Recently, I had the fantastic opportunity to attend the Cloud Comms Summit in the USA for 2019. The event is always an incredible place to learn about the current trends in the marketplace and explore the opportunities facing today’s vendors, service providers, and resellers.
To discuss the paths ahead for service providers and resellers in the current cloud environment, I caught up with Iain Sinnott, the Vice President of Sales at UBOSS. The UBOSS brand, part of DRD Communications is a cloud management ecosystem that works alongside BroadSoft platforms to assist service providers in exploiting as much power as they can get from BroadWorks while adding additional value and functionality into the mix too.
As service providers and resellers strive to differentiate themselves in a competitive marketplace, solutions like UBOSS allow today’s competitors to offer a unique end-to-end service for their customers, covering everything from customer portals to billing. Here’s what Iain had to say about what he had learned from the Cloud Comms Summit this year.
What’s a Key Trend for You at this Year’s Summit?
A massive trend at the Cloud Comms Summit both this year, and in the recent years that I’ve attended, has been the growing need to differentiate in a time where most communication platforms offer similar things. I asked Iain if he had also noticed a growing need for service providers to provide a full portfolio of products, even if it meant working with a multi-vendor strategy.
“Ultimately, you can either go with one brand and hope that they win the communications race, or you can begin to pull the best in class options from a range of environment and deliver the best package you can for the market that you’re selling to. That’s something we’ve seen for a while here at UBOSS”
With the UBOSS offering, today’s service providers can build their own approach to communications, picking the differentiation opportunities that suit them. Another trend that Sinnott said he had noticed this year was the growing demand to put customer service at the head of all decisions.
“Today, the end-customer experience is vital. Automation and the simplification of adding new products and tools for a customer are crucial at this point. This means that we’re moving into an environment that’s a lot closer to the kind of cloud we’ve always wanted. Service providers aren’t just offering a pack of features anymore; they’re focusing on really finding the solutions that address the problems that their customers have.”
Differentiation Challenges
As the communication landscape continues to evolve at a rapid pace, and differentiation becomes challenging to achieve, not every service provider is coming out on top. We’ve already seen some wobbles from companies reselling Avaya solutions, for instance. I asked Iain what his advice would be for the channel partners that are struggling in the current environment.
“You’re looking at relationships here that have been successful for a very long time. These channel partners have a relationship with a vendor that they’ve had success with before, and a relationship with their maintenance team to think about. It’s difficult to let go of those connections.”
Sinnott told me that at this year’s Cloud Comms Summit, he was seeing increasing evidence that today’s traditional resellers and channel partners need to move forward into the next stage of their evolution. Traditional PBX comms company valuations will start to fall in the next 2 years ago, and it’s time for partners to either come up with an exit plan or embrace UCaaS. For companies in the Avaya channel, the time is now to make a move; customers won’t stick around if Avaya falls.
“I’d be eyeing up a plan B at this point, for sure. The energy in the marketplace for a cloud-based future is strong. Now is the best time for companies to start making strategic moves. Although moving to the cloud is a huge and complicated change, it’s something that many customers are beginning to expect.”
Iain is also the Sales and Marketing Director for VanillaIP, and he noted that many service providers like VanillaIP have been very successful in helping companies move into the cloud through BroadWorks, The company is keen to help resellers migrate their end-users into the cloud through solutions like PBXIT.
The Future of the Communications Industry
The transition into the future of the communication industry for resellers isn’t going to be simple. As Iain told me, you don’t just stop selling on-prem one day and move into cloud the next. However, resellers do need to be willing to take the leap as quickly as possible. “If it was me, I would go now, because everyone is going to be coming for your base. It’s also important for resellers to make a move when their customers still believe in what they have to offer.”
Sinnott noted that it’s easy for customers to lose faith in the brands that aren’t offering the latest tools and features. Resellers and service providers are going to need to make sure that they have a wide selection of innovative offerings to bring to their end-user, including things like omni-channel communications.
“You need to think about your customer’s end-users too. If your customer’s customers leave them, then they’re going to leave you”
