In the past, resellers have encountered restrictions with UCaaS offerings, which Centile sees as a crucial roadblock for resellers that leads to limitations. As a result, they aim to turn resellers into service providers, and in doing so, Centile’s UCaaS offering is simple to differentiate, especially amongst a sea of solutions that for the most part appear the same.
I spoke with Justin Hamilton-Martin of Centile who said:
“Control over UCaaS offerings has not historically been in the hands of resellers, causing them all kinds of setbacks”
“Centile sees this as an issue that has an obvious fix – resellers need the tools to become service providers. In doing so, they gain more authority over UCaaS offerings giving them the ability to create more custom service plans.”
Centile Shifts Focus
Hamilton-Martin shared with UC Today how Centile makes this a reality. He said the architecture of Centile’s platform is its primary focus as a vendor. The team at Centile concentrates on this and has spent time and energy on not only what the platform can do, but rather how its customers can use the platform. In other words, a list of features is great, but how much control do resellers have over the UCaaS platform?
“This opens resellers up to a world of opportunity and they can turn on trial features for certain verticals as part of a campaign. Resellers can then give clients a taste of what they can access. Their customers can add the features they want, and not have access to features that aren’t relevant to business goals and objectives.”
This practice lets resellers promote the features necessary for specific markets. If a law office needs GDPR compliant call recording functionalities, to know they are available is good. To take things a step further, it creates an opportunity for extra revenue. Hamilton raised another paramount point about customer engagement. He said if customers are aware of a feature’s existence that if they need to subscribe to a feature they must first reach out to the reseller establishing stronger rapport – “It lets customers know the line of communication is always open.”
Ditching the One-Size-Fits-All Licensing Model
The reality is, today’s customer only wants to pay for what they use, and nothing more. There is, however, an outdated practice (still performed by organizations in the telecoms space) of blanket licensing. Centile steers clear of this model. Hamilton-Martin explained, Centile is a SaaS provider, meaning it bills for features and extensions every month, rather than pre-selling large volumes of licenses for volume discounts. While this doesn’t suit everyone, it does the vast majority.
At the end of the day, vendors should accommodate channel partners to the best of their ability. In doing so, UCaaS offerings are simpler to sell and become more charming to a larger assortment of enterprises. Centile has a talented team of developers and salespersons, a winning blend pulling out all the stops to ensure reseller success.
Any serious reseller looking to accentuate their annual revenue should look at what Centile is doing and contemplate becoming a partner.
