Jola Cloud Solutions' Blog

Encouraging customers back

The first thing to think about is how your customers feel at the moment. What are their concerns? Can you help to allay them? Have spending habits changed? Can you help drive spend back to pre-COVID levels?

Re-connecting with existing customers

Reach out to your customers to find out how they feel about coming out of lockdown. By understanding the needs of your customers, you can reflect back and propose solutions to meet their current needs. Pick up the phone, send emails, arrange conference calls with your key clients and put development plans in place.

Supporting new customers

During lock-down many businesses changed the way they operated. As businesses open, companies will be mindful of what brought in revenues for them during lock-down and may be keen to develop these further. Is this something you can help with?

Customising your messaging

Businesses need to build trust with their customer bases, starting by making them feel safe. Communicating regularly with your customer base, being visible locally and being in tune with evolving needs is essential.

Promoting the benefits of technology

For resellers supporting industries badly hit by lock-down, such as retail and leisure can you help your clients recover? Do you have the technology to help them open and drive growth? Demand for digital signage in retail is increasing as retailers work hard to create safe environments to encourage their customers back into stores. Those badly hit may be looking to suppliers for ways to save money on their communications, can you help?

Strength and depth of management

A good way to attract and keep the best individuals at the head of an organisation is to share ownership. Investors like a strong leader supported by expertise in key areas. As the business grows, external investment is a good way for shareholders to de-risk, and ensure the future growth of the company.

Recurring revenues

Subscription models, preferably on long term contracts, are more valuable than once-off project fees. They protect the business in a down-turn and provide a solid base to grow the business, and scale the establishment required to support it.

Cash collection and cash flow

Companies with a high percentage of customers paying via Direct Debit are more valuable. Working capital is more predictable and finance costs, including debt collecting, are minimised. Operate a rolling cash flow forecast and focus on converting as much of the profits into cash. The ability of the business to generate cash is a primary driver when investors are valuing the business.

Product Development

Companies that develop their own unique products and are first to market with new innovations demonstrate value. An efficient and agile product development process demonstrates long term value, especially in extremely competitive markets.

Great sales and marketing

Great sales and marketing strategies and teams are essential to building a strong business model. You must have a process for recruiting, retaining and developing staff as the business grows. Sales and marketing teams that work together by design demonstrate strong management. By building a large, strong, loyal and diverse customer base, you minimise the risk of the business’s reliance on top customers and verticals.

Working from home in our sector has been widely recognised as a success. 100 days in though, how are your employees holding up?

At the start of lock-down, working from home was a novelty for some. They enjoyed their home comforts, without missing a meeting, ticket or phone call. Employers were quick to provide headsets, chairs, screens etc. to make working from the kitchen table or spare room, easier. Companies organised weekly quizzes, checked in regularly with Teams calls and sent little gifts to reward and encourage their staff.

As many of us continue to work from home, and some companies consider making it a more permanent arrangement, do we as employers need to do more, to ensure the health and happiness of our employees?

Companies like Perkbox and Vitality offer employee wellbeing programmes, which include; exclusive free online fitness programmes, free online GP, day and night appointments, same-day prescriptions, perks and discounts, as well as 24/7 emotional support.

Employee Assistance Provider (EAP) Programmes provide articles, newsletters and webinars, on topics such as anxiety, depression, debt management, legal issues, bereavements, relationships and childcare. A 24-hour confidential helpline is provided to all employees to get immediate support and counselling.

Programmes such as these help to recognise and reward staff with online vouchers, but also support physical and emotional wellbeing. They allow you to track the happiness of your workforce, as well as gathering feedback on what could be done to improve motivation and results.

SMEs no longer have to worry about going over their monthly data allowances and getting big monthly bills containing data overage charges, as unlimited data packages are now available. Resellers won’t have customers complaining about overage bills and risk losing them to the competition.

Use Cases

Unlimited data SIMs are being used in 4G routers to provide fast, reliable internet connectivity to homeworkers. They are also used in 4G devices for primary and secondary connectivity.

Wholesale Options

The first thing resellers need to look at when signing up with suppliers for unlimited data packages are the terms and conditions. Are the SIMs fit for purpose? Are they designed to be used permanently in routers? Are they available without speed restrictions? Are they available on short-term contracts? Can they be easily ordered, provisioned, managed and billed? How much margin can be made on these packages?  

Jola

Jola is an award-winning, channel-only supplier of business communications, specialising in unlimited data SIMs. We have over 700 partners including global MSPs, CSPs, ISPs, Systems Integrators, Telecommunications resellers, IT Resellers, and IoT vertical specialist. 96% of partners would recommend us. In a recent partner satisfaction survey, Jola scored a Net Promoter Score of 61, which categorises the company as ‘great’. Our unlimited data SIMs are available on Vodafone and O2 networks. We offer a range of contracts from 30-days to 24 months. Our tariffs support 5G subject to device compatibility and network coverage.

Resellers have been supporting care homes by providing smart devices used by both residents and care workers to raise alarms and track the health of the residents. They have also been installing CCTV cameras to increase security and video telephony solutions to facilitate contact with family members.

The challenge care homes face with 4G data is the lack of visibility and control. They manage an estate of 4G devices and SIM contracts, but cannot monitor and track usage, which results in monthly data overage charges.

Specialists are partnering with Jola to provide solutions which include Jola data-only SIM cards, which can be aggregated and monitored within Mobile Manager. This means that usage can be spread across the estate with heavy-use devices taking the un-used data allowances of lower-use devices.

As many more businesses plan their openings, the channel prepares to support their changing IT and telephony requirements. For many, Microsoft Teams has been a great tool for video calls, group meetings and collaboration during lockdown. Some are now considering adding a calling plan to be able to talk with people outside of Teams.

One stumbling block some employees find is the move away from handsets. They are used to handsets on their desks, they hold their frequently dialled numbers and are plug and play so can be used at home or in the office.

Direct Routing

Direct Routing for Microsoft Teams offers much more than the standard Microsoft Calling Plans. Jola’s Direct Routing offering offers numbers in 167 countries and every area code in the UK. It comes with free UK calls, competitive international call bundles and unlimited in-country local call packages.

We are the first Direct Routing supplier to offer handsets, certified for Microsoft Teams. The new handsets are cost-effective, with multi-touch screens and HD audio. They are also compatible with Bluetooth headsets. 

As businesses return to work, we think Direct Routing for Microsoft Teams users could be a great opportunity for the channel to increase ARPU and win new business.

In the last 12 weeks we have recruited 6 new staff. None of us had ever hired someone without physically meeting them before.

FOR BUSINESSES

1. YOU CAN MAKE YOUR PROCESS MORE RIGOUROUS

Too many trips to your office can put candidates off. Conversely the more we see them, the more likely they are to reveal their true selves. You can use multiple Teams calls and they don’t all have to be an hour long to justify the travel time. Just make sure you prepare well and avoid repeating questions.

2. RECORD THE INTERVIEW

This enables you to take fewer notes, focus on the candidate and include others in the review process. Ever interviewed a candidate from an agency and within 10 minutes you know it’s not a fit? Help your agency filter better by watching videos of their CV interviews.

3. TAKE VERBAL PRE-OFFER REFERENCES

References are especially important if you can’t physically meet someone. Nowadays written references are practically useless. Ask candidates for phone numbers of recent bosses and their permission to call them. If they think highly of the person, they will take your call so as to not harm their chances. Describe the job and ask them why they think 'X' is suited to the role and what training will be required.

4G back-up is not a new idea for ISPs. It makes sense to have a product that guarantees some form of internet connectivity when the primary circuit fails. The challenge has been the cost. If the service is not used, they are often still charged for the data allowance and if it is used, they are charged an exorbitant overage fee.

Jola is the first MVNO to launch a true Layer 2 product, designed specifically to meet the bespoke needs of UK ISPs, with no modifications to their edge network.

Mobile L2TP gives the ISP full control over routing and IP addressing, facilitating the creation of fixed-line failover, pre-ethernet and stand-alone internet access services. Mobile L2TP gives ISPs access to all four UK mobile networks and 450 networks globally.

ISPs can now interconnect at Layer 2 directly into the Jola eSIM MVNO platform in London (or any other AWS connected location in the world) – with the option of failover to a secondary location for the delivery of resilient services. The solution is inexpensive, reliable and straightforward to set-up. With un-steered multi-network eSIMs, ISPs are not tied to any particular network and no longer need to do a site survey to determine the best signal globally.

With the popularity of Teams during lock-down, Direct Routing has really taken off. Many new suppliers have entered the market and resellers are selling it as a great opportunity to expand their telecoms portfolio and win some lucrative new business. The challenge many face however is the provisioning. It’s not straightforward and even with Microsoft qualified engineers and extensive Microsoft PowerShell or S4B knowledge, many have struggled until now.

Jola has a good track record with portals. Our ethos is to make it easy for the channel to sell, provision, bill and manage telecoms services. We understand how much margin the channel needs to make on these products and how competitive the market is. We know that needing specialist engineers in-house will put-off many resellers and our solution is fully automated provisioning on our SIP management portal.

Our unique Direct Routing proposition provides partners with unlimited UK calls, competitive out-of-bundle rates, international call packages and in-country calling packages in 30 countries.

Our Automated Configuration for Direct Routing is based on best-practice and doesn’t require partners to provide Office 365 credentials. It gives all resellers the opportunity to sell, provision and manage Direct Routing within a self-serve portal, without the need for specialist knowledge, skills or software.

Lockdown has been a testing time for many channel businesses, but is there anything we can learn from it?

We can work from anywhere with a good internet connection

We were ready to work from home ‘en masse’ as our phone systems, software and files were in the cloud and we were already using collaborative software, such as Microsoft Teams. Moving to a work-from-home model did not present many challenges, as many of us were already spending part of our week working remotely. Employees were able to answer calls and tickets from their kitchen tables and make offices in box rooms very easily. We were able to order and deliver additional equipment, such as headsets and office chairs to the homes of our employees.

We embraced technology

Even though we had the technology, face-to-face meetings were always preferable, and meetings booked rather than webinars or video calls. This all changed during lock-down. It is now acceptable to video call colleagues at home and arrange video conference calls and webinars with customers. We are now much more accepting of background noise and interruptions than we were pre-lock down, as we have a better understanding of the challenges our employees and customers are facing.

We got creative

With many projects being put on hold and events cancelled, we needed to rethink our sales and marketing strategies. Many of us enhanced our online offering, making it easier for our customers to place orders online. We re-thought our marketing messages and our sales strategies and began building relationships online using LinkedIn, Twitter and IM. As we couldn’t interact face-to-face, we had more time to comment on blogs, like posts, answer LinkedIn messages and get around to those projects we had been putting off. We changed our recruitment policies and hired new people without ever meeting them face-to-face.

We listened

We listened to our staff and the challenges they were facing balancing work with their homelives and created support programmes. We arranged quizzes and online socials. We rolled out access to online workouts and confidential help lines and encouraged regular breaks and flexible working. We provided vouchers to access the latest films for free and discount vouchers for online shopping.

We tried to help

We have access to technology to allow people to communicate and were watching on the news how doctors were struggling to see patients, students were unable to study from home and family members were worrying about relatives in care homes. We contacted our local surgeries, schools and care homes and offered to help. As an industry we were able to quickly provide the technology to solve these problems.

We have more listening and learning to do to allow us to diversify and grow our businesses. The crisis will end, and we will look back on this period and the lessons learnt. Those that adapted quickly and prepared for future may turn out to be the most successful.