Meeting in his fifth month as Managing Director at Daisy Wholesale, Terry O’Brien was finalising plans for the coming financial year (April-March) and considering integration plans for Net Crowd, the professional services company Daisy Group had just purchased and for which he is now responsible.
Terry O’Brien (TB): With the acquisition of Net Crowd we have opportunity to expand our professional services offering for resellers in to the data as well as the voice markets through a white label service. As well as the actual service we would be able to offer the availability of such service will help resellers that wish to enter new markets by providing the support services they need to cross or up-sell either voice or data products.
We work in a very dynamic market where business is changing. Daisy Whole recognises this and has to respond by changing ourselves. Investment in key areas is crucial to success – we need to be more proactive than reactive so we will be investing in a new channel support model. This involves investing in systems and people. For example, we need to have one billing system and one partner portal for resellers. The result of this will be the coming together of O-Bit and Daisy systems in to one set of commercials as well as delivering a far slicker service for partners. Our objective is to complete the migration to a single billing system within 12 months but to have the solution technically ready by September this year.
Our goal for the new partner portal is to deliver a great partner experience. At the moment we are scoping what the partner portal will deliver.
Comms Business Magazine (CBM): What else will resellers see from Daisy wholesale in the coming year?
TB: We are adding and developing many new products and services to our portfolio to provide even more opportunities for our reseller partners. These will include hosted telephony, hosted data services, managed services, SIP trunks and SaaS solutions. We have our own Broadsoft hosted telephony platform and our own data centres so we are very excited about these two offerings.
CBM: What do you think resellers will be keen to see from Daisy Wholesale?
TB: Resellers want to have more people on the phone they can talk to from both a sales and technical perspective. For resellers wishing to enter new markets with new products, services and applications from Daisy means we need to provide first class reseller support both from the desk and in the field. We will invest in identifying, recruiting and training the right staff to deliver this service and then measuring partner satisfaction levels very closely.
Staff will be rewarded on customer service excellence. Service excellence needs to be a constituent part of our DNA and we need to know exactly how our channel partners feel about working with us. Again, becoming more proactive with our partners is going to be a key deliverable.
CBM: Customer service excellence means the resellers can focus more on sales opportunities one would assume?
TB: Indeed it will and here we will be talking about up-selling as wells as cross-selling opportunities. Both are very important.
Cross-selling opportunities, such as for a lines and calls resellers then adding mobile to their portfolio is a great move. At the same time that reseller could up-sell hosted telephony.
For Daisy Wholesale the task is ‘how do we provide that hosted telephony service so that the reseller maximises revenue opportunity and minimises risk’?
CBM: So what will be the key differences your resellers will see this year?
TB: The cost base of our business is in good shape so we are able to invest for the future with confidence. This year we will deliver training and development for our partners through investment in the right resources here.
Resellers will notice new product additions, a focus on up-selling, more specialist sales people here to support them and a new, more proactive way in which we support them.
The market in which we operate is as exciting as it ever was with new products, new incentives and money to be made. There are lots of customers to look after and customers today want more for their money. They want services that can be tailored or bespoke to their business which means opportunity for the resellers who recognise the need to embrace change.