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Q&A
20
...continued
now. A lot are happy to bill for things like
an internet circuit, which is the same rental
every month, but don’t want to get involved
in billing for voice, because they’re billing
minutes and because they are opening
themselves up to the risk that if a customer
goes bust or is hacked, they have to pay
the bill.
TR
:
Is there a particular type of IT
reseller you like to attract?
NG:
The best partners of all are those with
between five and 50 people. We do have
ones that we have worked with for a long
time that are larger, sometimes significantly
larger. But generally, companies bigger
than that are more likely to be able to do
in-house what we offer resellers in terms of
expertise, support and training.
Ultimately, the sorts of reseller we are
looking for are those who have a similar
passion to provide the very best solution,
rather than just make a quick buck. We’re
very lucky at Spitfire; the company is
privately owned, we’re profitable, we don’t
have any debts and we don’t have external
shareholders and venture capitalists
clamoring for quick profits. For us, it’s all
about proper, sustainable, organic growth,
based on long-term relationships with our
IT resellers and their customers and with
our direct customers.
TR
:
Do any of your partners worry that
you also sell direct?
NG:
No, they don’t or at least they
shouldn’t! We make it extremely clear
that we’re never going to try and poach
customers. If we were to do that it would
clearly be the end of the relationship.
That’s the sort of thing you do if you want
to make a short-term buck, which is not the
sort of company we are. Almost our entire
business is based on recommendations
and referrals, whether through our partners
or through customers. If we behave in an
unethical fashion, that will stop.
TR
:
What about office software? Do you
just provide voice and data solutions or
do you sell things like Microsoft 365 as
well?
NG:
No, we don’t. And that’s primarily
because if we were to do that, our partners
might think we were trying to encroach on
their territory, as the majority of them now
provide services like 365. We’ve looked at
it and some of our competitors are selling
365, for example, but we don’t think it’s
the right thing to be doing at this stage.
TR
:
I tend to think of Spitfire as a
London business. Do you operate
nationwide?
NG:
In the 1990s we used the advertising
strapline ‘London’s local telco’. Rather
like COLT (City of London Telecoms), we
were very London-centric. One of the
benefits of the Partner Service and selling
through IT resellers is that it has allowed
us to expand outside London. Most of
our business now comes from outside
London. The reason we opened our office
in Redditch, just south of Birmingham, was
to have more of a local presence in the
Midlands.
Today, we’ve got partners in Scotland,
in Northern Ireland, in Devon, in Cornwall,
in Wales – they are spread right across
the country. There is a larger proportion
in the south-east and in the midlands,
but our coverage is probably not all that
different to the business density across
the UK. Having a local presence means we
can provide services and support those
services nationwide – it’s because of our IT
resellers that we are able to do that.
TR
:
What plans does Spitfire have for
2017?
NG:
The big thing for us this year are
Ethernet circuits – internet circuits that
provide very high quality bandwidth and
very large amounts of bandwidth. They cost
from around £150 right up to £1,000 a
month. We have traditionally only used BT
Wholesale, but we are now providing Virgin,
COLT and TalkTalk Business circuits as well.
This means that we can install circuits
far faster and at lower prices compared
to using BT alone, giving our partners the
best choice of circuits around.
The other service we are expecting to
grow significantly is Cloud Connect, which
provides high quality connectivity to the
likes of Microsoft Azure, 365 and AWS
(Amazon Web Services).
Those are the really big things for
2017, but quite a lot else is happening.
For example, our 3CX cloud telephony
product is being significantly enhanced,
and we’re really stepping up training for
that, based on partner demand.
The other thing that our partners have
asked us to do is raise our visibility, so
we’re putting more money into brand
awareness. We’ve historically advertised
on Heart FM, and we’re now advertising
on Smooth and Classic FM; we’ve got 55
taxis driving round London with Spitfire
branding; and we’ve got adverts at key
railway stations.
On top of that, we are continuously
enhancing our core network so that we
keep up with the increased bandwidth
requirements of customers and can provide
exceptionally high availability for those
customers who can’t afford to be down.
TR
:
And for resellers, what are the big
trends that might make them look at
voice and data?
NG:
The big trend in data is still the cloud.
It’s amazing how many small and medium-
sized businesses still use on-site servers;
there’s a big opportunity for resellers in
moving them to high quality cloud-based
services.
Another big opportunity is legacy
voice. There are still something like 3
million ISDN channels in the UK. ISDN
is so expensive compared to using SIP
trunks – getting on for four times the cost
– that customers who have legacy phone
systems sitting on ISDN are going to be
moved to VoIP by someone. If the reseller
doesn’t do it then a) they’ve lost potential
business; and b) the company that does
do it has a foot in the door to sell them
other IT services. We’re seeing some more
traditional, voice-type companies moving
into the data market and I think IT resellers
need to wake up to that and take on voice.
If they stick their heads in the sand and
think ‘I don’t want to deal with that’, they
run the risk of losing customers.
The other thing is the roll out of fibre.
One of the main reasons we’ve partnered
with Virgin Media Business is because
they are investing literally billions in
rolling out fibre across the UK. There
are so many locations – and I don’t just
mean rural locations, but locations bang
in the centre of cities – that have poor
quality connectivity. That this is now being
addressed is really exciting because it
enables customers who previously had poor
connectivity to move to the cloud, to cloud
telephony and SIP trunks and all the rest.
That’s a big thing – and a big opportunity.
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