technologyreseller.co.uk 21 TR: How did you find botario? AW: We were actively looking for investments and were clear that we wanted to get into AI, a future-based investment, rather than buying new users, which is a revenue-based investment. We had a long list of possibilities, and botario was one of them. Coincidentally, before we called them, they got in touch with us because they were looking for the expert in cloud telephony solutions for an AI offering they had and were interested in partnering with us. We first connected on a business level, then we met their people and realised this could work. It was not the usual M&A process. TR: Are the solutions you’ve launched so far a revenue opportunity for partners or are they just another reason to choose NFON cloud telephony? AW: There are multiple dimensions to this. The simplest is the voice message transcription that you saw today. This new feature in cloud PBX, comes with zero cost and is integrated in the solution you already have, clearly improving the attractiveness of the core product. We will do a lot more integrations like this over the coming weeks and months. Another aspect is the ability for a partner to sell AI solutions, for example their business. We may do this by including AI features in our core proposition or we may do it separately for a specific solution with AI as an enabling technology. But these will not be AI sales. AI is a buzzword. What we offer are solutions for customers’ challenges. TR: Are you giving channel partners the ability to develop their own solutions to their customers’ problems or would they identify the problem and then come to you and say ‘This Is the problem. Can you resolve it for us?’? AW: We strive to sell a clear product portfolio but, at heart, NFON is a tailormade solutions company. We have a technical consulting department, we have a professional services department, we have AI sales specialists that we throw into specific projects that a partner might bring to us. So, yes, if there’s a specific challenge or situation we will get in there, but we can’t do this for small projects bringing in say €500 revenue per month. They have to be of a certain size. For those that are, we have resources we can throw at projects, and we will bear the cost of that, not the channel partner. TR: Will you make your AI technologies available to partners so that they can go down this route? AW: No, we won’t. To be able to offer AI solutions, the main requirement is not to have the right technical resources, enough storage etc., as it would have been in the past, but to have developers and people who can see the next step you need to take. A large language model (LLM) is a running system; it changes every second, so you need developers. We started pretty early last year with our AI Competence Centre. In August we bought botario, a company with 50 developers, all in Germany, all highly educated and all experts in AI development. They are all on board and integrated with NFON. That Competence Centre is the asset we have. Technology Reseller (TR): A lot of communications companies have integrated AI into their solutions. Is what you are doing with AI defensive, to protect your existing position, or is it offensive, to give you a competitive advantage? Alexander Wettjen (AW): My point of view, from the perspective of the sales channel rather than portfolio development, is that it is more of an offensive move, due to the fact that we really can say, this is real – you as a partner, you as a customer can use it now. You say a lot of companies have integrated AI, but in the comments and articles I’ve read, they are very particular about the wording they use. They say ‘we see this as an opportunity’ or ‘we are interested in going down this route’, but they are not saying ‘you can buy it now, you can use it, you have it here, live’. So, when you ask whether this is an offensive or a defensive move, I would say in our wording, in our thinking, in our mindset, we are on the offensive. We think getting in first gives us an advantage, but we will have to deliver. TR: Have your channel partners been asking for this? AW: Channel customers are not asking for AI. We have to be clear, coming from a portfolio product development perspective, that when it comes to partners, to channel, to customers, to sales, we are still solving problems for customers. In the case study we showed (see page 20), the first interaction with the client was to talk about cloud communications, business telephony. It was only later that the client said ‘My main problem is I have so many calls and I can’t answer them all because I don’t have the resources, the people to do it’. He was not asking for an AI feature to solve his problem, but that is ultimately what the partner delivered. We have to translate AI sales into what we always do, which is to solve the problems that customers have in their daily business, to improve their business, to grow their business, to secure or optimise CLOUD TELEPHONY continued... With Alexander Wettjen, VP Group Sales, NFON Q&A Alexander Wettjen
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