How a Savvy Service Provider can Survive and Grow – Part III August 23, 2017
Posted by Dominic Black in Uncategorized.Tags: business communications, business growth, business telecoms, Business Verticals, Cavell, Cavell Group, Cloud Communications, Consulting, CRM integration, customer service, European VoIP Summit, events, Future of Voice, horizontal solutions, Hosted VoIP, Innovation, Instant Messaging, integrations, internet, IP telephony, IT, market opportunities, market reports, market research, market update, marketing Cloud services, Matt townend, mobile, network, Productivity, reports, Research, Service Provider, Service Providers, SME, technology, Telco, telecoms, UK Market, UK solutions, UK Telecoms, UK telecoms market, UK VoIP, USP, verticalisation, Voice, voice over IP, voice services, voicemail, voip, VoIP Consulting, VoIP Market, VOIP Market research, VoIP Providers, VoIP research
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Creating Bundles of Success
We have frequently heard that selling telephony services on features is simply emulating the old PBX sales approach and that hosted services benefits for a solution-based sale. Now we have figures to prove it. Cavell figures for 2016-17 confirm that where Service Providers in the channel are seeing success is in the SME where Service Providers are bundling a tight solution and with a very defined set of capabilities. The advantage of bundling is that it creates a solution-based proposition with a vertical or horizontal approach where the Channel understands their pricing, margin and the commercial and technical solution.
Vertical bundles are very strong, enabling the Service Provider to sell down a single vertical and targeting on features needed by that vertical. Cavell has seen a number of Service Providers target specific verticals by integrating into key business solutions that that vertical works with. It requires that the Service Provider understand the business processes of the customer and demonstrates this value to the customer.
Horizontal solutions can be equally strong with specialised CRM integration, or solutions with voicemail control options for road warrior use. Bundles can be commercial or technical, the secret is to tailor them to your target market and demonstrate an understanding of their requirements. A sound business approach for a Service Provider would be to start with commercial bundles and then develop into a technically integrated bundled solution as the customer requirements become clear. The approach for the Service Provider is to analyse your USPs, examine your customer base and products and then look at the rest of the market to determine your competition.
Bundling is more about how to do better with what you already have than about offering anything new.
Service Providers who embrace these opportunities and build solutions with specific value in mind are most likely to be the winners in the market.
If you wish to read more about how the market is changing, please get in touch for more information on Cavell’s market reports due to be released next week on Thursday, August 31st.
How a Savvy Service Provider can Survive and Grow – Part I August 11, 2017
Posted by Dominic Black in Uncategorized.Tags: 8x8, Analytics, Analytics Solutions, BREXIT, business communications, business growth, business telecoms, call centre, Call recording, Contact Center, contact centre, cost saving opportunities, customer service, events, Innovation, Market Data, market opportunities, market reports, market research, market update, marketing Cloud services, messaging, Productivity, reports, Research, Service Provider, Service Providers, technology, Telco, telecoms, Telecoms Market, UK, UK Market, UK solutions, UK Telecoms, UK telecoms market, UK VoIP, Voice, voice over IP, voip, VoIP Market, VOIP Market research, webinar
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Many businesses in the UK, small, medium and large are suffering. Pressures created by fears of what BREXIT may bring, austerity reducing the flow of money and challenging economic conditions, mean they are searching for efficiencies and cost saving opportunities to maintain and grow. These are requirements that the savvy Service Provider can meet to grow their own business. Services have become increasingly competitive and the number of Service Providers in the UK now exceeds 95, so business customers have choice, and this creates the need for Service Providers to increase the attractiveness of their offerings creating stickiness to maintain their current clients and to introduce new value-added services to increase their client base.
Value Added Services that Improve Customer Service
Good customer service is key to business success in every sector and the market research firm Cavell are reporting an increasing demand for call centre features for business telephone users beyond the contact centre. They surmise that this is a direct result of the drive to improve customer services. The business goal is to collect data from communications that will provide information to help the business to make customer communications better and enable multiple communication channels to be utilised beyond voice, including social media and instant messaging. Call Recording and Analytics are the two key basic call centre offering in demand and large platform providers are increasingly developing these capabilities, or collaborating to be able to offer these services to SME and large enterprise businesses.
Call recording has been available for a while and is a mature product. The key applications have been MIFID II for financial Service tracking and PCI compliant call recording for where credit card details are collected over the phone. The recent change, is that there is an increasing use of Call Recording to provide the business with the data to target areas for improvement through staff training and to secure details of customer interactions for future reference and to improve customer service.
Analytics is the second growing offering. Businesses are increasingly using Analytics on every customer inbound channel to gather information to help them to sell better and to understand what media their customers are using to communicate with them. This data helps them to understand how their customer is interacting. Demand for these analytic products is very high. Service Providers such 8×8 have invested in building their own analytics solutions and others are collaborating with providers like Akixi, Dubber and Tollring to be able to offer analytics solutions. The data provided helps the business to understand how to manage calls effectively and to identify future possibilities for new products.
Stay tuned for our upcoming posts where we will be covering what else we have seen makes Service Providers successful in this ever-changing and highly-competitive market.
Also, if you wish to contribute to our market research (due to be released on August 31st), please follow the links below. All participants will receive one ticket at our upcoming European VoIP Summit and have the opportunity to join our webinar on September 7th where we will be communicating our top-level results and some of the main trends we have seen in the UK Hosted VoIP and SIP Trunking market in the last six months.
#EVSLDN17: Who will run the Communications Platform of the future? January 31, 2017
Posted by Dominic Black in Uncategorized.Tags: applications, AudioCodes, belgium, Broadsoft, business telecoms, Cloud Communications, Collaboration, Communication Platform, Communications Platform as a Service, Consulting, Developers, dubber, European VoIP, European VoIP Summit, events, EVS London, france, germany, global telecoms, Hosted VoIP, IBM, Innovation, ipcortex, ISDN, IT, Launch, London, lumeon, market research, market update, metaswitch, mobile, mondago, netherlands, network, Networking, Platform, portugal, Providers, regulation, reports, Research, Service Provider, service provider pass, Service Providers, spain, System Integrators, technology, Telco, telecoms, Telecoms Cloud, Telecoms Market, UK, UK Telecoms, UK telecoms market, Unified Communications, Vendors, Voice, voice over IP, voip, voip events, VoIP Market, VoIP Providers, VoIP Summit, Voxygen, yealink
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The future is about providing a VoIP platform that people can integrate and develop on, to solve both specific and generic customer problems.
With an ever increasing number of Service Providers considering whether to buy or build their own platforms, there is a huge question of who will be running the Communications platform in the future. Service Providers, Vendors, System Integrators and Developers are all trying to work out what their role is going to be in this new world of communications and they may as well have to fight for their very future and relevance.
Find out more from the experts at the European VoIP Summit 2017
at the QEII Centre in London on 9th March:
- Dean Elwood – CEO, Voxygen
- Rob Pickering – MD, IPCortex
- James Slaney – Co-founder, Dubber
- Rob Cox – Commercial Director, Mondago
- Prof. Matthew Wilson – CEO, Telecoms Cloud
- Mike Wilkinson – VP Marketing & Product Management, Lumeon
These are just some of the experts who will be discussing the dynamics, providing input from all parts of the ecosystem and sharing their views on market opportunities for Service Providers.
With the Service Provider Pass you can bring your colleagues along to discover ideas on how to prepare for your future. It includes 3 tickets for £300+VAT offering you 20% off each ticket when bought together.
If you have any questions, please get in touch. We look forward to seeing you on the 9th of March!
The Fine Line of Trust in Customer Relationships #EVSLDN17 January 24, 2017
Posted by Dominic Black in Uncategorized.Tags: AudioCodes, Broadsoft, business telecoms, Communications Platform as a Service, Consulting, customer relationships, edgewater networks, European VoIP, European VoIP Summit, events, Genband, global telecoms, Hosted, Hosted UC, Hosted VoIP, IBM, London, market research, network, Networking, Panasonic Business, Platform, polycom, QEII Centre, QEII Conference Centre, regulation, Research, Service Provider, service provider pass, Service Providers, SIP, Siphon, technology, Telco, telecoms, Unified Communications, Vendors, Voice, voice over IP, voip, voip events, VoIP Market, VOIP Market research, VoIP Providers, VoIP research, VoIP Summit
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Cavell are proud to announce the European VoIP Summit 2017 Guest Speaker: IBM’s Global Communications Industry Leader Rob van den Dam.
In a highly competitive market, telcos often struggle to differentiate their services and in their ongoing race to bring out new features and solutions they can find themselves at risk of losing focus on what remains constantly important: customer experience.
Join us for the European VoIP Summit 2017 on March 9th at the QEII Conference Centre, in London to discover the key to mastering:
The Fine Line of Trust in Customer Relationships
For customers, their ideal customer experience is prompt and effective response to queries, outstanding service and fair resolution to complaints, said van den Dam. But telcos are falling way short of that ideal. They generally rate average to good – but that’s not good enough. You really have to excel at customer experience if you’re going to be competitive.
Rob van den Dam’s Keynote Presentation touches on:
- Findings from IBM’s global telecom consumer survey
- Personal data to reshape customer experiences
- Digital trust as the key factor in relationships between customers and providers
- Telcos’ unique position in the personal data opportunity
Tickets are selling fast: register here today and be sure not to miss out on this unique opportunity!
About Rob van den Dam
Rob van den Dam leads strategic thought leadership in telecommunications and media & entertainment, developing future agendas, industry outlooks and business value realization studies.
He has over 25 years experience in the communications industry. Rob periodically presents at major industry conferences, such as ITU World, GSMA Mobile Asia, TMForum, CommunicAsia, Digiworld, Total Telecom and IBC.
He has published multiple articles in, amongst others, the Annual Review of Communications, Jnl of Telecommunications Management, European Communications, Total Telecom Magazine, Broadcast Engineering, Telecom Asia and Mobile Europe.
Save the date! 25th of April, 2017: Channel Leaders Conference, organised in association with Comms Business December 6, 2016
Posted by Dominic Black in Uncategorized.Tags: applications, business telecoms, Channel, Channel Leaders, Cloud Communications, Comms Business, conference, consultants, events, Innovation, IT, Launch, London, mobile, network, Networking, Productivity, Resellers, SI, Slack, sponsorship opportunities, suppliers, technology, telecoms, Telecoms Market, UK, UK telecoms market, Vendors, Voice, voip, WhatsApp
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Cavell Group is excited to invite you to a new one-day conference: Channel Leaders, organised in association with Comms Business.
In a ceaselessly changing world where customers can communicate by using WhatsApp, Slack, and can buy their IT solutions from the cloud, the event will explore what channels will need to do to remain relevant to customers both in the short term and in the future.
The conference will be held at the America Square in London on the 25th April 2017 and it is targeted at C-level executives within reseller businesses, SIs, and consultants that sell directly to end users.
The day will include several high-level key note presentations and panel discussions, a combination of expert analysis and thought provoking views from respected analysts and commentators delivered as key note and panel sessions with input from some of the UK’s Channel leaders themselves.
We will be exploring end customer trends, supplier and vendor relationships, Customer knowledge and intimacy, the future Role for a Channel business, and how to create value for the Channel business in the future. There will also be a chance to network with top level executives and discuss topics and themes around the event
Talking about the new event, Cavell Group Director Matt Townend said: “As the pace of change accelerates it has never been more important to be looking at the horizon in a number of different ways. Customer requirements can change very rapidly in today’s market and for Channel partners it is vital they remain relevant.”
Miles Bossom, CEO of Miles Publishing, commented: “We have seen several industries ‘shaken-up’ over the last few years by what many refer to as Digital Disruption. Business communications and IT is evolving quickly and new entrants are coming to market with disruptive products and services all the time. Channel Leaders will address these issues for the top-level Channel executives and will act as a platform to educate and inform attendees of challenges they will face in the market. For anyone with high ambitions in the Channel this will be a must attend event.”
Spaces are limited, so if you would like to book a place, please email us. Tickets cost £250.
Also, sponsorship opportunities are available! If you are interested in finding out more about the event, please get in touch with us.
Telcos missing out on Digital Disruption opportunity whilst CPaaS providers act October 27, 2016
Posted by Matthew Townend in Uncategorized.Tags: AIRBNB, applications, business telecoms, Business Verticals, Cloud Communications, Communications Platform as a Service, CPaaS, Developers, digital disruption, digital tranformation, events, global telecoms, Innovation, Launch, market opportunities, market reports, market research, market update, Matt townend, Nexmo, Platform, reports, Research, Service Provider, Service Providers, technology, Telco, telecoms, Telecoms Market, Twilio, Uber, UC, Voice, VoIP Market, VoIP Providers, WhatsApp, Wholesale Voice
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You cannot help but read about how digital disruption is helping revolutionise existing businesses and enable new businesses to establish and disrupt complex industries. I think most people would also agree that at the heart of most business models are communications of different types.
So why is it that we find that Traditional model and fixed Telecoms companies are in general leaving this market opportunity to the CPaaS and development market to address?
Today, Cavell launches a report co-authored by Matthew Townend, Research and Consulting Director at Cavell, and Mike Wilkinson, one of the most respected senior marketing figures in the Technology market, former VP Product Marketing at Broadsoft and a pioneer in the whole UC and VoIP marketplaces.
In the report “The Communications Platform as a Service Market – Market Opportunities for Service Providers”, Cavell are exploring why companies like UBER, AIRBNB & WhatsApp all have chosen CPaaS providers like Twilio to power the transformation we are witnessing.
The paper addresses why the longstanding traditional Service Providers have not been able to embrace this opportunity, and what they might have to do in the future to be relevant both to these large scale global players, but also to their traditional national Enterprise customers who seek to establish new business processes and value propositions.
Matthew Townend, commented:
“As we move into a period of Digital transformation, we want to have real-time communications embedded into all sorts of business and consumer applications, and users want communication delivered in the context of their business and personal lives, however, not in the way vendors and communications providers prescribe it. Communications providers are going to have to deliver CPaaS platforms and capabilities that enable this change. “
“We are already seeing Business customers who demand their communications be imbedded in their vertical applications, as in their business they spend their life in say a hospitality business process tool. They do not want to receive it in the PBX or Cloud vendors UC all singing all dancing portal.”
For more details on the report please click here.
Cavell are Co-Hosting an industry dinner with the Internet Telephony Service Provider Association (ITSPA) in London, where we will be exploring these issues with a group of different service providers whilst also enjoying a great dinner and networking opportunity. Matt and Mike will both be at the dinner. For more details and how to book tickets please visit our website.
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