Jola Cloud Solutions' Blog

The Internet of Things is an innovative automation and data analytics operating system that captures networking, sensing nodes, big data, and artificial intelligence, to deliver complete orders for service. IoT systems have applications across industries through their unique flexibility and ability to be suitable in any environment. They enhance data collection, automation, operations, and much more through smart devices and powerful enabling technology. The IoT key features are the use of Artificial Intelligence, Connectivity, Active Engagement, and Small Devices.  The core benefits offered are improved security, flexibility and compliance. The potential is not just allowing multiple devices simultaneously but leveraging the enormous volumes of actionable data that can automate different business processes.

As a channel, many of us are missing the personal contact we are used to with colleagues, suppliers and customers. Some of us are really missing our exhibitions and awards evenings, as they are a chance to network and celebrate together.

The reality is that due to current local restrictions, many of our events are now virtual.  

From a marketing prospective there are pros and cons of both virtual and physical events for organisers, sponsors and attendees.

Physical Events

Attendees commit their time and expenses to attend. They have a reason to attend, something to research, people to meet and plan their time accordingly. Exhibitors know this and make themselves as visible as possible to meet as many prospects as they can, to recruit new partners and win new business. Organisers put the work in to bring this all together, providing educational seminars and sponsorships to deliver on requirements for both parties.

The great advantage of physical events is the face-to-face time spent with new resellers. Resellers can provide a quick overview about their requirements, get a feel for products and pricing and even see a quick demo of a portal. Suppliers can quickly establish needs and the size of the opportunity and decisions to proceed or dis-engage are made there and then. These face-to-face meetings can also happen over coffee, lunch or even in the bar, where direct questions are posed and answered, saving time on both sides.

The exhibition environment provides resellers with an education on current opportunities and the ability to compare potential suppliers in one afternoon in quick succession. Exhibitors get a chance to showcase their USPs and to talk more around the current opportunities and successful use cases they have been involved with.

Virtual Events

These events require less commitment and can easily be missed if something else comes up, especially if they know recordings may be available post-event. As attendees have not travelled and left the office for a day, they can easily get distracted with other business.

That said, virtual events are a great way of learning about market opportunities and comparing suppliers without leaving your laptop. You don’t need to worry about travel time or lunches, you are able to arrange quick meetings virtually, without leaving space in-between to find your next meeting.

For suppliers, the obvious difference with a digital event is costs. Physical events tend to cost more, but don't underestimate the cost of hosting a digital event.

You can speak to your audience without leaving home and don’t require an exhibition stand or merchandise. You also have the opportunity to gather further information from your attendees, such as engagement and can track poll question results and questions posed.

From my prospective, both types of events have their place but there is no comparison to being in a room full of your industry peers. The relationship building you can do face-to-face is valuable and much more difficult to achieve in the same timescales virtually. I look forward to getting back to live events but in the meanwhile am grateful for the opportunities to speak and meet with resellers virtually.

With any event, the more you put in, the more you get out.

Having clear company values helps to ensure that employees are working towards the same goals. Corporate values shape company culture and impact business strategy. They help to create a purpose, improve team cohesion, and create a sense of commitment in the workplace.

Given the quick spread of COVID-19 and restrictions on movement, our daily lives have required more time at home and more usage of data for work and leisure. Some of our customers working in sectors unable to trade during lockdown have been adversely affected.

Resellers in our sector have experienced a slow-down in orders for core products, such as broadband and Ethernet, whilst others have seen an increase in 4G solutions for homeworkers, keyworkers and students.

An easy product for resellers to add to their portfolio to meet current demand for reliable internet connectivity, is 4G. Typical packages include a robust 4G router, with an external antenna and an unlimited data SIM. Most people don’t appreciate how fast 4G is. 4G is on average three times faster than 3G and by adding an antenna, speeds can be increased ten-fold.

Some companies are also offering site surveys to recommend the best network signal strength and an installation service.

A good way to market these packages is to add them to your website and allow your customers to order them directly. You may wish to drive traffic to this web page by investing in online adverts and Google AdWords. In addition, you may wish to communicate the package to existing customers via email and telephone campaigns.

The best way to track the success of the campaign is to monitor traffic to your web page, investment in marketing, emails sent, calls made, responses received, and orders placed.

Communication

We need to be in constant contact with our customers right now to assess their changing requirements. By understanding the challenges, you can tailor solutions to meet their needs, and in the process increase ARPU.  You may have customers who are struggling with slow broadband at home and 4G may be the solution. 4G routers are available with antennas and unlimited data SIMs, offering reliable, fast, internet connectivity which is plug-and-play. You may need to support customers struggling financially or looking to add an online or delivery service to their businesses. By understanding and meeting the needs of existing customers, you are in a good position to retain them and increase loyalty moving forwards.

Innovation

We need new revenue streams at the moment to help us off-set other areas of the business, which may be suffering due to COVID. Thinking about new products and solutions which could be packaged for existing customers is a good place to start. Do you currently sell 4G? It is a product that is easy to add to your portfolio and in great demand from homeworkers and keyworkers in the current climate. It can be ordered and provisioned within a white-label portal, easy to bill and easy to monitor.

Do you currently supply the NHS? Doctors surgeries and pop-up hospitals are looking for telecommunications and IT support. Nurses and carers travelling to see patients at home need reliable SIM cards in personal alarms and smart devices to complete their reports. Paramedics need reliable 4G connectivity in tablets to update their patient records on the move. Police need reliable SIM cards in push-to-talk radio and body-worn cameras. In the public sector reliable internet connectivity is required for smart lighting and smart parking solutions. Are you on the Government Framework to supply telecommunications and IT? Now is a great time to innovate and cross-sell and upsell into your existing base. Do you sell IoT solutions? IoT is now commonplace in all industries, measuring and tracking devices need SIM cards, you may be able to supply.

Differentiation

What we need right now is differentiated products with good margin potential that are easy to sell, provision, support and bill. We need to invest in opportunities we have a good chance of winning and promote our successes with a view to winning new customers in the same sector.

A recent article written by Sheryl Sandberg in the Wall Street Journal, suggested that there is a crisis looming in corporate America with more than one in four women considering downshifting their careers or leaving the workforce. This got me to thinking, is the same thing happening here in the UK and if it does happen, what effect will that have?

LeanIn.Org and McKinsey & Co have run a study over the last six years and published their findings in the 2020 Women in the Workplace Report. It showed slow but measurable progress for women in all levels of management and that these slow gains could be wiped out within a single year, as up to two million women are thinking of leaving their jobs.

In the channel we are starting to see a rise in female leadership, but during COVID many women have felt the strain of extra responsibility and worry. This has amplified a need to work longer and harder than their male counterparts at work, as they feel they are held to a higher standard and judged more harshly if they fail. Many do not feel comfortable sharing their concerns, or even communicating their childcare issues, to avoid being perceived negatively at work.

Today women are under immense pressure at home and at work, taking the lion’s share of the childcaring, relative caring and domestic tasks. The American statistics show that among senior level leaders with partners, 63% of women have one who works full time, compared with 35% of men. Senior level women are therefore 1.5 times as likely as men to consider downshifting or leaving. The top reason they give is burnout. Ethnic minorities and those with additional conditions are finding it even tougher, as they often feel excluded and don’t always feel they can properly express themselves.

If I think of my own friendship group of senior managers in large corporates around the UK. I am the only one left working full-time with a family. Some went part-time, others gave up work completely and cited burn-out as the reason. In our own organisations in the channel, working from home has blurred the lines for many, and we are seeing illness levels increasing.

If we don’t address these issues, we will continue to see absence levels increase and employee satisfaction decrease, which could lead to us losing some of our most valuable employees, who would be hard to replace.

If we come up with a solution now, we can increase productivity, employee satisfaction and retain the progress we are making to achieve diverse and inclusive teams.

We need to look at working from home and how we can make this work for our employees. Encourage regular breaks and regular hours, as well as a good balance of two-way communication and trust to work alone. What I think we need is good managers. Socially I think we need to look at the balance of responsibilities in the home and support our partners for healthier work life balances.

Current guidelines advise us to work from home where possible. In our industry this is something we can do easily because we have the technology and already use it. During the last lock-down many of us found our businesses not just survived but thrived with teams working from home. Call answer times remained high, tickets were answered quickly and a surge in orders was processed efficiently. We sent home care packages and thank you gifts to our employees, we arranged online quizzes and benefitted from more time at home. As time went on however some employees found it more difficult to switch off. When the laptop and phone are in the sitting room with you, the temptation to continue working after hours is high. Some really missed the friendships and banter from the office and others struggled managing parental responsibilities with a full-time job.

As restrictions have lifted, anxiety levels are still high with parents worried about kids mixing at schools and colleges and the situation at universities around the country. Uncertainty has crept in with people not sure whether they should be ‘eating out to help out’ or staying in to be on the safe side. Some of us are worrying about relatives in care homes or shielding.

More worrying still is the affect the pandemic is having on our nation’s mental health. The Office for National Statistics said, “Generally, higher rates of suicide among middle aged men in recent years might be because this group is more likely to be affected by economic adversity, alcoholism, and isolation. It could also be that this group is less inclined to seek help.”

What can we do to help team members suffering in silence? Firstly, we need to know what to look out for. Common signs are:

• Long-lasting sadness or irritability.
• Extremely high and low moods.
• Excessive fear, worry, or anxiety.
• Social withdrawal.
• Dramatic changes in eating or sleeping habits.

If you are worried about any of your team there are resources available to help.

https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/stress-anxiety-depression/mental-health-helplines/

https://www.mind.org.uk

https://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/your-mental-health/getting-help

NB-IoT is a low power wide area network (LPWAN) technology. Narrowband Internet of Things is one of the new breeds of Low Power Wide Area Network (LP-WAN) standards.

It has been developed for devices which have a long battery life. It provides long range communication, with the ability to connect a wide range of assets.

It is specifically designed for connecting devices with low bandwidth requirements, using low power, while providing wider and deeper network coverage. Devices can last ten years in the field without a battery charge and connect as far as 10km.

NB-IoT is an industrial-grade LPWA solution which runs on a licenced spectrum, which guarantees quality of service and supports two-way communications. It is compatible with existing cellular network infrastructure and offers the same level of security as LTE.

Who uses this technology?

NB-IoT is being used in street lighting, smart bins, smart parking and traffic monitoring, as well as parking sensors. Their devices don’t need much power and have a long battery life. The SIMs required for these smart solutions are low-cost, long-life SIM cards, which can be activated and controlled within a central portal.

This technology is also being used in the consumer space with smart metering. Gas and electric companies are installing hundreds of thousands of smart meters, which require a low power SIM on a long-term contract. Usage is minimal, costs are a few pence per SIM, however the contract length is typically 5 years plus.

Warehouses are adopting smart technologies and there are opportunities for resellers to supply NB-IoT SIMs in warehouse monitoring, within safety devices such as cameras in lifts used by lone workers washing windows at height and in cranes.

In agriculture, NB-IoT SIMs are being used in monitoring devices for animals, crops and soil. They need a SIM card with the same lifespan as their device.

In laboratories, NB-IoT SIMs are being used in smart laboratories for monitoring and tracking.

LinkedIn was designed to help us manage our professional identities online.  It allows us to build and engage our professional network. With over 675 million members, LinkedIn was designed to help us access knowledge, insights and opportunities.

My experience with LinkedIn both professionally and personally has been positive. A quick scroll through the news feed keeps me up to date with events taking place, awards being won, new products being launched, and new business closed. I also get insights from the comms channel, marketing community and entrepreneurs working in technology across the globe.

Jola uses LinkedIn to connect with partners and prospects, keeping our target audience up to date with current opportunities and support available to win them. We identify current problems and propose unique solutions to solve them. Our messaging is unique to us, reflecting our own abilities and strengths. We focus on building up our connections with decision makers within specific targets. As our connections learn more about Jola and the solutions we offer, further influencers connect and engage with us, leading to private messages with individual account managers and entry into our sales process. Reaching the person with the problem with our unique solution is our goal. By carefully researching our audience and crafting messages to attract their attention.

Used correctly LinkedIn is a fantastic database and a great lead generator. The problem comes from users not applying marketing fundamentals to the platform. Are you thinking about who you want to connect with or reactively accepting requests? Are you focussed on getting the content out there but not considering who to? Once you have your connection list streamlined, you can then focus on crafting messages to educate and attract your prospects.

Do you send the same request email to everyone? Your email request is really important. Why should that individual connect with you? How will being connected to you benefit them? This message should be unique and compelling. Do you then have an automated email ready to send to anyone that accepts you? Do you find this approach works? It may be better to send fewer, more bespoke emails. Resist the temptation to assume what people want and go straight to a pitch. Timing is everything. Doing your research and being sure of the problem and the people involved in solving it is always helpful. Having a contact to recommend you and sponsor you in is also incredibly helpful.

In my view LinkedIn is a blessing. When used correctly it can help you build your brand and your pipeline. Like all marketing tools having clear objectives, a well thought-through strategy, a defined target audience, scheduled activity and set targets and measures will result in a better experience and results.

When deciding to grow your business, you may look to recruit a sales team and hope the investment will be rewarded. When the new sales team starts, there are often challenges to overcome.

If the company is not well-known, the sales team may have an uphill struggle generating new leads. Without professional product materials, great pricing and credentials, they may struggle to win opportunities. They may also find themselves being pulled into other areas of the business, resulting in less time to look for and close new business.

How can marketing help?

By working closely with sales teams, marketing can draft a plan outlining the target audience and strategy to attract and close the easiest to win, most profitable prospects. The team can craft a communications strategy to increase brand awareness and to promote unique solutions. By creating a well-optimised website, marketing can generate regular leads and on-line sales. They can connect with key prospects, focusing on unique solutions to current problems.  

Marketing can create and manage events to allow sales to meet with prospects face-to-face or arrange online demonstrations, webinars or video calls. The team can keep an eye on the market and feed actions into the sales team to make contact with key prospects at appropriate times. They can also put together case studies and awards entries to increase credibility and the value of the brand.