INTERVIEW Nuvola Partners Day
“We think AI will become part of the routing engine, and how you route calls to the appropriate person. We also
think AI will tie directly into digital channels to drive that integration into things like WhatsApp and Amazon.”
Brett Theisen, SVP – Global Channel Sales, Nice Incontact
Partner day – Nuvola
Comms Business recently attended Nuvola’s partner day at the Belfry to talk to some of their vendors
regarding the changing landscape of communications. Here we caught up with RingCentral and Nice inContact
JASON P USLAN, SENIOR SALES MANAGER MID-MARKET, EMEA
COMMS BUSINESS MAGAZINE (CBM): RINGCENTRAL HAS EXPERIENCED 69 PER CENT
GLOBAL CHANNEL GROWTH OVER THE LAST YEAR, WHAT DO YOU PUT THIS DOWN TO?
JASON P USLAN (JU): Channel harmony, we work directly with our channel team and
provide 100 per cent credit on both sides. The Channel really has the opportunity to bring
our direct side, and really our subject matter experts, into the deals to help them sell. That’s
from the solution, proposition and fi nancial point of view. We are all tied together and when
we go into customers we are all going there with the same face.
CBM: HOW HAVE YOU KEPT THAT TRUST WITH PARTNERS?
JU: We have developed a lot of trust with our Channel from how we support them. Typically,
a lot of our partners have sold on-premise where they are paid in a different structure.
We have a different model so instead of putting things on our customers and partners
paperwork we are now saying bring that all to RingCentral and we will pay you kindly for
that business.
The way we have been able to earn that trust is there is simply nothing to risk. As a
Channel Partner you still have 100 per cent credit for the deals so we can really go in full
force to the customer base. We also look for opportunities to bring our partners into direct
deals where they may not have had a foothold because it strategically makes sense. It
really does go both ways and we are proud of that.
CBM: WHAT IS THE STRATEGY AROUND MICROSOFT TEAMS?
JU: It’s Microsoft, they are the name in the room. Often customers are already utilising
Microsoft in some form so that route to the market is easier. It’s a really good product for
messaging and sometimes for video. We can capitalise because we are everything and
global, we have over 78 countries and can provide a full global solution with a telephony
back bone. The hardest thing to get right in the business is the telephone, to push the
reliability and QoS out to all of your end users globally is easier said than done.
Could Microsoft get that right one day? Sure, but I still think they are a few years away
from it. If someone is looking at Teams specifi cally for whatever reason then we look to
integrate. You can take the best of Teams and the best of RingCentral and marry them
together. Either way we can take them on head to head or integrate with them, whatever is
best for our customers.
BRETT THEISEN, SVP – GLOBAL CHANNEL SALES,
NICE INCONTACT
CBM: HOW ARE YOU USING AI WITHIN YOUR
OFFERING?
BRETT THEISEN (BT): We have taken Nice’s AI, they
have a product called Neva, that actually does
auto-attendant for companies. We are also part of
a company called Mattersight that does predictive
behavior routing. We think AI will become part of
the routing engine, and how you route calls to the
appropriate person. We also think AI will tie directly
into digital channels to drive that integration into
things like WhatsApp and Amazon.
I lean on the side that AI will increase the
productivity of agents but if you take a look at the
latest fi gures the need for agents is going up. It’s
going up because of the need to deal with more
channels, the AI is going to help with that but there
is still going to be a need for agents.
CBM: WHAT IS YOUR UK STRATEGY?
BT: In Europe we are focused on three markets,
the UK, Germany and France with the main market
being the UK. We have a two-part strategy, fi rstly
to grow through Channel partners, roughly 70 per
cent of our heritage is through Channel Partners.
We are going to continue to increase the number of
Channel partners we have and then enable them
to sell us.
The second thing is to trade with the brand. Nice
has a good brand presence in the UK and inContact
doesn’t, although we are growing. You should
grow about 30 per cent in the cloud space, we are
looking to grow close to 100 per cent over the next
year across EMEA.
28 | Comms Business Magazine | October 2019 www.commsbusiness.co.uk
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