Jola Cloud Solutions' Blog

At Jola our most successful telephony partners install JolaPhone as their in-house telephony. These partners use the system regularly and are comfortable demonstrating solutions on-site and creating compelling proposals. The team are all familiar with the key benefits of the solution and have no issue sharing their thoughts or even recommending the system to others, whatever their role.

They have a regular stream of opportunities they bid for, with an excellent close rate. Customers get a great deal of comfort from knowing the supplier they trust also uses the system in-house and is well-versed on how to order, install and support it moving forwards.

Common drivers for change are a new location, an internet connectivity upgrade, a need for additional users, a need for new functionality or to save money.

By being a supplier who uses the products they sell, they are already demonstrating the benefits of auto attendant, call handing, music on hold etc. to every client that calls in.

Suppliers will convince themselves that having a member of staff touch every quote and transaction is better for customer service but that may not be how resellers, dealers and end customers see it. Manual processes introduce time and mistakes, plus the cost of them either depresses your margin or makes you uncompetitive.

Also, job satisfaction is low for staff doing repetitive tasks that could be automated. Human intervention is required to manage the exceptions, not standard processes.

The minimum requirement of a portal is to generate quotes and place orders automatically 24/7. The next stage for Jola is always to then get APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) from the networks so that information can be retrieved and orders placed by us automatically. 

From there the self-service portal needs to be developed in two ways; 

1. Software to help Partners differentiate their own proposition.

An example of this is the new breed of dealer portal. An IT or voice supplier can be sat with a customer and as they talk, build an online quote on their laptop or mobile that automatically checks the availability of internet connectivity, sets up new numbers and arranges porting. The system picks up key words and emails a customised, dealer-branded, proposal to the customer. The customer can then review, amend, click to accept the Ts and Cs and the order is placed. Often the first supplier to meet and quote a prospect wins the business and vertically integrated portals facilitate this.

Jola has grown over 24 months to be one of the largest suppliers of mobile SIMs through channel, in the UK. This is primarily due to the growth in demand for mobile data and our unique ability to provide the means for resellers to manage their mobile broadband estates.

Reliability

A mobile signal is usually only unreliable when it is moving. A 3G/4G broadband signal when stationary often delivers a faster and more stable service. In fact, most resellers and their customers would probably prefer to use mobile broadband for everything if it weren’t for two things; cost and risk.

Management

Once a SIM is installed in a device (handset, laptop or vending machine) the user is often blind to usage until they get a warning or a bill. They usually don’t want a device to stop working once the SIM has reached its allowance, equally they don’t want the shock of enormous out of bundle charges. Jola is successful because we offer great rates and a management portal that allows resellers and their end users to activate, SIM-swop, monitor usage, cease or bar SIMs. We also have a unique overage protection facility to protect customers from bill shock.

Demand

Research shows that when companies are thinking about upgrading their internal communications, 48% seek advice from their local suppliers and 55% research the internet. Some suppliers are happy to give advice but then either leave it at that or simply refer a company they know. By also supplying the telephony, they have an additional monthly revenue stream and a new service to support.

Simplicity

Around 10% of SMEs are using VoIP (Voice over IP) but it is the fastest growing communications product in the UK. There is no equipment on-site except the handsets, which are often included in the rental. 

Recurring revenue

Hosted telephony seats are pay per month and offer a lucrative recurring revenue stream especially when bundled with additional IT services.

According to McKinsey, revenues from mobile data are set to increase dramatically in the next 7 years to over £11bn.

Factors driving growth are the availability, speed and reliability of 4G (39.5 million subscribers in 2015), the trend of embedding data SIM cards into devices and the availability of cost-effective SIM-only packages on 30-day contracts.

UK SMEs are turning to their trusted IT and telecommunications suppliers for help sourcing mobile data SIMs. Their suppliers need good management portals to control their burgeoning estates.

Jola offers a range of 4G UK, EU and Global tariffs on 30-day contracts starting from around £7 per month. The company has recently launched Mobile Manager, an online management portal for ordering and managing estates of mobile data SIMs. The portal communicates with the Vodafone 4G network, enabling Jola partners to create customers, manage activations and instantly control SIM swaps, bars, ceases, tariff changes and bolt-ons.

Jola is one of the channel’s largest mobile data providers managing thousands of SIMs all over the world. The company is experienced in developing and managing portals for the channel and has just launched Mobile Manager.

Mobile Manager is an online management portal for ordering and managing estates of mobile data SIMs. The portal communicates with the Vodafone 4G network, enabling Jola partners to create customers, manage activations and instantly control SIM swaps, bars, ceases, tariff changes and bolt-ons.

Mobile Manager gives partners complete control over their mobile data assets. In most cases end users don’t want their mobile data SIMs to switch off when they reach capacity, but they also don’t want to pay much higher out-of-bundle charges. With Mobile Manager, Jola partners can set up alerts to monitor usage limits per customer. They can then automatically pause the SIM or use the overage protection facility. Mobile Manager is a white label portal with parent-child functionality, so partners can extend functionality to their own customers as if the software was their own.

The right business partner can help you to grow your business, as well as fill gaps in your product portfolio. They will work with you to understand the needs of your customers and support your strategic focus moving forwards. In our experience the top three ways suppliers can help you win more business are as follows;

1 – Help you find and qualify prospects

If you don’t have a full-time sales and marketing team you may not be focussed on finding and uncovering opportunities either within your base or from new contacts. Trusted suppliers can help you here. They have the experience and skill sets to work with you and identify existing customers with problems you can help to solve as well as highlighting verticals you may already have a good case study for, which you could use to win new clients. 

2 – Provide you with materials to highlight solutions

Once customer issues have been identified, good suppliers can work with you to create presentations and proposals to explain solutions. Many have white label marketing content you can use, explaining key features and benefits.

3- Provide quoting and ordering tools

Dealers can build co-branded proposals to include internet connectivity, hosted telephony and mobile SIMs, which can be sent directly to customers. Customers can then amend proposals and when they are happy accept orders which automatically trigger the provisioning and ordering process. Both dealers and their customers are kept in the loop at every stage. Resellers, who manage their own billing, also have quoting and ordering tools and white label marketing content for proposals.

1 – Lack of maintenance contract

Very few SMEs still have maintenance contracts on their on-site phone systems – often because they are so old they are no longer supported. This seems like good value while they work but when they break it is often terminal and the organisation can be without phones for days. 

2 - Cost

Telephone calls are 5% of what they cost 20 years ago and because your customer has not seen monthly charges going up too much they think they are doing well. The reality is they are paying three or four times the monthly charge of an up-to-date cloud voice system, which includes all of their calls.

3 - Professional call answering

Your customers have got used to the idea that their phone system can’t handle out-of-hours, public holidays, multiple calls and even busy lamp fields, showing who is on the phone before transferring. Often staff cannot pick up valuable sales and support calls even if they want to. Your customers would love to have an automatic call distribution system but consider such features outside of their budget; as well as the idea that the name of the person calling in might ‘pop’ onto their computer screen.

Step 1 - Provide the internet connectivity

In our experience whoever quotes the customer first for connectivity is three times more likely to win the business. 95% of SMEs go with the cheapest quote as they see internet connectivity as a commodity. Jola’s strategy is to help partners win the connectivity business. We have a pricing tool which resellers and dealers can access from their mobile in customer meetings to retrieve information on what is available and the best price in minutes.

Leased line contracts tend to be on three-year deals, which brings in recurring revenues over that timeframe and the ability to upsell cloud-hosted applications like voice.

Step 2 – Provide the knowledge and experience

When the customer is ready to consider their first cloud applications, hosted CRM, hosted telephony etc. they will turn to their trusted advisor. IT and telecommunications partners who have the knowledge and experience as well as range of products and services to help them make the right choice.

We have been talking for years about the tipping point. That point in time when internet connectivity is fast enough, cheap enough and reliable enough for organisations to benefit from the cloud. Jola’s experience has been that many SMEs are still struggling with broadband and this is inhibiting their adoption of cloud services. Superfast broadband and dedicated circuits for businesses are now available at around 20% of the cost of traditional leased lines.

UK SMEs are lagging behind when it comes to the adoption of ‘The Cloud’ when their only way of accessing critical applications and data is over an unpredictable, insecure, best-efforts broadband circuit. If SMEs are dissatisfied with their internet connection when it is being used for web browsing and email, they are unlikely to run their telephone system, accounts packages and CRM (Customer Relationship Management) systems over it too.