Technology Reseller v40

01732 759725 Q&A 44 Gamma in 2020 Financial Highlights n Revenue up 20%, from £328.9m to £393.8m. n Organic revenue (excluding 2020 acquisitions) up 9%, from £328.9m to £357.6m. n Recurring revenue (repeat business) up from £306.9m to £359.3m. n Gross Profit from UK Indirect Business up 11%, from £119.1m to £132.2m. n Gross Profit from UK Direct Business up 21%, from £38.2m to £46.3m. n European Business saw gross profit increase from £9.2m in 2019. to £22.3m in 2020, primarily through acquisition – Voz Telecom (acquired in April 2020), HFO Holding (acquired in July 2020) and gnTel (acquired in July 2020). Product Highlights n Number of installed SIP Trunks up 17%, from 1,016,000 to 1,185,000 (excluding sales of the MS Teams Direct Routing product and seats on Exactive’s CloudUCX platform). n Number of Horizon (Cloud PBX) users up 15%, from 522,000 to 601,000. n Number of Horizon users taking the additional Collaborate service up from 9,000 to 46,000. n Horizon Contact (fully integrated Horizon cloud contact centre module) launched in the UK (2 March 2021). UK Acquisitions n Exactive Holdings. Acquired in February 2020, this unified communications specialist based in the UK and Poland, with expertise in Microsoft Teams, enables Gamma to configure Microsoft Teams as a full UCaaS solution. European Acquisitions n VozTelecom (April 2020), a Spanish cloud communication services provider. n A majority shareholding in HFO Holding AG (July 2020), a leading provider of SIP Trunks in Germany that has recently begun to sell Cloud PBX products. n gnTel B.V. (July 2020), a Cloud PBX provider operating in the Netherlands and Germany. Technology Reseller: What are some of the key reasons why dealers choose to partner with Gamma rather than another supplier? Neil Taylor: Ease of onboarding is really important. It’s up to each partner to say what want from us, but essentially everybody gets a business development manager to look after their account. A small partner might get a desk-based account manager who will conduct webinars and train them up on how to spot opportunities. If face-to-face contact is required, a field-based person can go out and do exactly the same, but in person. If a partner is new to telecoms, for instance a managed print service provider, we can create campaigns-in-a-box for them. Our in-house marketing experts can go in and create all their campaign collateral, from social media banners to email footers, and ensure that all messaging is aligned and that their customer base is made aware of what they now offer. I don’t know if we would do that in every instance, but we can really throw our weight behind partners we think have a lot of potential. It also helps dealers to know we have the expertise to make sure no opportunity is lost. Although my team is quite small, we’ve got 50 or 60 direct sales people with experience across multiple sectors who funnel into our team and sift the opportunities. It really does help partners to know that if the opportunity is in the public sector, we’ve got public sector specialists that can work on it, frameworks that they can buy from; if it’s enterprise we’ve got a specialist team that can do that; and if it’s SME, we’ve got people who can talk to those types of organisation as well. Lastly, they really value partnering with a company of Gamma’s size and capability. We provide a complete communications service across our national voice and data network, including UC, connectivity and mobile. We are the leading SIP provider in the UK and, with 601,000 cloud PBX seats, are the UK’s leading Hosted provider in the sub-500 seats category. That sort of pedigree is hugely reassuring for partners that might be nervous about entering a new technology area. To find out more about how Gamma can help expand your customer offering with unified communications as a service (UCaaS), SIP trunking, connectivity and mobile services, please email dealer@ gamma.co.uk, call 0333 014 0000 or visit www.gamma.co.uk . We have various models within the dealer channel. One is to be an Introducer, where the partner introduces a contact to us and we take over the sale from start to finish. Two is to be a Revenue Share Partner, a traditional dealer model, where they bring us the signed order form and we do the rest, although that is becoming increasingly rare as people today want us to do a lot of the selling for them. The third option is to be a Strategic Partner, where we will go into that business and help them to set up a whole marketing campaign, including collateral, artwork and web copy. We can even provide them with a tailored delivery plan too. Our team provides inhouse sales and product training, if needed, and they’ll manage the progress through regular campaign meetings. We can even put in heads to canvas their base and create sales opportunities, which our sales specialists will close and for which the partner gets a pretty decent commission. That option is a no-brainer for some organisations. Technology Reseller: Is the dealer side of your business growing? Neil Taylor: Yes it is, and It’s a part of the business that we really want to put some effort behind. It is fair to say that over the last 14 years, the dealer side of the business has taken a bit of a backseat, as partners wanted to own the customer and build a base that they could sell. This took them down the Wholesale route, but now analysts are telling us that the UK market is going more and more down the Direct route, so we have made a conscious decision to focus on recruiting more dealers. ...continued