INTERVIEW
Bundles are Not Always Best
Paul Gibbs, Sales Director at MyPhones talks to Comms Business about some of the key issues facing resellers
Comms Business Magazine
(CBM): Is ISDN end of life still
a major driver for the march
towards hosted telephony?
Paul Gibbs (PG): e ISDN end
of life program is a driver for
VoIP and has kept momentum
in the marketplace but the
Covid-19 pandemic is making
us put our foot down and
accelerate.
Business has painfully found
out what remaining on ISDN
looks like now – we have seen
customers being charged £125 a
line for each ISDN line diverted.
But the future is now really
bright for many resellers who are
weighing up how much of their
turnover is weighted towards
recurring revenues. Not so long
ago LCR used to prop up many
resellers who believed that it
would last forever. ey didn’t
react to the arrival of the cloud,
say 3-5 years ago and nd that
PBX sales is a scary place to be
right now. Who will buy them?
e rst three weeks of
Covid-19 was crazy and whilst
that initial headlong rush for
VoIP solutions has slowed down
somewhat, if you listen carefully,
you can still hear the sound of
PBX systems being unscrewed
from o ce walls. e channel
can take the positives out of
this, the sales opportunities are
great and overall I believe it will
accelerate mergers, acquisitions
and consolidation – expect to see
some re sales.
CBM: Is Direct Routing a huge
opportunity or are Microsoft
just waiting to cut out the
Channel?
PG: Direct routing for enabling
calls on Microsoft Teams is an
opportunity, but a limited one.
Resellers should buy from a
supplier that understands voice
and the voice market. Direct
routing is expensive and o ers
users a basic service but no real
PBX functionality.
MyPhones is fully integrated
with Teams; this means users get
all the telephony functionality of
MyPhones plus the collaborative
functionality of Teams. We
use Teams as a UC client with
voice going through MyPhones
and gives you the best of both
worlds. Direct routing was an
interim voice solution while
the cloud telephony guys who
have integrated their products
with Teams nd it beats the
functionality of Direct Routing
hands down.
CBM: What do partners really
want out of an IP proposition?
Sticky product, margin rich,
solid network uptime, or all of
the above? Can one service
really cover all your bases?
PG: Partners want solid network
up time, this has never been so
important, and we are proud to
say that we have never had an
outage.
e market is now mature
enough for users to have been on
the carousel with various VoIP
providers and had some bad
experiences, they should now be
yours for life if you do it right.
Cloud telephony is an inherently
sticky product so getting the
customer experience right is key
- your chosen product should
allow you to tick all of the boxes.
If it doesn’t we are seeing a lot
of people taking this time to reevaluate
their supply chain.
Overall, resellers want to be
able to set themselves apart – to be
able to put a proposal on the desk
that is di erent from the next man
walking through the door.
CBM: Have the larger providers
taken the value out of the
market with the ability to offer
super bundled propositions?
PG: Covid-19 has caused users
to re-evaluate their suppliers;
they want to see something
di erent. Some suppliers have
created bundles that are very
easy to consume but if everyone
is buying the same then
clearly there is a need for some
exibility as the bundles are only
right for the right end users.
Users need exibility –
should users be paying full fees
for phones that are rarely used
but have to be there, say for
example in schools?
We are launching a reseller
con guration tool shortly to
help resellers establish the best
con guration mix – the best
price for resellers to give to their
users. is will be located on
our portal and provide a blended
buy price for each end user.
One example where savings can
be made is on having the right
seat mix for the end user whilst
bene ting from aggregated
SIP trunks, where our research
shows that one SIP channel on
a hosted telephony solution can
typically s Paul Gibbs Sales Director at MyPhones ervice 28 users.
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