HIPCOM’s Partner event was attended by over 80 people from their channel and was a chance to launch new products, hear success stories, and network at the Royal Society of Arts in London.
The event started with a review of the journey to date with a number of HIPCOM firsts in the market since being founded in 2005 and a recap on the four product pillars. These are;
Voice – under this banner is a Hosted PBX with a complete set of enterprise feature services and SIP Trunking as a straight ISDN replacement. This provides revenue overlay functionality such as CRM and Call Recording
Video - Video calling between desktop, tablets, smart phones and IP phones.
Mobility – HIPCOM’s MobileOffice which works across any voice service providing twinning with users BYON (Bring Your Own Network, smart phones tablets etc.). Call Director, which provides seamless call transfer and handling between all user devices – desk phone to mobile and back. Call Director is a network based solution – rather than a premise based deployment which typically carry high entry costs.
Apps – HIPCOM delivers both free and paid for applications. Call Logging launched earlier this year provides call analysis for an entire communications estate directly to customers - regardless of service. MobileToolbar allows service control directly from an iPhone. Web integration into Outlook and CRM integration tie business applications to the customers voice services.
HIPCOM says ‘that in keeping with the market leading Open Cloud Communications Platform – all these pillars work seamlessly together and can be overlaid/mixed and matched to ensure that resellers are not stuck in sales silos’.
New Applications
A key announcement at the Partner Event was the launch of the new UC product pillar. This expands the HIPCOM offering to deliver UC service to the channel – with true voice enterprise services. UC Office is a client which delivers voice, video, IM and presense, conferencing and collaboration services to desktops, smartphones and tablets. As with the rest of the HIPCOM service – this is built into their Service Delivery Platform allowing resellers to deploy a full enterprise product set, on demand in minutes. HIPCOM say they are the only UK wholesale provider doing this.
James Brind – HIPCOM CTO and co-founder stated, “The key message is that we have a full suite of UC products in the cloud, built for the channel and delivered in real-time. Since 2005, HIPCOM’s foundation is a platform that is carrier class, has geo independent data resiliency, 999 services and self provisioning portals that have been specifically built for the channel – all wrapped by ISO 27001 and Service Level Guarantees”.
Paul Aabryn – HIPCOM Strategy Director and co-founder stated, “Key to the heart of HIPCOM is the channel. We are and remain channel only – with a platform purposely designed to create an easy to use environment to power both further technical innovation and rapid, cost effective delivery of commination’s services.”
Aabryn further showed this commitment to the channel by providing a first look at the new portals due for release in September.
“HIPCOM delivered a market first with Atreus and building on its strengths and, our acquisition of the IPR from Sonus in 2012, is delivering a brand new look and feel to raise the bar again in terms of services, features and usability.”
Rob Murdoch, HIPCOM Sales Director told delegates, “HIPCOM’s subscriber base and turnover has been doubling since 2011 with a churn rate that is less than 1%. Over 5000 business’s trust HIPCOM with their communications. These range from national new papers, health authorities, financial institutions and SMBs. Credibility is key here. In a maturing market, this pedigree is important for your customers to demonstrate our shared commitment to them. We have been here for the long haul and these performance statistics speak for themselves.”
Murdoch also spoke about the opportunity that is available to the channel.
“This is a disruptive technology that provides a myriad of sales opportunities. As a further incentive, the HIPCOM Sales Club is taking the top performing channel partners to New York. Sales and turnover has doubled and we are on target to achieve it again this year – we want our partners to continue to share in our success. As part of the incentive all sales of the new UC products will be rewarded with double points!”
The event was rounded of with a Q&A session, live demonstrations of UCOffice, Call logging and Call Centre Wallboard and followed by lunch and drinks.
Ed Says…
Experience counts in this business as HIPCOM demonstrated at the Partner Event. Today the firm is offering channel partners a robust voice service at the heart surrounded by a set SIP trunk based overlay service which now includes their UCOffice. HIPCOM has demonstrated how to differentiate and how to add value.