Established in October 2013, AVC One has been building its capabilities over the last nine months in readiness for a channel launch in to the UK and European unified communications and collaboration market. Here Director Adrian Hughes outlines what his company has to offer the channel and how other AVC Group based businesses can add new and integrated income streams for partners.
Comms Business Magazine (CBM): Tell us more about AVC Group – what are their principal activities?
Adrian Hughes (AH): AVC Group is a long established company with around 200 employees with offices throughout the UK and Europe. Made up of a number of separate companies, providing a wide and diverse portfolio, the group addresses a number of key markets in the communications and electronics sectors. For example, within AVC Media there are a number of operations where channel engagement with us will open up new customer opportunities in markets such as IT Managed Services.
Operating our own data centre environment we provide a range of capabilities from Content Management Systems and Wi-Fi solutions, data hosting services, telephony, VoIP, DSL and high capacity data circuits. Already deployed providing solutions globally to retail brands to interact and deliver awareness and engagement with its customers.
AVC Weeeco represents a huge and so far untapped potential source of income for resellers in the recycling of electronic equipment where we can handle the whole process and supply chain for a partner via an end user voucher system and a money back scheme that will help reseller’s customers finance new equipment.
Our NextGen operations can advise on and deliver energy saving solutions for business that are sustainable.
With our passion for Alternative Energy we are committed to creating a sustainable future, investing in technologies that will help the next generation and beyond.
We have built a reputation as one of the best energy efficiency companies in the UK, providing competitive commercial solutions delivered to the highest standards of quality and reliability by our accredited and fully trained engineering team.
Here our knowledge and operational expertise make AVC the perfect partner through specialist knowledge and advice on a range of energy saving projects i.e. commercial LED lighting; offering full turn-key service from design, installation, refurbishment and maintenance across a comprehensive range of energy saving LED lighting solutions; all monitored 24/7 by our market leading on-line software AVC Energy Eye.
CBM: What are the aims of AVC One, your own operation, and how will the channel benefit from partnering with you?
AH: AVC is a channel based unified communications operation that offers an integrated portfolio of products and services to channel partners. Since we were established we have been building a true fit for purpose channel offering and in doing so have invested heavily in building our infrastructure in terms of network capability and capacities. We have our own Broadsoft based hosted services platform with probably the largest capacity of any independent supplier in the UK market. This will enable us to respond immediately to both large and small-scale demand for services and help us drive the market for hosted services such as telephony, call centre and video applications – in fact the whole gamut of collaborative and unified communications applications.
CBM: How are you leveraging the scale, financial strengths and stability that the AVC Group provides?
AH: You are right that these factors play a huge role in the market for channel partners who want to know that they are dealing with a company of a stature that is large enough to have all the resources to support them long term yet retains local decision making and a speed of response they could not get elsewhere.
For resellers this means access to the whole range of AVC Group products and services. So as well as our own UC&C portfolio we can open up new income streams for resellers that will help them increase sales and margins as well as make their customers more ‘sticky’.
The key to successfully winning and retaining customers is to have an integrated portfolio of products and services that can be rolled out to end-users. We therefore look for synergies within the portfolio and how they can be applied for customer benefit and partner profit.
And of course we can deliver all this not only in the UK but also across Europe. Our message for resellers is therefore, ‘Talk to us about new and existing marketing opportunities, how you too can leverage our scale and breadth of operations and increase your own income and profitability’.