Feature

Getting Practical with SIP

Networks & Network Services
Enzo Viscito, Managing Director at Inclarity, says that it’s time for resellers to capitalise on the opportunity that SIP trunks are presenting to the channel and that it is now time to ‘get practical’ and look at what SIP trunks can do for a channel provider and their customers.

To help Comms Business to probe the market trends for SIP trunks, Enzo Viscito, Managing Director at Inclarity decided to take a very practical approach.

“There is plenty of useful commentary about the potential value of SIP trunks to the channel. To complement this, the Inclarity team chose to look at the opportunity for partners from a very practical perspective by considering some real achievements and putting them into context.

The customer scenario

Consider a UK customer of a channel partner. The illustration shows that the customer has some significant opportunities to drive the cost of telephony down and business performance up. This is a typical scenario and all of the benefits outlined are based on real data points.

Currently, the reseller’s customer has a main office, a network of regional offices and a small call centre connected by ISDN. The satellite offices and remote workers dial in through the PSTN or the mobile networks.

This customer wants to rationalise the existing telephony solution to save money and achieve connectivity across the whole company.

The current situation

inclarity-Current-scenario

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The reseller opportunity

This scenario presents a number of commercial opportunities that create value for the customer and the reseller. The illustration shows how the reseller can create a straight forward, yet persuasive, solution using a combination of SIP trunking and hosted telephony. The value points pertinent to the sale are detailed from the customer and the reseller perspectives.

 

inclarity-After-scenario

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Customer value

Significant cost efficiencies from replacement of ISDN with SIP trunks. In this scenario, we estimate savings of between 35% and 45% based on 9 to 5 office hour usage.

The opportunity to remove the call centre and redeploy agents using a hosted service, creating office infrastructure savings and improving agent performance through closer collaboration with colleagues in the remaining offices.

Centralised communications, providing opportunities for intelligent call routing and single number contact for employees with ‘follow me’ capabilities.

Reseller value

Higher margin on the SIP trunking services from the trunks themselves and the business continuity services that are sold with them.

Future up-sell opportunity. As the customer requires more communications services, the reseller is in the ideal position to supply them.

Customer retention. The consolidation of the call centre into the other offices has improved the customer’s business capability and saved substantial capital and operational costs. The customer has become very loyal to the reseller and it will be difficult for a competitor to win this customer’s future business.

Viscito concludes, “This practical example is not complicated, yet it creates a compelling opportunity for the buyer and the seller. When sold in this way, SIP trunks deliver the channel with an attractive and significant route to market that the channel should embrace.”