“In this sector of the marketplace, winning business is more to do with the relationship that exists between the reseller and the customer than the brand of the solution they offer.”
“Not that you’ll get any of the large global players who’ve poured millions of dollars into promoting their name and image to admit that of course!” continues Hayman.
SpliceCom’s route to market for their products in the UK is one that they’ve pursued from day one; No Distribution, No Direct Sales. This means that the SpliceCom team and their channel partners form the close bonds that only come from working closely together on a regular basis; from the beginning to the end of the sales process and from pre-sale to post at a technical level.
“Whilst brand name might not be as important to the prospect in this area of the market as it is in the medium to large Enterprise, the resellers’ relationship with the vendor certainly is,” continues Hayman. “Our direct relationships with our channel, the ability of our sales teams to offer support, including demonstrations, at the point of sale and the fact that we’re the only British manufacturer of business telephone systems means that our partners and their customers have a big say in our product strategy and development programme. We’re the only PBX vendor who can say that the UK is their most important market.”
In product terms SpliceCom’s channel have two telephony platforms to meet the customer demand for maximiser in the sub-24 extension market. The 5108 Call Server covers the very small end up to 8 extensions, whilst the 5100 Call Server starts at 8 extensions and scales all the way up to 500. Both Call Servers offer the same advanced maximiser features and benefits, including; embedded voicemail, auto attendant and IVR, call recording, forwarding of voicemails to email, use of existing mobile/GSM phones as maximiser extensions, a choice of IP, analogue or mobile/GSM phones for home or remote working and the ability to re-use any existing analogue phones on the system.
“As budgets are usually fairly tight for a system sale of this size, the maximiser feature set and our ‘Fair Trade’ licencing policy allows our partners to offer a highly saleable and award winning product at a competitive price for smaller business requirements,” continues Hayman.
“For example, we provide Fixed Mobile Convergence (FMC) support as standard on maximiser. This allows employees to receive DDI calls on their mobiles when they’re out of the office, with the ability to put the call on hold and execute a blind or assisted transfer, on or off switch, should they need to. And we can do this for any mobile, without the need to load an application on it. Needless to say, this Mobility application is proving popular for all sizes of business, irrespective of their size. But in particular the smaller organisations have found that they can now still handle calls even when there’s no one in the office – and there’s no need to hand out their mobile numbers if they don’t want to”