INTERVIEW Bob Mercer - Panasonic Business Europe
“We have seen large organisations that are 100%, or near to it, in furlough.”
Bob Mercer, Group Manager - Communications Business Unit - Panasonic Business Europe
The cloud beckons
In this interview Bob Mercer, Group Manager - Communications Business Unit at Panasonic Business Europe,
spoke to Comms Business about the future of the PBX product portfolio
CBM: What are you seeing
from your Channel during this
time?
Bob Mercer (BM): We are
100% distribution based but
we are seeing that only about
8% of the Channel is working
in the way we would expect
and those that are working
are predominantly resellers
that deal with the NHS. We
have seen large organisations
that are 100%, or near to it, in
furlough. Some partners might
have maintenance engineers in
but then no sales sta.
CBM: How is the product
portfolio developing right
now? What is selling?
BM: On the comms side we are
selling a lot of software licenses
as you would imagine. e
area that is doing really well is
the Toughbook division, they
make ruggedized notebooks
and such. ey have a tablet
which was designed for freight
companies for customers to
sign, but it contains a thermal
imaging camera. at has
suddenly become the toy to
have. e factory in Newport is
working overtime trying to get
those out there.
We launched the cloud
version of our PBX in
November last year. Initially
that product was designed to
sit on a VM server so it acts as
a cloud PBX. At the moment
it is a cloud version of an onpremise
PBX. We go to a more
multi-instance product in July
which gives us more scope to
move into the broader markets.
Our focus is on what the
market needs right now.
e interesting thing to
come out of this period is
around resilience. We are
getting feedback that people
wouldn’t mind something on-
premise just to give them a bit
of back up in the event of any
issues. ere is no reversal of
the move to cloud but we are
seeing this opportunity around
resilience.
CBM: How is Panasonic
changing during this time?
BM: Although we are a very
legacy driven company we
have a great ability to give
people new handsets which t
old systems. We can retrot
and don’t have to change
everything when we install kit.
I think we have to change,
we have moved heavily into the
cloud PBX now. Everything
we do is third-party and we
haven’t been great at software
solutions on top of the PBX
historically. e other big
players have acquired those
third-party companies and
made them an integral part of
the product they sell. We need
to be doing that going forwards
and we have very long-term
plans.
We have a ve-year roadmap
on where the products are
going. In July we will align
with Amazon Web Services for
hosting and with various others
also. What I see as the biggest
change in our PBX is we have
always done it as an on-premise
extension based product. e
more recent product is instance
based or user based. As a
user you can pick any one of
ve devices to use, a mobile,
deskphone, softphone etc, and
that is your extension.
We are looking long term
at how we supplement things
also. We are strong in DECT
for example. We have done a
lot in department stores and
distribution warehouses across
Europe. We see that product
developing further because
wireless is quite dicult for
some of these installations.
CBM: What about Brexit?
What are your thoughts
around that?
BM: Our European HQ is in
Germany so we are driven
from there. Towards the end
of last year we were involved
in extensive conversations
about the supply into the
UK market and Ireland. We
have been very clear with our
distribution partners in the
UK that we don’t want them
to hold unnecessary stock. We
can supply in time and we have
a bonded warehouse in the
UK where we can ship directly
into. We are ready for it, but
the concern is that because
of the current situation they
may try and push this into a
no deal scenario in December.
We can manage that, it is more
likely to have an impact on our
consumer business I think.
28 | Comms Business Magazine | July 2020 www.commsbusiness.co.uk
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