Technology Reseller v07

Article TiTLE technolog y reseller.co.uk 22 IP TELEPHONY 3 On a roll with HV.Select Daisy Wholesale targets IT resellers with hosted IP solution offering best-in-class functionality and the most attractive terms, including a rolling 30-day contract with HV.Select,” explained Long. “We are seeing more dedicated mobile resellers going into the traditional line space by offering a hosted service that they see as very similar to a mobile sale in the way it is commercially designed. And we are seeing huge growth with IT resellers who see the IP phone as just another endpoint. Whoever owns the network in an office generally has the best opportunity to add services. The IT reseller already controls the connectivity, the network and the servers, so why wouldn’t they provide HV.Select as well and lock out their competitors?” The whole journey Resellers that do sell HV.Select should also benefit from greater customer retention, as the management portal is designed to cover the entire customer journey from ISDN and on-site PBXs to cloud-based communications – a capability that Daisy is about to introduce with the launch of a new SIP product that, for the first time, enables it to provide a fully integrated solution offering a migration path whilst also supporting a hybrid deployment. “The changeover from ISDN to IP presents customers with a number of challenges. Many have expensive phone systems and may not yet be ready to move to a fully hosted solution. But, over time, those same customers will not want to keep paying for fancy bits of PBX with large upfront Capex costs. So, in addition to the single portal that a reseller can use to transition customers from their PBX and ISDN to SIP, with our new SIP solution we give resellers the option to say to customers ‘You can keep your PBX, but as it gets old or your business grows you can add a hosted user that integrates into your PBX’,” explained Long. He added: “Our aim is to become the reseller’s partner of choice when it comes to hosted and IP. Our new SIP product will enable customers to come with us, from ISDN to SIP, from a mixed fleet of SIP and hosted, right the way through to a fully hosted solution. We have a demonstrable track record of achieving the status of ‘the reseller’s partner of choice’ with the Daisy Wholesale, the fastest growing part of the Daisy Group, sells a broad range of communications products and services to resellers, including lines and calls, broadband, mobile and Ethernet connections. In support of its ambition to deliver a fully converged solution to help resellers maximise the huge opportunities in convergence, it has added a hosted IP solution to its portfolio. Daisy realised that in order to become the supplier of choice in the reseller channel, HV.Select had to be more than just another ‘me-too’ product. So, from the start, it took the decision to make it the best hosted IP solution designed specifically for the channel. ‘To be the best’ is something of a mission statement at Daisy Group. What it means in the case of HV.Select is to have the best feature set, at the best price, with the most flexible financing and the best user and reseller experience. In this context, one innovation that has proved enormously popular is HV.Select’s rolling 30-day reseller contract. Having a contract term of just 30 days instead of a year or more minimises the risk for resellers should a customer default and gives them more flexibility in setting terms with their customers. Another is the online portal through which resellers and customers manage all aspects of the solution. This, explains Gareth Long, Daisy Wholesale product manager for UC&C, makes HV.Select easy to implement and use. “It’s all very well having the best solution, but setting up a hosted system also involves the complication of building an offering and porting users. So, the other thing we wanted to give resellers was a one-stage auto-journey. With BT, we created a portal that supports the reseller through the end-to-end journey, from porting numbers to setting up features or adding additional features, such as call recording and data analytics,” he said. This ease of use makes HV.Select particularly attractive to channel partners that might be new to telephony services, such as mobile or IT resellers. “We are seeing two areas of growth We are seeing more dedicated mobile resellers going into the traditional line space by offering a hosted service Continued... EDITOR’S CHOICE AWARD DAISY WHOLESALE : HV.Select