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BUSINESS INTERVIEW O-bit moves into mobile


O-bit Telecom has launched a mobile proposition that the company’s CEO, David Breith, claims will set a new benchmark in ease of provisioning and potential revenue earnings.


Dave Breith and Elizabeth Sparrow B


reith predicts that O-bit’s move into mobile, which follows a link-up


with O2, will add £2 million revenue per year over the near-term and significantly help the company to achieve its target of £41 million by 2014. The launch is part of O-bit’s retrenching plan following its acquisition by Daisy earlier this year. Since then Breith has negotiated with the parent company to secure an agreement that sees O-bit retain its standalone status rather than being merged. Prior to its acquisition, O-bit was in talks with O2 and about to seal a deal. “Pre-Daisy, mobile was on our roadmap,” said Breith. “When we sold we lost that proposition, but Daisy had a like-for-like scenario so we are back on track with our existing business plan.”


O-bit’s move into mobile is the culmination of a detailed search for the right offering. “It’s been hard and challenging to get the right proposition, not just in terms of the commercials but securing the right partner with the right offering,” said Breith.


O-bit’s mobile proposition wish-list was comprehensive,


and the key criteria included a speedy route to market supported by flexibility in provisioning, as well as other dealer must-haves. “Customer ownership, the ability to white label, the ability to bespoke tariffs quickly and easily for our customers, and a quick rollout without too much red tape are key components,” noted Breith. “Mobile is always going to be a ‘want to have’ product so speed to market is important.”


Breith hopes to achieve 5,000 sales per month within a year and early indications suggest that he will hit his marker as reseller interest is already high, he says. O-bit will market its mobile proposition as the most competitive in terms of ongoing revenue potential, citing as an example the middle package of three flavours which offers 30 per cent revenue share. “Within our three packages, to a certain point the margins that the reseller can earn is in their control,” explained Breith. “We believe our top package doubles the margins advertised by rivals. We’ve done our research.”


According to Elizabeth Sparrow, Sales & Marketing Director, flexibility will be


a key factor in winning greater market share. “We are willing to shape the deal and give resellers as much of the ongoing revenue that we can,” she said. “Mobile is a relatively easy vertical upsell for our resellers. It’s a service that offers longer term contracts compared to the minutes model. We’ve always known the key criteria is client ownership. Resellers want to own the customer and be able to send out a white label bill and offer a one bill solution to their end users.”


Success factors


An important success factor in helping O-bit achieve its ambitious aims is its Merlin portal, which, thanks to an 11-strong team of specialist in-house programmers, remains one step ahead of the game, claims Breith. Merlin is a provisioning tool, fault reporting tool and billing engine that runs the organisation and in turn gives resellers autonomy over the provisioning of services and how they want them to look. Mobile has been integrated into this piece of work.


Merlin also enables O-bit to offer resellers control over the ratios between upfront commission and ongoing revenue for mobile sales. “The reseller is in control and can tailor the proposition and tailor what they will make from it,” added Breith.


Just like a magic wand, Merlin produces instant results. “Resellers go online, click the order button, input how many handsets are required, which tariff, and a proposal will drop out of the bottom giving commission and ongoing revenue,” explained Breith. “O-bit has invested heavily in programming. This makes the whole customer experience a much more pleasant one. We are fully automated to deliver quickly to the reseller and end user. Resellers can do it all themselves without having to chase an account manager.”


Within Merlin sits a marketing area where the customer can brand not just the mobile product, but any of O-bit’s products and automatically get a high resolution pdf to send to their customers. “Within half an hour resellers can go onto our portal and download all of the products and have 50 pdfs ready to send to market,” explained Breith.


Sparrow believes that the mobile opportunity is ‘enormous’. “Everybody who has a handset has a mobile phone, so it’s about doubling the business,” she reckons. “Plus there’s the Unified Communications piece. It’s about going into a business and understanding all of their processes. But it’s also a difficult area for fixed


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line resellers to get to grips with. The way they build the packages is different, so we are making it easy for them.”


Mobile is a hot topic and there is a growing number of distributors and resellers selling similar services, but an attribute that could mean the difference between success and failure is the ability to react fast and give the market what it wants, believes Sparrow. So O-bit has built up a strong head of steam to accelerate the market. “Resellers must react quickly to ensure they ring fence the client as their own,” she affirmed. “It’s about making resellers efficient in the delivery.”


As well as following a policy based on the shortest distance between two points, O-bit says its reputation, at an emotional level, also makes a contribution to its appeal. “People like working with O-bit,” noted Breith. “It is a family orientated business with a great internal ethos that’s projected out to our customers. This breeds loyalty and over the years we have experienced little churn. When we launched the mobile proposition we didn’t just launch it with a few SIMs and token marketing collateral in the hope that resellers would sell it. We are providing all of the necessary tools to help resellers succeed with mobile.”


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