Jola Cloud Solutions' Blog

IT and telecommunications suppliers

A recent survey by SIR suggested that half of SMEs would talk to their local IT supplier when considering communications purchases however very few of them sell and support the products their customers are interested in. The rest turn to their telecommunications providers who are ahead of the game in many ways already supplying internet connectivity and traditional and hosted telephony.

IT Support companies spend a lot of their time talking to their customers about something that isn't working properly. They work to ensure things don't break and then fix them if they do. The time they spend on site and the importance of IT to their customers means that they are usually trusted more than any other supplier. Surveys have shown that SMEs favour buying cloud-based solutions from suppliers with an IT/data background, however few IT Support companies sell cloud voice or the quality connectivity required to enable it. 

So why should you consider broadening your IP portfolio to include connectivity and VoIP?

1. SIM-only

JolaMobile is a SIM-only service. By not including a handset you get a much better deal - prices start at £9.50 per month.

2. Monthly contracts

By moving to JolaMobile SIMs you can keep all your employees on the same cancellation period - 30 days as Jola offers monthly rolling contracts.

10 reasons to partner with Jola

1. We have over 15 years' experience running a channel ISP
2. We have access to all the major network operators
3. Our prices are really competitive
4. We have the best deal on Broadsoft hosted voice seats and Vodafone SIMs
5. We have an easy quoting tool for access to all options and prices in minutes

BT Retail has conceded that hosted telephony is a viable alternative to on-premise telephone systems by launching BT Cloud Voice through their direct channels and their local business franchises. Another Broadsoft-based offering, this is good news for their competitors because BT will boost demand through generic advertising and by the fact that they have ‘legitimised’ the product. However they will also be a significant competitor so here a five things you might need to know when you inevitably meet them in the market.

Are you looking for the best deal on Broadsoft hosted voice solutions?

Do you have a demand for hosted voice? Are you looking for a reliable Broadsoft partner?

Jola is a channel-focussed business communications supplier and our hosted voice offering is called JolaPhone.

Proposition to resellers

Premium Broadsoft seat, UK calls and a Polycom handset from £9.70 per month (price to you)

How to generate leads for hosted voice and internet connectivity

Getting started

You have signed up with a supplier such as Jola for hosted voice solutions. What next?

Step 1

Add the new products and services to your website. List them under products, provide an overview of the services and if appropriate add a download to further information. Think about key words and phrases in your web content. Contact your supplier for help with text and graphics. Ensure you have a data capture box so that interested parties can submit their details for further information. Forward these leads to your sales team for immediate follow up.

1. Do you want a hosted or traditional business telephone system?

Technology savvy customers will already be considering the benefits of hosted telephony over a traditional phone system. To make your decision consider the following:

Reliability - you need to be able to make and receive calls during business hours with no issues. Research the underlying technology, the uptime guarantees and disaster recovery options. Some hosted solutions allow you to use mobile devices as desktop phones and make and forward calls remotely to ensure business continuity.

According to Market Monitor the market for cloud computing services such as cloud voice will grow at a rate of 36% every year and revenues will be just shy of £12.7bn by 2016. A large percentage of this growth is coming from SMEs being driven by a number of different factors:

Are your customers being held back by poor performance or poor reliability of their broadband?

Low bandwidth, high latency and packet loss can cause many applications such as voice over IP (VOIP) and video conferencing to be unusable. Customers that have checked only with BT often feel that there is nothing to be done.

Few people realise that BT Openreach don’t supply a broadband or leased line service directly to end users. Their customers are service providers that use them for the ‘last mile’ of connectivity services they sell.