paramount moving forward, according to Ohde.
“It is almost impossible to buy services from one provider. Competing in this market means offering a solution that can do way more than the average UC solution, you have to stand out”
Soluno has a presence in many of the Nordic countries, including Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Finland. The company also has a presence in Germany, the Netherlands, and the UK, and Ohde said in the future, Soluno will likely expand into the central and more southern parts of Europe. “We have to see the clear potential that the markets will be a success for us though, which is why we depend on vast partner networks in countries we’d like to expand in so we can ensure success.”
