Jola Cloud Solutions' Blog

I first encountered the concept of corporate stories when I went to school, and then worked, in the USA. Here are two examples.

Nordstrom – these guys love to encourage tales of heroic customer service and this one is my favourite. A man goes to one of their stores and complains his relatively new tyres have worn too quickly. He has lost his receipt but regardless the store agrees to refund him the cost of the tyres. Weeks later he finds the receipt and returns to the store. “I’m so sorry” he says, “I’ve just realised I didn’t originally buy the tyres from Nordstrom”. “I know” says the store assistant, “we don’t sell tyres”.

Dominoes– a store in San Francisco ran a promotion. They would refund your money if for any reason you were dissatisfied with the pizza they delivered. A customer ordered a pizza every few days, ate it, and then claimed a refund. This continued for several weeks until the local Dominoes invited him to come in and prepare his own pizza, exactly the way he wanted it. This he did, ate it, and then asked for his money back. They refunded him, no questions asked (and then quietly withdrew the promotion a week later).

I told the Nordstrom story to my Customer Service Manager at Griffin and challenged him to implement a sustainable process (arguments rage as to whether the Nordstrom example is good or bad in the long run) that would create a positive story . He actually did two things;

There are around 200,000 charities in the UK, employing nearly a million people. This sector has been a conundrum for the IT channel because, whilst there are opportunities for professional service fees, ongoing revenue and margin are depressed by heavily discounted licenses and low commission rates.

For example, Microsoft’s E1 license is free up to 2000 users and E3 is only £4 a month. To add Phone System to either of these is only £2.40 but at £9.10 pcm (and no reseller commission), resellers and their customers have been put off by Microsoft’s Calling Plan (needed to make and receive calls outside the Teams environment).

Now resellers of Jola’s Direct Routing call plan for Teams can offer their non-profit customers the full suite of Office products, including Exchange, Teams, Phone System, and Unlimited UK calls at a competitive price.

Not only will the customer save on the rental of a traditional/hosted phone system, they will also no longer need telephone lines or ISDN.

Retailers want fast, reliable, cost-effective internet connectivity in stores for EPOS till systems, kiosks, advertising screens, WiFi etc. They often use 4G as a back-up to a fixed line primary circuit, to ensure business continuity.

MSPs want to win retail bids for European technology roll outs. 4G is often a small element of the bid, but can cause Project Managers headaches, when dealing with multiple in-country suppliers, manual ordering and no visibility of data usage. They want full control over every element of the roll out.

The opportunity

4G devices that roam in the EU, such as 4G WiFi routers in yachts, need to connect to the strongest 4G signal available. According to recent European Boating Industry statistics, there are over six million recreational craft in EU waters at any one time.

Devices that always need connectivity, such as monitoring devices inside containers, need SIMs which provide users with good connectivity, wherever they roam. There are over 20 million shipping containers worldwide.

PPG

Pay-Per-GB SIMs are un-steered, so have no preferred network, and connect to the strongest 4G signal available. These SIMs connect to multiple mobile networks in many EU countries. Resellers only pay the standard per GB price for additional roaming data, above the monthly allowance.

PPG SIMs offer resellers and their customers a much more flexible and predictable cost when roaming in the EU. Even if the primary and secondary network fail, a multi-network SIM will continue to operate seamlessly.

It’s challenging to set a price for roaming SIMs. Resellers need to know which countries the SIMs will roam to and how much monthly data they will need. Some countries are more expensive than others to roam in, for example UAE and Andorra. Sales people can’t always be sure how much data will be used in each country and how often SIMs will roam in more expensive countries. They run the risk of choosing a package that includes countries which SIMs will never roam in, pushing up the price.

To solve this problem Jola has launched an M2M Roaming Tariff Tool. It was designed for Jola partners to make it quicker and easier to find the right SIM tariff. Tariff Tool provides resellers with a range of options on a variety of data allowances across hundreds of countries and networks.

There are two types of partners that sign up with Jola for mobile broadband SIMs. The first already has an opportunity and needs a supplier to help fulfil the 4G element, the second is enthusiastic about growing a new recurring revenue stream.

Experienced Partners

Partners with existing opportunities often have strong relationships with their clients. Although they may not already offer mobile broadband, they are trusted advisors and capable of sourcing the elements they need to build and roll out solutions. These partners are looking for a solution to a data problem. They need a partner to quickly understand the problem, pose a cost-effective solution and help them to win their bid. This often involves pre-sales and product development, to create a tailored solution to displace an incumbent.

New Partners

New partners selling mobile for the first time want to understand the products, and pricing, but more importantly the opportunity. Partners with a large connectivity base, often start by offering 4G back-up solutions and temporary Ethernet solutions. Many can already see how the product would meet the needs of their audience and package it accordingly.

In retail and construction specialists are offering 4G internet connectivity, hosted telephony, IP-CCTV and IP-PTT radios on short-term contracts for events and site offices.

Successful partners produce case studies and reference sites to help to build a pipeline of similar opportunities.