How a Savvy Service Provider can Survive and Grow – Part II August 17, 2017
Posted by Dominic Black in Uncategorized.Tags: applications, Broadsoft, Cavell Group, Collaboration, collaboration software, Consulting, customer service, differentiators, European VoIP Summit, events, future of work, google, IM services, Innovation, Instant Messaging, internet, Launch, market research, Matt townend, Microsoft, mobile, network, Networking, Platform, Productivity, reports, Research, RingCentral, sales transformation, salesforce, Service Provider, service provider pass, Service Providers, Slack, SMS, team collaboration, team messaging, team software, technology, Telco, UC, UK, Voice, voice over IP, voice services, voip
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Delivering Tools to Increase Efficiency
Last week we touched on the value of Call Recording and Analytics – Another way to improve businesses competitiveness is to increase staff efficiency. Team Collaboration is a hot topic in the Service Provider space at the moment and directly addresses this need. Team software can build efficiencies into the way the business is communicating. Cavell report that the investments they are seeing in tools to help people to communicate better are huge. The starting point for team Collaboration was Internal messaging using IM services on a VoIP server. Early products were not very clever, or able to do much. The next step was to make it work better and allow teams to work more closely included SMS services with drag and drop capabilities and the ability to create workgroups providing the opportunity for integration of team solutions into the services offered by providers. Products such as Hipchat were free to download and initially were primarily used by developers, and they were provided as a standalone service. Slack today is still free to download but it has created the first company valued at over a billion dollars in under a year, and they have 1.5 million paid users as well as a free service with over 5m users.
Today, team Collaboration is becoming a ‘must have’ service offering and it is no longer just chatting on your own network, it is about integration into key business tools such as Salesforce and Google drive. Users of team software are able to automatically call files up or pull up salesforce details when talking. It is about linking products and making communications better, and as a result the number of integrated products has become a key differentiator between service offerings.
Team Collaboration is a product that sounds like it is a good fit for the large enterprise, but Cavell report that it is increasingly being used by small and medium businesses with remote workers. Launches from RingCentral, Broadsoft and Microsoft in the last few years as well as the standalone offers has invigorated the market and given Service Providers lots of choice of who to partner with to deliver these services to their customers. When launching new products, they are integrating messaging and Team Collaboration into their voice services with value adds such as click to dial. The approach is to create free, easy to use, communications solutions and offer links to call on the phone.
Many Collaboration software users are still not paying for their software, and Cavell speculate that Team Collaboration may become a competitive requirement for Service Providers in the future as companies look to enable their employees to communicate better. The issue that it may provide for Service Providers is can be consumed free but Service Providers will need to work on the sales challenge to learn to present and expand from selling lines and minutes to selling Collaboration – different sales techniques and a more consultative approach are needed as well as an understanding of how their customers work. But it’s not all bad news – integrated into services may not make any money per-se but it creates a stickiness that has a huge value to the Service Provider, since the more integrated the solution the less likely the customer is to change provider.
Stay tuned for our third post in the series where we will be touching on how smart bundles can be a game-changing differentiator.
If you wish to learn more about the industry, join us at the upcoming European VoIP Summit in Amsterdam on the 10th of October for an unmissable networking opportunity.
Cavell’s market reports offer in-depth analysis of the key market trends and are due to be released on August 31st. Please get in touch for more details.
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.
The inaugural Channel Leaders Conference: a great success! April 27, 2017
Posted by Dominic Black in Uncategorized.Tags: Business Verticals, Cavell, Cavell Group, Comms Business, Communication Solutions, digital disruption, digital tranformation, Disruptors, events, Genband, Instant Messaging, internet, IT, Knight Corporate Finance, Launch, London, market research, Microsoft, mobile, network, Networking, Productivity, reports, Research, Strategic Imperatives, suppliers, technology, Telco, Telcoswitch, UC Solution, UK, UK solutions, Unified Communications, verticalisation, Voice, voice over IP, voip
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Monday was an exciting day; the London Channel Leaders Conference (#CLeaders17) successfully launched in collaboration with Comms Business Magazine. Delegates enjoyed a day of panel talks on highly relevant topics such as ‘How Can You Guide Your Customers Through the Digital Age?’ and ‘Building Compelling Solutions (Verticalisation & Integration),’ networking opportunities and keynote presentations by Matt Townend, Director of the Cavell Group, and Kristine Olson-Chapman, Managing Director of TalkTalk Business. Digital Disruption, the UK Telecoms Market (find out more in our reports here), the Internet of Things (IoT) and the changing role of the Channel were also among the key topics of discussion.
Of these several recurring themes, the most prominent were falling traditional market revenues and rapidly changing customer requirements. The first panel discussion of the day was ‘How Can You Guide Your Customers Through the Digital Age?’.
Chaired by David Dungay, Deputy Editor of Comms Business, Ralph Page (Director of Global Strategic Solutions at Genband), Mike Wilkinson (VP Marketing & Product Management at Lumeon), and Dan Cunliffe (Managing Director of Pangea) tackled points on identifying when a customer is struggling to adopt a digital strategy. This lead to an interesting anecdote on smart water drains on the Isle of Wight by Dan Cunliffe, prompting further discussion on the IoT. Another hotly discussed point on the panel was where Channels can find immediate success in a rapidly changing industry, be it focussing on CPaaS, M2M or elsewhere.
The liveliest panel discussion however, was represented by ‘Suppliers and Vendor Selection: Which Horse Should I Back in the Future?’ between Steve Harris (MD of Siphon/EVP UC Nuvias), Richard Bligh (COO of Gamma), Mark Timmermans (Director of Portfolio Development at BT Wholesale), Gary Gould (MD EMEA at ShoreTel) and Russell Lux (CEO of TelcoSwitch).
The variety of vendor and service provider businesses present, passionate panellists and importance of the topic created some great discussion on the fragmentation of the traditional vendor and service provider markets, as well as what products/verticalisations/service areas the channel should embrace. This was particularly relevant with the recent news on companies like Avaya. Discussion also touched on competing with the services provided by the likes of Twilio, Microsoft and Amazon and how cloud services can transform industries like distribution and logistics.
We would like to thank our Gold (Knight Corporate Finance, Strategic Imperatives, and TelcoSwitch) and Silver Sponsors for their contributions to making Channel Leaders a success, and also, Blabbermouth, whose drinks sponsorship fuelled a great networking opportunity at the end of the day.
If you did not manage to attend Channel Leaders 17 but are interested in the topics discussed, want to meet industry leaders and gain valuable insight into the European Telecoms industry, click here for our upcoming event in Amsterdam (10th October 2017), or use the email addresses below for more information regarding our next event in London (8th March 2018).
You can also contact francisca.dinga@cavellgroup.com or dominic.black@cavellgroup.com for further questions and sponsorship opportunities for both events.
For research into the European VoIP markets, click here for our website, or contact adam.kowalski@cavellgroup.com or dominic.black@cavellgroup.com
#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!
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.
Join us for the 4th edition of the European VoIP Summit November 18, 2016
Posted by Dominic Black in Uncategorized.Tags: Acquisition, applications, AudioCodes, Broadsoft, Cavell, Cavell Group, Cloud Communications, Communication Solutions, Communications Platform as a Service, conference, Developers, digital tranformation, edgewater networks, European VoIP, European VoIP Summit, events, EVS London, Gamma, global telecoms, Hosted VoIP, Kcom, Launch, London, market opportunities, market research, marketing Cloud services, Matt townend, Microsoft, mobile, Networking, nfon, Partners, Platform, Presence, Productivity, Providers, Q Advisors, QAdvisors, QEII Centre, QEII Conference Centre, regulation, Research, Service Provider, Service Providers, SIP, Siphon, siphon networks, technology, Telco, telecoms, Telecoms Cloud, Telecoms Market, UK, Vendors, Voice, voip, VoIP Acquisitions, Voxygen, Voztelecom, yealink
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We are pleased to announce that the 4th edition of the European VoIP Summit will be held on the 9th of March 2017 at the QEII Centre in London.
The European VoIP Summit has become the leading industry event where Service Providers meet to discuss the key issues in the market, so this time we have expanded to accommodate 300 delegates for a series of insightful panel discussions and presentations as well as Industry Keynotes from Cavell’s analysts Matt Townend & Dominic Black.
Knowledgeable, experienced thought-leaders will share their experiences and practices, and enlighten us with their controversial views. Key industry players such as Gamma, Kcom, Broadsoft, AudioCodes, Voxygen, NFON, Voztelecom, Telecoms Cloud, and QAdvisors, as well as the experienced CMO Lisa Hutt, and Mike Wilkinson, one of the most respected senior marketing figures in the Technology market, have already been confirmed as speakers. Click here to see the complete Agenda.
The day also includes ample time for you to connect with your peers, and lunch and networking drinks are all included in the ticket price.
Also, we are proud to announce that Audiocodes, Broadsoft and Yealink have committed as our Gold Sponsors for the event, with Edgewater Networks and SIPHON joining as exhibition sponsors.
We have sold out all of our previous events, with over 220 attendees registered from 60 different Service Providers in London in March 2016 and we expect to do the same next year, so sign up now to secure your seat and avoid disappointment.
Also, this year we have introduced the Service Provider Pass, offering 3 tickets for £300+VAT which provides 20% off each ticket when bought together, so don’t miss out on this opportunity and bring your colleagues along.
If you have any questions, please get in touch.
We look forward to seeing you on the 9th of March!
Cavell’s European Research Shows VoIP Markets at Very Different Stages of Development October 12, 2016
Posted by Dominic Black in Uncategorized, VoIP Numbers.Tags: Cloud Communications, European VoIP, france, germany, italy, Launch, Market Data, Market figures, market reports, market research, market update, Matt townend, netherlands, portugal, reports, Research, Service Provider, Service Providers, spain, Telco, UK, Voice, voice over IP, voip, VoIP Market, VoIP Providers
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Amsterdam – 11th of October 2016 – Cavell Group today launched its European VoIP research which includes detailed studies of the French, German, Dutch, Belgian, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese markets.
Cavell can see that the UK is the largest market in terms of number of customers, however, the Dutch market continues to be the most developed. The French and German markets are showing signs of growth and maturity with increasing numbers of Service Providers launching a service.
The research shows three groups of countries in terms of market maturity with Netherlands and the UK leading the way, followed by France, Germany and Spain, with Italy and Portugal being the least mature.
Cavell also has seen a particular focus in the French market which is likely to lead to strong growth in the coming year.
Dominic Black, Senior Analyst at Cavell Group, stated: “Each market operates with slightly different dynamics and we see different pricing approaches and platform choices by the market. It would be fair to say that no two countries are the same in terms of their development or their individual market dynamics.”
The research team is happy to share further comments and views on their findings, so should you have any queries, please contact Francisca Dinga, Marketing & Research Assistant at Cavell Group:
Email: francisca.dinga@cavellgroup.com
Telephone: +44 (0) 1206 911393
BT Clive Selley discussed BT Inside Out wireless & future voice strategy at Genband Perspectives June 11, 2014
Posted by Dominic Black in Uncategorized.Tags: BT, FEMO Cells, Genband, Inside Out, Perspectives, telecoms, UK, Voice
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It’s strange that you might travel across the Atlantic and one of your highlights of a conference is to hear from Clive Selley explaining BT’s UK technology strategy. Clive was a keynote speaker at Genband Perspectives conference in Orlando.
Clive explained that BT believe the total market value for the key areas they focus are
Wireline
Mobile Telecoms
Pay TV
IT Services
Clive explained BT’s television and fiber strategy but I was particularly interested in his discussions about BT’s mobile and Future Voice strategy. He described that the momentum from TDM to IP was now moving at a pace and is the most advanced in the Enterprise segment, and how voice only networks were now morphing to session based core networks. What was also interesting is that BT valued the IT services at £37 billion in the UK alone.
He described how BT services were now all based on a IP SDIN (Session Distribution Interworking Network), which is based on Genband and he mentioned that the growth on this network was now running at over 100% percent a year and this had been the case for the last 2 years. This core is also being expanded globally into USA, Middle East, Asia and Europe. The growth of this is also demonstrated by the wholesale offering of IPX being one of the 3 fasted growth areas in the whole BT Group. So as there are discussions about who offers the applications within the BT network, whether that is Cisco HCS, Genband or Broadsoft etc., it appears Genband is well established in the very core infrastructure being used in the SDIN. With the current growth rates, that must be a good place to be.
Clive then went onto describe how BT have been considering a reentry into the mobile market. He mentioned effectively they had 3 strategic choices
– Buy a mobile operator
– Build a national mobile network
– Or try a Disruptive play
He mentioned the cost of purchasing one of the UK based mobile operators would probably be too expensive and to build a national network would be both costly and take a long time to deliver. He also mentioned that he thinks the current providers are going to struggle because as new LTE technology is enabled the growth on their core is network and cell infrastructure is going to increase cost dramatically.
So when looking at a disruptive strategy BT looked at a number of key factors, probably the most important was that 70% of mobile data was happening either at a users home or in a single workspace, and often mobile delivery in building or at home was often poor. With BTs role out of FON and other investments BT had already got over 5 million WIFI hot spots.
So BTs strategy will be to use low cost FEMO Cells using LTE spectrum in home and office to provide in building service in those locations, and then using its EE MVNO to provide service outside of the building. BT will then be able to benefit from their core investment and infinity investment to provide a disruptive mobile play. This was described as BTs “Inside Out” wireless strategy.
Its interesting that BT continues to leverage the edge provided by its customers to power its services, and it will be interesting to see how this will manifest self in real services in years to come but certainly should be disruptive to the mobile operators including its old friend O2!
SIP/IP trunking market continues to grow November 4, 2010
Posted by Matthew Townend in VoIP Numbers.Tags: Market figures, SIP trunking, UK
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The 3rd quarter saw the business SIP trunking market grow by just over 11%. The growth was less than we saw in previous quarters, the slow down in growth over the summer seems to be down to macros concerns with the economy although we have seen signals of strong growth again in October. The total number of trunks reported was 187149, this was made up from growth from traditional players but also demonstrates an increase in the number of active players selling services. What was clear as well is “not all trunks are the same”, with providers remarking that they were focusing on the likely revenue per trunk rather than just the number of trunks, as there is large difference in the utilisation & revenue between different trunk customers.
VoIP Blog 