Jola Cloud Solutions' Blog

Video is playing a bigger part in digital marketing strategies, so how can it be used effectively without breaking the bank?

Video doesn’t have to be expensive

There is software available you can rent, to create your own content from templates and there are companies who will help you to create short branded videos from their own content libraries, with voice over for as little as £100.

Equally marketers are filming and editing content on their iPhones, capturing key messages and creating step by step guides, which are being uploaded to YouTube channels and shared via social media.

What does video add to the mix?

Video is a great way to put a face to the company and reflect your brand values. If your brand is built on trust, expertise and personal service, video clips demonstrating problem solving can be highly effective.

Videos are great ways of attracting attention and drawing crowds especially at trade events. Facebook Live clips promoting product launches and offers can generate new leads.

Most articles that talk about customer service, concentrate on how well a company reacts when things go wrong. Of course this is important but has become a ‘given’ and tells only part of the story. Companies that focus on the optimal end-to-end customer experience, make it easy for customers to do business with them. Done properly this builds loyalty and, most importantly for rapid growth, means that variable costs do not need to increase at the same rate as customer acquisition and revenue. Recruiting people and upgrading infrastructure are expensive and difficult. These days the most successful rapid-growth organisations use the cloud whenever possible and avoid building their own infrastructure. They identify and invest in the points where human interaction is key and for all other aspects of their customers’ journey, they automate. This is especially important when customers need to interact with you very regularly, for example when you operate through a network of dealers and resellers.

Identify your most common customer types and put yourself in their shoes. If you are trying to develop a channel, consider all their decision points and think about how you can ‘in-fill’ with knowledge and resource. If an IT company wants to get into hosted telephony and mobile they will need sales support, contracts, training, collateral, billing, technical support and products that are easy to sell and manage. You need a formal process for collecting feedback and using it to improve your proposition. Consider setting up a User Group and involve them in the product development process. At the very least, if you solicit feedback from your customers, make sure you act upon it beyond a standard response email. Show how you have considered suggestions and if you have discarded them, explain why.

What do you measure as a business? What measures are important to you?

Most businesses will track revenue, profit, margin and cash in the bank and some go further and measure Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), linked to overall business objectives. These companies tend to measure company-wide, departmental and individual KPIs such as ticket response times, call answer times as well as order lead times. Each KPI paints a picture and together they provide a dashboard to quickly identify areas of success and often more importantly areas to be improved.

For example, in marketing, there is a lot to measure, monthly unique web visitors, Twitter followers, retweets, LinkedIn connections, likes and shares etc. which give us an indication of who has seen our content and how they responded. However, without more detailed analysis of how the engagement relates to leads, conversions, ARPU and ROI, we can’t really draw conclusions.

The same can be said for response rates. Tickets and calls may be answered quickly, but without linking this information to cost, customers, cases and suppliers we don’t see the full picture and may not be able to identify key underlying issues holding back the business. Conversely, companies that try and measure everything end up with a very busy dashboard making it hard for departments to understand their priorities.

Demand

According to a recent report by Zion Research, hosted voice services are set to grow rapidly over the next few years, reaching £112 billion globally by 2021. Demand from the SME market is growing and they are turning to trusted IT and telephony suppliers for help.

Technology

The cost of dedicated, private circuits for connecting businesses securely to the Internet has reduced dramatically. SMEs no longer have to rely on broadband with best-efforts fix times, fast fibre broadband is widely available and secure, reliable circuits with dedicated bandwidth are available for less than £200 a month in some areas.

Hosted telephony solutions are feature-rich with auto attendant, busy lamp fields, Office UC, Skype for Business plug-ins, Go Integrator, shared call appearance hunt groups, hot-desking and music on hold as standard at the fraction of the cost of managing legacy systems.

Cost savings

Budgets are tight for many businesses so when phone systems come out of contract the ability to pay per seat per month for a hosted solution that includes calls and does not require hardware costs upfront or ongoing maintenance costs is very attractive, especially when supported by their existing supplier.

According to a recent report by Megabuyte.com, BT, Talk Talk and Virgin Media are being outperformed by much smaller channel suppliers who are reporting healthy growth, with profits and share prices on the up.

Some of the larger providers were affected by accounting errrors and overseas pressures and the channel saw high levels of growth from hosted voice and mobile. Of course channel suppliers still buy from carrier wholesale divisions, but continue to win business from their direct sales teams by collaborating with their partners.

What are they doing differently?

Growing with partners

Channel-focussed suppliers are becoming smarter in helping their partners find and close business, growing average revenue per customer and building new margin streams. Resellers do not see them as a threat and so are relaxed about letting them help directly with customers and with lead generation campaigns.

Multi-carrier portals

Channel suppliers have built relationships with all the major networks and suppliers giving partners more choice for their customers. Partners can quote and order internet connectivity with hosted voice seats, handsets and extras as well as mobile SIMs within a single platform. Hosted voice and mobile services have their own management portals, so resellers can provision and make changes giving them the control they need to support their clients. SMEs are not restricted to just one carrier and benefit from the personalised service they are getting from their trusted supplier - supported by their channel supplier.

Competitive offerings

Channel suppliers have crafted competitive bundles, packaging market-leading hardware and software, designed to suit every pocket with clearly defined USPs. They have added service wraps such as training, white label pre-sales support, white label technical support, billing and collateral to enhance partner offerings.

Demand for mobile solutions is escalating and more and more partners are asking about JolaMobile. We put together a blog answering your top 5 questions.

What types of JolaMobile SIM cards are there?

In terms of SIM-size, we offer all the usual SIMs including nano, micro and standard. We offer a range of voice and data SIMs or data-only SIMs as well as multi-network roaming SIMs that pick up the best network available and are designed to be used outside the UK.

Can I have static IPs?

They are coming soon. We are currently trialling static IP SIMs on Vodafone with other networks to follow.

What are managed SIM cards, APIs and CDRs?

We refer to our data SIMs as managed as they come with Mobile Manager, where you can activate, deactivate, SIM swap and check usage, via APIs we have directly into Vodafone and O2. There is a small data delay to be aware of, however the portal allows you to set alerts and manage usage to help avoid bill shock.

API stands for Application Programming Interface and is a set of commands, functions, protocols and objects that programmers can use to create software or interact with an external system. It is a short cut so developers don’t have to start writing code from scratch integrating external systems.

CDRs are Call Detail Records, also known as Call Data Records, which are used to rate and bill calls.

'How can I compete?' is a question we get asked regularly by new hosted voice partners. They understand the value of the market, they have experienced a rise in demand for the product and know the alternative solutions they are up against. We recommend the following;

1 Focus on your USPs

Why do your customers choose to buy from you?

By identifying why existing customers buy from you and how they first became a prospect, you can start to list types of organisations you already have an advantage with. Have you developed an expertise in any particular type of company or sector that you can leverage? This might be a piece of software, an accreditation or just knowledge of how their business runs and how they buy. Also you might be surprised at how willing some sectors are to recommend you to other companies in the same field. 

We partner with companies who are known locally as experts in their field. Customers choose likeminded companies they trust with their IT, who are on hand to resolve issues quickly, should anything go wrong. Companies are also recommended by local trade associations or networking groups they are members of.

We help partners to identify their USPs and focus on uncovering opportunities within their sphere of influence, tailoring solutions to exactly meet requirements. We built our solutions to suit any pocket, with all the features you would expect included in the licence and a few more besides. Optional extras such as hardware, to amplify ring tones in loud environments, PCI & FCA compliant call recording and CRM integration software can be added as required.

2 Support the product

Use the research you have found on competing solutions and your own USPs to sculpt your proposition and promote this on your website. Make sure your staff are fully briefed about the product and have materials to hand when enquiries come in. Support your sales people so they have the knowledge and tools available to demonstrate products and can put together professional competitive proposals. Imagine your materials being reviewed at board level against competing offerings, do they stand out for all the right reasons?

3 Stay close to your customers

Your customers already have a relationship with you. Regularly communicate with your customers so that when they are ready to upgrade their telecommunications you are best-placed to help them make the transition. You need to be competitive on price but your customers already value you beyond supplying a basic commodity. Compelling propositions often include a better solution that meets all current and future requirements and saves them money.

1 Increasing demand

IT companies are trusted suppliers and are seeing a rise in demand for hosted telephony and mobile data from their customers. Cloud-based services fit well with their skill sets and 4G is starting to replace satellite and broadband, especially in areas of poor fixed-network coverage. These new products offer recurring revenues and increased ARPU.

2 Simple propositions with management portals

Hosted voice is contracted usually on a per seat per month basis although bundles with handsets are also available on longer contracts. A large range of features are included with premium licences and options such as call recording, CRM integration and call reporting are easy to add as required. Mobile data SIMs are available on 30 day contracts and come in a range of sizes with bolt-ons as required. White label management portals are available for both.

Adding new products and services to your portfolio can be challenging. What is the current demand? What products should I add? How much will I sell? What price should I sell at? At what margin? Who should I partner with? How do I manage the billing and technical support?

Dealer Model

Many companies start on a dealer model with their chosen supplier to get a feel for demand, packages and pricing. They work with suppliers on marketing campaigns, often taking suppliers with them to customer meetings and using the quoting and ordering tools available. Billing and technical support are managed by the supplier with dealers receiving regular commission/margin share.

Reseller Model

Moving from a dealer to a reseller model provides better control and improved margins, however resellers need to manage their own contracts, materials, billing and support. For those that don’t already have the necessary resource in-house it can be costly and risky to hire and train new staff to support a product, which may never make it to core product status. Using a generic 3^rd party support service is an option but there are set-up costs and you pay for calls by the minute. If your new platform is unreliable or generates early-life calls, the first month charges could wipe out 12 months margin.

Existing suppliers

The most qualified and experienced technical support teams use the products themselves and already support them for end-users of channel partners nationwide. They already operate a UK-based call centre 24/7 and may well offer a white label service.

Voice and data companies can improve ARPU by supplying new products to loyal customers. Research shows that SMEs prefer to buy from existing suppliers, they trust. Until there is sufficient demand to justify investment in support, billing and marketing, the supplier will often partner with a specialist on an introduction and commission basis. Moving from a dealer to a reseller model provides better control and improved margins, however there are billing challenges.

Billing

Billing can be especially problematic for IT companies that want to start reselling fixed, mobile and hosted telephony products. Alongside monthly service charges they will need to process monthly CDRs (Call Data Records), rating each call type and producing itemised bills and variable invoices. It can be difficult and risky to try and adapt existing in-house billing systems and purchasing and managing specialist billing software is not always feasible.

There are some good third-party billing products available, however the set-up fees, monthly standing charge and billing percentages mean the reseller often needs to take several orders before the margin covers the monthly cost of billing.