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Smart moves by Colt
INTERVIEW
Colt’s new Smart Office product is more than just a channel friendly way of bundling together connectivity with essential cloud services for the mid-market, says Business Unit Director Rob Jupp, it also signifies a year of change for the company.
ike most operators, 2009 was tough for Colt, but cost cutting combined with growth in demand for managed services and Ethernet access meant that it finished the year out of debt and with a 4.9 per cent increase in earnings. The tough times aren’t over, however, as the first three months of 2010 showed the group’s EBITA down 1.9 per cent on the same period last year, although the firm did reveal comfortably higher operating margins.
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Outside of the financials, much has changed at Colt over the last 12 months, Jupp says. There’s been a major rebranding exercise, and a change in strategy to focus on its indirect channel in the mid- sized market. “Smart Office really is the culmination of a year long internal change program to get us ready for the new strategy and branding,” he explains. “It’s very much about our new strapline – ‘smarter, faster, further’ – and how we work together as a team to support our customers better.”
Essentially, Smart Office is a combination of those services that have helped the company succeed in the enterprise space bundled together as a single
product for the SME channel. The core is uncontended – increasingly Ethernet – Internet access, with SIP trunking, managed firewall, PC back-up, mail security and managed email available as bolt-on services which can be simultaneously provisioned and billed. “It’s easy to order, with a single order form,” says Jupp. “Initially it’s being launched for the agency channel, and we’ll soon be talking to resellers about how to make it suitable to them.”
Colt, of course, isn’t the only company to be bundling similar packages for wholesale, and the ‘single supplier’ strategy is very much en vogue at the moment because of the long-term stability it creates within a customer base. It’s a simple formula, the more services a customer takes, the ‘stickier’ they are. Jupp acknowledges that as more suppliers bundle more services into giant convergence packages, it can become difficult to tell them apart on paper. Which is where the new focus on channel activity comes in.
“The differentiation comes from our partners,” he said. “They’re the experts who know their particular niche far better than we ever could, so they wrap their own
Smart Office is the culmination of an internal change program to get us ready for the new strategy
Rob Jupp
“The front desk and pre-sales support resources are now completely focused on indirect channels”
service around what we do. We differentiate ourselves through the quality of the service that we offer. Our partners come to us knowing that if they buy a Colt service it will be reliable and carrier grade quality.”
As a demonstration of its commitment to partners, Jupp claims that almost all new business in the SME space is now coming through the channel. “We do have some direct customers that we’ll continue to serve,” he added. “And if they choose to order Smart Office it will be available to them. But we’re mainly focused on the partner channel.”
Jupp stated that Colt is also offering partners marketing support, joint campaigns and, critically, lead generation. His department has generated almost twice as many new
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leads in the first part of 2010 as it did in the entire preceding 12 month period, he claims, and they’ve all been handled through partners. “We also have a dedicated training manager on board now, who’s delivering web-based and face-to-face training on product knowledge and tools that we’re rolling out,” said Jupp. “Within my area, the front desk and pre-sales support resources are now completely focused on indirect channels.”
In order to strengthen its position Colt is actively seeking new channels to market, but Jupp stressed that this is a part of an overall goal of expansion and won’t be at the expense of existing partners. “We’re looking for PBX resellers for our VoIP access proposition within Smart Office,” he commented. “It’s an area that we think we could be stronger in.” n
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