COMPANY PROFILE Value adds up for Carter
DMSL may not feature highly on your list of top telecoms distributors but industry awareness is not an issue for Managing Director John Carter whose priority is the ongoing success of his reseller partners.
director’s guarantees. Under the agreement dealers will receive a 33 per cent revenue share and 33 per cent of the customer value in the event of a business sale.
John Carter
based distribution business which has expanded rapidly on the back of a long standing relationship with BT and, as the company’s name suggests, a dedication to supporting dealers with reactive and creative marketing support they could never produce themselves. Another element to the company’s growth has been the success of its FixITLocal web engine which intelligently directs leads from businesses in need of IT help to local specialists, often data resellers, who then have upsell opportunities. DMSL has even engineered
D
MSL stands for Direct Market Services Limited, Carter’s Romford-
Call Line Identity protocols so, for example, a Telford- based customer responding to a marketing campaign and calling an 0844 number on an eshot or direct mail leaflet is automatically routed to a dealer in the Telford area.
These integrated and joined up marketing initiatives, aimed predominantly at IT dealers addressing as Carter puts is ‘the S in SMEs’, link very nicely with his latest initiative which is an agreement with O2 Joined Up partner Fidelity Group. The deal gives DMSL reseller partners a golden opportunity to own their customers without the onerous clauses demanded by the mobile networks such as bonds and
The roadshow was a great success
44 COMMS DEALER DECEMBER 2011
Carter said: “The 0-50 employee businesses we target need just as much bandwidth as the bigger ones and are looking at things like hosted voice as well. There is also a ludicrous situation out there where some of our Apple accredited resellers can’t get hold of iPhones but under this agreement they can. Through Fidelity and its O2 partnership we can now offer our dealers complete joined up solutions including landlines, mobiles, high bandwidth broadband, hosted voice and other added value products like data backup.”
According to Carter, DMSL removes the risk. “When you are dealing with mobiles there has to be a bond, a big bond,” he said. “We have put that bond up with Fidelity. This means our dealers haven’t got the credit risk, that won’t have to put up a bond, they won’t have to sign guarantees. They may be sharing the margin but in normal circumstances they wouldn’t get near a direct deal with O2, let along the chance to sell iPhones.”
More importantly, as Carter stressed, the Fidelity/O2 deal brings his dealer partners a number of crucial benefits such as the opportunity to punch above their weight, the potential to earn ongoing recurring revenues, the chance to improve customer relationships and stickiness via Fidelity’s Anvil Billing Platform, and the ‘holy grail’ of customer ownership.
Pathways to profit Carter says the response to the plan from his dealer partners has been positive. “This deal takes them down a path they need to go but wouldn’t otherwise be able to,” he explained. “They understand what we are trying to do. They like the idea of customer ownership and adding value to their business, they like the idea of recurring incomes, they like the idea of selling other services to their existing customer base. They are saying this because they can’t survive without doing something.”
The success of DMSL’s campaign to persuade dealers to upgrade their customer offerings took a major step forward last month when over 20 IT partners were signed up at an inaugural educational roadshow
organised by Fidelity and O2. Delegates at the event were members of the Brigantia IT buying consortium which claims to be largest grouping of independent Computer Solution Providers in the United Kingdom with around 1,000 outlets. “The roadshow was a great success and demonstrated clearly to me the hunger there is for education about joined up telecoms solutions and the opportunities they present,” commented Carter after the event.
“One of the benefits of working with us is an umbrella agreement whereby all dealers can potentially sign up, get their own login and start providing joined-up business services via Fidelity’s Anvil billing system. We have a base of some two million small businesses and via our well proven web optimisation and call routing programmes we are effectively delivering enquiries about joined up communications directly to the Brigantia member.
“Most IT resellers work on cash deals. By locking in customers on Fidelity’s joined up communications contracts dealers can actually add some intrinsic value to their business. It’s a win-win solution all round.”
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www.comms-dealer.com
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