If you have customers looking to upgrade their ADSL circuits to faster, more reliable fibre broadband and fibre Ethernet and you do not operate your own network, you may be looking for a partnership.
If so, how do you decide the best company to partner with? We have put a few questions together to help you decide.
1 – Do you want to manage the billing?
If so, you need to look for a reseller scheme, where you can set your own pricing and bill your own end users. If you don’t have your own billing platform or prefer not to take the risk on 36 month contracts, a dealer programme might be more appropriate for you. Most reputable suppliers will be upfront with you about their costs and will split the margin with you 50/50. If you go down the dealer route then look for a Partner that has a HMRC approved self-billing system. This guarantees regular payments and avoids the need for you to raise invoices for every penny of commission owed to you.
2 – How many suppliers do you want to partner with?
If the answer is one, you need to look for a company that has access to multi-carrier services and competitive pricing, so you have a range of options for your end users and they are not limited in their choice of product and price.
If you are happy with several partnerships, consider how you will manage getting multiple quotes for each customer, chasing them up and collating the information, before presenting proposals to your customers.
Also when you deal with multiple suppliers yourself, you will need to employ someone to place orders on the various carriers, progress chase and provide updates to your customers. A good aggregator supplier will negate the need for a dedicated head in your organisation.
3 – Do you want to support your customers yourself and manage your own router configurations and installations?
Leased lines come with business SLAs and you will need to be on-call 24x7 if you intend supporting your customers yourself. If you cannot commit to this you may want to consider a dealer scheme as in point 1.
If you decide to go ‘wires-only’ and install your own routers then there are resource and management implications. You will need to purchase, configure and commission your own equipment and install network monitoring servers yourself. Most networks and aggregators these days will include a high-end router in the rental cost of a leased line. They will also include a managed installation anywhere in the UK and 24x7 network monitoring.
Once you have the answers to these three questions you will probably conduct a little research and shortlist some options. Look for a company that values customer service as much as you do. Someone who will be responsive to your needs, won’t compete with you or pull out of the channel taking your customers with them.
Jola has access to every Ethernet service in the UK. We are dedicated to the voice and data channel and we offer both dealer and reseller schemes.
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