Jola Cloud Solutions' Blog

Jola helps to raise over £250K for Cancer Research

Posted by Cherie Howlett on 24-Jul-2024 14:50:21

Cherie Howlett, one of Jola’s founding members and Chief Marketing Officer, completed the Race for Life in Derby with her daughter Bella, aged 10. They wanted to raise money for Cancer Research to prevent other families from losing their loved ones to this terrible disease. 

“We lost my Dad and Bella’s Grandad to a rare form of cancer in October 2020 and Bella wanted to help Cancer Research fund new innovative treatments to help more people survive. Neither of us likes running, so we trained with the Couch to 5K app to get fit to face the challenge. We raised over £800 as a pair and over £250K as a group! Thank you to everyone for your generous donations, the support we received for this has been amazing. Thank you!” Cherie, Howlett, CMO, Jola.

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Topics: Jola Cloud Solutions Ltd

Building a great team

Posted by Cherie Howlett on 17-Apr-2024 18:07:37

Hiring 

We are looking for problem solvers in the channel. People who go the extra mile, who are innovative and who can deliver what they say they will. Key skills and experience vary by department, however an appreciation of the market and how relationships between end-users, channel partners and their suppliers work is essential. At Jola, we have found success looking for people who share our values, who go the extra mile to solve problems and who continually learn and improve.

 

Home-grown talent

We offer work experience, hire university students on their gap year, offer graduate schemes, return to work schemes, and apprenticeship schemes. When we have the right people, we invest in their training and development. We have a support training school, a sales training academy and a marketing development programme. In accounts, we offer professional qualifications and in development offer bespoke training schemes for  ZoHo, Microsoft and Amazon Web Services.

Partner support

For partners, we run the usual product and portal training sessions as part of our onboarding process, but what partners tell us they want are opportunities they can win to fill their pipelines. For this, we have the MRG™ programme. A successful programme we run with partners to help identify, qualify and win high-margin, recurring revenue mobile-data opportunities. Scaling organically is a resellers’ biggest challenge because for this they need quality leads and salespeople to close them.Marketing is often viewed as an overhead rather than revenue generating. Sometimes companies aren’t specific with what they want from marketing and don’t measure activities accurately. A steady flow of leads is good news for salespeople and employers.Jola helps partners with their strategy. Our partner managers are trained to help partners identify the best prospects for mobile data and give them the questions to ask to generate the need and close the deals.

Planning for growth

Many of our academies in sales and support are set up to fill opportunities as employees develop and get promoted within our business. 

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Topics: Jola Cloud Solutions Ltd

Jola sponsors The Big Goal

Posted by Cherie Howlett on 07-Feb-2024 14:21:47

Jola is delighted to be a founding member of The Big Goal, an initiative dedicated to addressing youth homelessness through the transformative power of football.

The Street Soccer Foundation is tackling youth homelessness with the support of clubs across The Premier League and English Football League (EFL) by equipping individuals with the skills and support they need for a brighter future.

The Big Goal Initiative is known for its holistic approach to youth development, aligning with Jola's commitment to fostering positive change and well-being. By supporting this initiative, Jola aims to make a lasting impact on the lives of young people.

Cherie Howlett, CMO Jola, commented “Football is a passion for many at Jola and after England won the Women’s Euros in 2022 it has become even more of a talking point in the office. We got involved with this charity because it is a great cause. By supporting the Big Goal Initiative, Jola is supporting vulnerable young people in our community, who may one day work in the industry. This initiative focuses on imparting valuable skills, and changing lives for the better, which I think we can all get on-board with.”

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Topics: Jola Cloud Solutions Ltd

Jola sweeps the board at the Comms National Awards

Posted by Cherie Howlett on 05-Oct-2023 13:37:37

Jola was shortlisted for five awards at the Comms National Awards last Thursday night at the Park Plaza Hotel in Westminster. We won Best Partner Programme over £10m turnover and Best Partner Portal for Mobile Manager®. We also came second with Highly Commended awards for Best Wholesale Service Provider above £10m, Best Supplier Innovation award and the Diversity award.

The judges shortlisted 160 entries from over 100 suppliers and resellers including other well-known channel businesses such as BT Wholesale, Talk Talk Wholesale, Giacom and Gamma. To dominate such a prestigious field demonstrates the strength of the Jola channel proposition.

Adrian Sunderland, Jola CEO, commented, "We were delighted to do so well at the CNAs and to sponsor the Mobile IoT reseller categories. It is an amazing achievement and I would like to thank our suppliers, partners and wonderful team for their continued support and dedication. It was a fantastic evening. Vernon Kay was brilliant as was Fat Tony. A great night was had by all.”

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Topics: Jola Cloud Solutions Ltd

The Jola team celebrates in style

Posted by Cherie Howlett on 26-Sep-2023 21:08:10

Last Thursday night, the Jola team celebrated exceeding their first-year earn-out target benefiting all Jola employees. Every Jola employee has helped the company to achieve phenomenal growth over the last twelve months and everyone was rewarded with a life-changing bonus. The Exec team treated their other halves to private dining in the London Edition in Soho.

Since Wireless Logic bought Jola last July they have whole-heartedly got behind Jola as their channel arm, collaborating to launch new products such as Conexa Voice and allowing Jola to do what they do best, supporting channel partners.

“What we have achieved at Jola is quite incredible. We enjoy working together and collaborating with partners to win deals with unique solutions they can’t buy from anyone else. We are at the forefront of technology when it comes to products, processes and portals. We have grown our own team, who have developed with us. I would like to thank all of our staff, partners and suppliers for the support they have shown us over the last 12 months. We have another big target to achieve and look forward to celebrating again in FY24!” Adrian Sunderland, CEO.

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Topics: Jola Cloud Solutions Ltd

Jola ‘s NPS score rises 7 to 63

Posted by Cherie Howlett on 24-May-2023 19:32:45

In a recent partner satisfaction survey, Jola scored a Net Promoter Score of 63, which categorises the company as ‘great’, with 43% of Jola partners giving them 10/10 and 93% scoring them 7 or higher. In the comments section, Jola partners praised Jola products, pricing, portals and people.

Andrew Dickinson, Jola CEO, commented, ‘I am delighted with our NPS. We now have over 1300 resellers and MSPs choosing Jola as their mobile data and intelligent connectivity partner. Our relentless product development continues with a long list of new products designed to help partners differentiate their offerings and win bigger deals. We have a fully redundant highly scalable IP edge network with DDoS protection from Cloudflare, and we continue to grow and invest in people, products, platforms and processes. We have a fantastic team here at Jola who are dedicated to supporting our growing partner base and it was great to see so many of them named in the survey by partners.”

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Topics: Jola Cloud Solutions Ltd

Apprenticeships

Posted by Cherie Howlett on 15-Feb-2023 11:01:09

Jola has run a successful apprenticeship scheme for many years, allowing us to educate our new recruits on the needs of Jola partners and our unique products. Our team enjoy introducing new people to the channel, with a passion for customer service and developing their skills and experience.

At Jola, we look to match new roles to available courses in each department. We work with a specialist agency that helps us to recruit the right candidates for our roles and supports our apprentices to complete their training courses. The blend of obtaining educational qualifications at the same time as learning on the job works well for us.

Jola has worked with three different apprenticeship training providers over the years. Each one has offered end-to-end support from recruitment, and training through to successful course completion.  Courses are made accessible using a mix of online and face-to-face tutoring as well as on-the-job training and projects.

The courses provide an understanding of important concepts, which our apprentices use and incorporate into our business. The apprenticeship schemes help the whole company to evolve in a positive way.

Jola has been fortunate to retain most apprentices beyond their programme. A successful Technical Support apprentice went on to be employed by Jola as a Network Engineer, further developing their skills.

One of our school leavers successfully qualified at level 4 of the scheme. They are now the go-to person for all our current apprentices, assisting with project work.

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Topics: Jola Cloud Solutions Ltd

Business Benefits of Diverse Teams

Posted by Cherie Howlett on 18-Jan-2023 16:31:36

What are the benefits to businesses of a strong female presence in boardrooms?

According to Deloitte, gender diversity in UK board rooms is lagging behind European counterparts with only 1 in 5 board room seats held by women. I sat on the board at Jola for over eight years and was the only female board member. Being a female on the board sends a positive message to other females in the organisation that there is not a glass ceiling and it is possible to progress to more senior positions within the organisation. If you can see someone similar to yourself doing the job you want in the future, it makes the goal seem more achievable and you can often gain a mentor to help you learn the skills to be able to get there. I like to think that I brought a new dimension to the team and some complementary skills. Board discussions were always inclusive and a female marketing perspective from a detail-orientated person was often useful in decision-making. The Jola Board has learned that it’s not enough to have female representation you have to make sure decisions are not made without everyone’s input.

How are you taking a lead on the issue of increasing female representation at the top in your business?

At Jola, we focus on hiring and developing the skills we need to satisfy the demands of our partners. We use our own technologies in-house to facilitate flexible working and run training and development programmes, which has helped us to recruit more women into management positions within the organisation.

I have championed a few different initiatives to remove the barriers some women face working in the channel such as work-from-anywhere and part-time hours. This has facilitated Mums working from home, doing school drop-off and pick-ups, attending parents' evenings, school productions, sports days and taking kids to after-school clubs. It has also allowed Mums to be at home to look after ill children and relatives globally, whilst being completely focussed on the needs of Jola, our sales team and our partners’ requirements during working hours.

We have introduced fantastic EMI schemes and employee benefits to compete with much larger organisations offering the same flexible working and gender-diverse culture locally.

We changed the way we recruited to remove the barriers of very specific qualifications and experience and focussed on finding smart people who share the same values as the Jola team and who are looking to grow and develop with us.

We are supported by entrepreneurs who have given us a voice at every level of the organisation and a career path to progress. We introduced work experience schemes, apprenticeship schemes, sandwich year placement schemes, graduate training schemes, and we advertised roles internally so women could progress inter-departmentally. We encourage and pay for our staff to gain qualifications to progress within Jola.

We have official training and development programmes as well as unofficial mentoring programmes. We encourage networking and personal development sessions with organisations such as Reframe, Women in Tech.

What initiatives and developments do you participate in to help increase the presence of women on boards in the wider industry?

I actively contribute to industry magazines and attend events speaking on panels discussing diversity and inclusion.

What are the objectives of these efforts and how are the initiatives being progressed? 

My objective is to raise awareness, inspire and to demonstrate how small changes can make such a big difference to the quality of female candidates being recruited and the success of organisations in the channel.

What more action needs to be taken to boost the number of women on boards?

I don’t think there is a quick fix. We need to increase the number of experienced candidates to recruit from. The more we can influence young people to reach their potential, the better the recruitment pool will be for us when they are ready to start work. We could go into schools and talk about the careers we can offer in IT and Telecoms and get them excited about learning new skills. We can offer work experience programmes, apprenticeship schemes, mentoring schemes, re-training schemes, back-to-work schemes and graduate schemes to grow our own talent internally and offer career development and share schemes. If you are on the board you often own a stake in the company and to do this you need to be able to invest. This is a barrier in itself. I was lucky enough to be part of a start-up with seed money, of which my share was a percentage I was able to invest.

What barriers have you identified to having more women on boards and how is Jola addressing these challenges?

To recruit the best talent into the industry we need to look at barriers. Do our daughters want to become board members in IT and Telecoms? My daughter did want to be a YouTuber or an actress but has recently said she may start her own business and aims to be CEO. She is more aware of what we do as she spent so much time sharing my home office being home-schooled.

Jola addresses some of these challenges because we need to grow our own talent internally. We are not specifically focused on hiring more women, in fact, we are against positive discrimination. If board positions are recruited for, the pool we recruit from needs to be more diverse and to do this we need more experienced women with great track records in previous board positions, who can add something extra to the existing board.

What cultural considerations need to be taken into account and why?

If you have children, someone needs to look after them. If I look at the school gates 97% of the parents doing the pickup and drop-offs are women. If you don’t have children it may be more of a level playing field. Do we then need to look at job descriptions for potential board members to see what they are looking for and work backwards? Do we have the connections and network to be recommended for openings? Do we have the track record and experience required? If not, we need to build that and work with brilliant entrepreneurs who can help us achieve our goals.

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Topics: Jola Cloud Solutions Ltd

Jola appoints Jon Chard

Posted by Cherie Howlett on 23-Nov-2022 16:22:20

Following the acquisition by Wireless Logic, Jola is strengthening its Channel presence with the appointment of Jon Chard as Partner Director.  Jon brings a wealth of Channel knowledge and is a fantastic asset to the Jola Sales Team. 

'‘I’m delighted to have joined the Jola Team, a business that I have held in high regard for several years. Jola is an innovative and forward-thinking business in the channel, and I am looking forward to helping them push towards further growth and continued success.’ Jon commented.

Lee Broxson, Jola CSO added, ‘It’s a pleasure to have Jon joining the team as a Partner Director, he brings with him 17 years of telecoms experience with five of those spent working with Jola at one of our suppliers.  Jon will be managing our larger MSP and ISP partners with a strategic goal to help find and win larger deals within their bases using our unique Mobile-Data Revenue Generator™  (MRG™) process.’

Chard’s appointment enhances the continued expansion of Jola with Oliver Izard, a former sandwich year placement, re-joining Jola as an Internal Account Executive.

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Topics: Jola Cloud Solutions Ltd

What does the channel need right now?

Posted by Cherie Howlett on 14-Oct-2020 11:20:11

Communication

We need to be in constant contact with our customers right now to assess their changing requirements. By understanding the challenges, you can tailor solutions to meet their needs, and in the process increase ARPU.  You may have customers who are struggling with slow broadband at home and 4G may be the solution. 4G routers are available with antennas and unlimited data SIMs, offering reliable, fast, internet connectivity which is plug-and-play. You may need to support customers struggling financially or looking to add an online or delivery service to their businesses. By understanding and meeting the needs of existing customers, you are in a good position to retain them and increase loyalty moving forwards.

Innovation

We need new revenue streams at the moment to help us off-set other areas of the business, which may be suffering due to COVID. Thinking about new products and solutions which could be packaged for existing customers is a good place to start. Do you currently sell 4G? It is a product that is easy to add to your portfolio and in great demand from homeworkers and keyworkers in the current climate. It can be ordered and provisioned within a white-label portal, easy to bill and easy to monitor.

Do you currently supply the NHS? Doctors surgeries and pop-up hospitals are looking for telecommunications and IT support. Nurses and carers travelling to see patients at home need reliable SIM cards in personal alarms and smart devices to complete their reports. Paramedics need reliable 4G connectivity in tablets to update their patient records on the move. Police need reliable SIM cards in push-to-talk radio and body-worn cameras. In the public sector reliable internet connectivity is required for smart lighting and smart parking solutions. Are you on the Government Framework to supply telecommunications and IT? Now is a great time to innovate and cross-sell and upsell into your existing base. Do you sell IoT solutions? IoT is now commonplace in all industries, measuring and tracking devices need SIM cards, you may be able to supply.

Differentiation

What we need right now is differentiated products with good margin potential that are easy to sell, provision, support and bill. We need to invest in opportunities we have a good chance of winning and promote our successes with a view to winning new customers in the same sector.

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Topics: Jola Cloud Solutions Ltd

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