The unified communications (UC) and cloud telephony solutions provider held the event at King’s Place on Wednesday 22nd February.
Kicking off at 10am with an update from group CEO Matt Mansell, the event aimed to keep partners informed with key business updates, including the launch of its new CallSwitchOne platform.
Mansell, who was appointed to the role of CEO in January, began by providing attendees with an overview of the business’ recent activities and some takeaways and events from the past year, including the vendor’s securing of private equity funding from Queen’s Park Equity (QPE) last summer. Mansell founded SaaS UC platform Yay.com and moved into the role at TelcoSwitch following QPE’s investment in Yay last Autumn, which enabled the platform to accelerate its channel offering through leveraging TelcoSwitch’s partner base – which has now grown to 450, Mansell told attendees.
Mansell discussed key trends and catalysts for the company’s growth, which included presenting some of the findings from its 2023 annual industry report, The State of Business Communications. He spoke about the upcoming PSTN switch-off and developing hybrid working landscape driving the continued need for high-quality collaboration solutions for both remote and office-based workers, with the CPaaS (communications platform as a service) market projected to continue accelerating in growth over the coming years, creating a wealth of opportunity for the UC vendor and its partners.
Simon Blackwell, who next delivered a seminar on partner marketing insights, was also keen to address the topic of the PSTN switch-off. “We need to completely reframe the message,” he told the audience, emphasising that whilst in our industry we are all aware of the ‘switch-off’ and what that means, customers won’t necessarily ‘speak the same language’ and need to be guided by partners in a way that allows them to understand the process and the opportunities that Channel partners can help them to gain from it with the right technology.
Taking the audience through the vendor’s marketing roadmap and partner benefits, he also explained the new partner programme, set to launch in Q2. The new partner programme will comprise three newly formed tiers for TelcoSwitch’s partner base: Channel Partners (over 50 seats), Platinum Partners (over 500 seats) and Carbon Partners (over 1500 seats). Whilst developing a tiered programme isn’t anything particularly 'groundbreaking’ itself, Blackwell said, the vendor had thought carefully about how to differentiate itself and offer extra benefit to partners within these tiers.
“We spent a lot of time looking at how other vendors operate … We started to think about what we could do that could be a little bit different – how could we help you, how could we add value,” Blackwell told the audience, taking them through partner benefits such as the physical partner media kit for Platinum and Carbon partners, as well as access to new partner organisations including website visitor identification software provider Lead Forensics, and access to MDF programmes.
“If you’ve got a crazy, ridiculous idea for something you want to do and it’s something you believe in, talk to us about it, and if it’s something that we believe in – if you want to take that risk, we will share that with you, we’ll split that risk,” he told partners.
Following this, Mansell and team members Jez Pickering, customer experience manager, and James Lockhart, head of product marketing, delivered a keynote address in which interactive demonstrations were included taking partners through the new CallSwitchOne UCaaS platform and some of its key features. These include a single pane of glass dashboard with Open-API and Webhook libraries to support bespoke integration requirements, customisable pricing structures and Google Cloud Infrastructure.
Jamie Woodruff, a cybersecurity expert, also delivered an insightful afternoon session in which he emphasised the importance of cybersecurity considerations whilst dealing with an ever-evolving threat landscape.
Finally, the day culminated in TelcoSwitch’s first ever Partner Awards ceremony, presented by MD of channel Sam Giggle.
Alfonica took home the Contact Centre Employment Award; Dataquest Group won the Product Champion award; Fibre Telecoms UK was Best Newcomer; Best 4 Business Communications was Fastest-Growing Partner; Cobalt Communication Solutions took SMB Partner of the Year; and Sharp IT Services snapped up Enterprise Partner of the Year.