Comms Business Magazine talks to Steve Jansky, CEO of Nottingham based Hello Telecom about the market, trends and channel strategy drivers.
Comms Business Magazine (CBM): What have been your key growth areas during the past year and what are your growth expectations for the coming 12 months?
Steve Jansky (SJ): Over the past 12 months Hello Telecom has seen several key growth areas in the Channel and I anticipate further growth in these areas within the next 12 months. Hosted voice extensions and SIP trunks is one of the key areas where I expect to see a 50% growth.
We are able to offer a single seamless solution where SIP trunks can be used in conjunction with the Hello Telecom Hosted Business Telephony service. Hosted call centre services is a fast paced area where we serve highly agile solutions to our business clients and we foresee a vast 500% growth in minutes in this sector. Provision of connectivity, including broadband and leased circuits, is a fast growing and hugely competitive area. Hello Telecom provide and support a range of uncapped Internet data connectivity solutions and Datalink technologies that can be tailored to our clients’ specific requirements. I anticipate an immense 200% growth in the provision of connectivity including broadband and leased circuits markets too.
CBM: What are the three main market trends and emerging markets that are influencing your go-to-market strategy this year?
SJ: One trend has to be the adoption of a single supplier for comms and IT services, which leads to the blurring of the distinctions between IT and comms providers in my opinion. Another emerging trend in the industry is the increasing need for businesses to bring comms in to the enterprise with integrated tools and services. As a result of this we are offering increasingly more integrated solutions to our clients. The simplification of the offers into unitised costs per user is another trend that also influences the business strategies in the Channel, including ours. New entrants in emerging markets in particular need fixed operating costs.
CBM: How do these market drivers translate into your near/mid-term channel strategy?
SJ: These market drivers translate into our channel strategy in form of a new range of business integration facilities that will appeal to both IT and comms channels, which we will introduce in the near future. Increasingly, our services will be offered as ‘A la carte’ or on a defined bundled services model.
CBM: What strategic channel moves will you be making in the coming year in terms of attacking existing markets with new products/services and addressing new markets with new products/services?
SJ: To begin with, we are introducing a bureau billing service to enable the partners who are not traditional comms dealers to move into this space without the need to procure billing expertise and systems. Our future offers will include a premium hosted mobile service to sectors requiring statutory accountability and a range of core cloud IT facilities that partners can white-label and add to their portfolio of services.
CBM: What do you see as the biggest challenges/opportunities in the UK ICT channel and how will you maximise the opportunity and address the challenges as they relate to you?
SJ: One of the biggest challenges I see in the UK ICT Channel is that many comms services are less entrenched or sticky than they once appeared which brings with it a threat of increased churn. In turn, this creates opportunities for our partners to exploit more frequent service switching points. Another challenge is that the cloud industry is hampered by a lack of suitably priced connectivity where businesses require it. Not everyone can justify a 100/100Mb solution. By creating offers of IT and comms services as hosted bundles to replace existing PSTN and data services, the outlay on connectivity can be justified by savings on CPE purchases/maintenance and greatly increased efficiency.