Partner events can be a bit drab. A full day of meetings and presentations followed by a complimentary drink, or two, to sweeten the deal, makes up the usual format. VanillaIP’s May Partner Event did not follow the same template.
There was an ambitious target. A company that specialise in cloud communications, and its partners, discussing cloud concepts on day one and then reaching the clouds by summiting Britain’s highest peak, outside of Scotland, on day two. UC Today caught up with VanillaIP’s Sales and Marketing Director, Iain Sinnott, to find out more.
“It was a cracking event and a brilliant day the next day up the mountain. We wanted to do something to bond with our partners and this perfectly summed up our focus on helping partners achieve peak performance.”
A Real Incentive
As if the opportunity to summit a genuine mountain wasn’t enough for VanillaIP’s partner community to attend, the team had an altogether different type of incentive in the pipeline.
Day one of the event was spent locally in Snowdonia and provided VanillaIP with the perfect opportunity to update its partners on 2019, which has been a pretty busy year so far. A 2019 review covered off the positive reception from channel partners following the launch of its Unity Omni channel contact centre products, Akixi Call Centre Reporting and Stats applications, and its HPBX Education User package, earlier in the year.
One of VanillaIP’s key goals is to ensure that partners are aware of the opportunities represented by adding supplementary services and this was another key message on the day. It appeared to be no co-incidence that a visualisation of this opportunity bore a striking resemblance to a local Snowdonia landmark! In contrast to many generic BroadSoft platform providers VanillaIP is trying to equip its partner base with layer of supplementary products which could allow them to realise massive growth in new technology areas such as mobility, contact centre and other 3rd party revenue services.
“The market is really gathering pace and that represents a challenge for our partners.”
“This is why we talked a lot about the overlay of other products like mobility, like contact centre that can really help a partner increase their revenue and their margin whilst dealing with the competitive nature of the industry.”
There was also a full roadmap update for the partners in attendance, outlining the latest available products and some new innovations pending imminent release included Broadsoft UC One SaaS as full video and desktop share application, Mobile GSM SIM end point extension and Mondago Go-Integrator.
Video Highlights of the VanillaIP Snowdonia Partner Event
The real talking point though was an incentive launched during the event. Always keen to help its partners evolve VanillaIP are providing a year’s worth of its Smart User Licenses for free to any customer, currently taking a recurring revenue service from a partner, who is moving to its HPBX service for the first time. The opportunity this represents for partners in terms of incentivising their own customers to move to HPBX caused quite the stir throughout the event. This combined with the switch off of the WLR and the PSTN gives our partners the tools they need to bring over many of the 80% of clients that have still not made the switch to HPBX.
“It’s not often that we have left partners speechless, but this incentive really does offer them a remarkable opportunity.”
After day two of the event saw the VanillaIP team and its partners reach the summit of Snowdon to enjoy the incredible views in amongst the clouds, you might have thought the jaw dropping was only due to the stunning vistas, but the combination of rapid platform innovation and seemingly too good to be true incentives might have also been a factor. When it comes to reaching ‘peak’ performance, VanillaIP is certainly helping its partners aim high, in all ways possible.
