Jola Cloud Solutions' Blog

There is evidence that the trend in the mobile consumer market towards SIM-only deals has now really taken hold in the business world.

SMEs are ditching pooled, usually 24-month, contracts in favour of more flexible deals where they can buy their handsets and airtime separately.

Jola have now gone one step further by offering an amazing SIM-only deal on a monthly contract.

Consumers have been moving towards SIM-only mobile deals for a few years and now UK SMEs are jumping on the bandwagon. Why?

Jola partners primarily with IT Support companies.

Something we hear from our Partners fairly regularly is “we don’t like salespeople and neither do our customers”.

Our Partners are technical experts and their customers know this. Consequently whenever there is a decision to be made on connectivity or telecommunications, research* shows that nearly half of them defer to their IT Support supplier. The smaller and less IT literate they are the more likely they are to treat their IT supplier as a trusted advisor.

Resellers risk their business for Government cash.

The voucher scheme

The Government has expanded and simplified its voucher scheme, which is great news for small businesses and telecoms resellers, who can now claim back up to £3000 on the installation of an Internet leased line. The end customer has to be in one of the 22 eligible cities and meet fairly broad criteria. The reseller needs to be registered on the scheme, which runs until April 2015.

There is little value in having great commissions paid on time if you cannot win the contract in the first place. There is also no point in partnering with a supplier for connectivity and telephony if niggles and downtime end up costing you money and jeopardising the relationship with your customer.

A small dealer came to us to quote on his connectivity business. He had a mature base of leased line customers who were putting him under pressure and the incumbent (and previously enthusiastic) supplier inexplicably refused to return calls and emails. One of their customers was paying around £2000 per month for a 2Mb leased line and we could supply a 20Mb replacement for £200 per month. We would be making a 20% margin on this, putting our cost at around £160. The ISP they were partnering with had not passed on the wholesale price reduction and was probably making around £1800 per month on the 2Mb service - which had been installed for a few years. If they could delay the customer’s decision to move away by a month this would be the equivalent of nearly four years margin at the new price. You can probably see why they might refuse to speak to the end customer or the dealer. Of course the dealer would also be making less commission on the replacement service too but at least he would retain a customer that was also buying several other products and services from him.

All that glitters…

I have been in telecoms since 1984 and right now there has never been both so much choice and at the same time so much confusion around connectivity.

1.SIM only. Breaks the tethering of airtime and handset contracts.

A recent Swan Independent Research survey into SME communications suggests that SMEs are falling behind in their Internet connectivity simply because they are not aware of what’s available.

A recent survey by Swan Independent Research suggests that half of SMEs would talk to their local IT supplier when considering communications purchases however very few of them sell and support the products their customers are interested in.