Automated Transcript
Elliott Robertshaw: Good afternoon, my name’s Elliott Robertshaw, one of the BDMs at Pragma, and today I’m at Gammaverse, joined by James Bustin, the managing director of Associated Telecom.
James Bustin, Managing Director at Associated Telecom: Yeah, hi Elliott.
Elliott: How are you?
James: Good, thanks. You?
Elliott: Yeah, excellent. Thank you for taking the time out. I’ve just got a few questions about various bits that have been going on. So, I understand you’ve just recently added iPECS to your portfolio, having been a long-standing Gamma partner. Just really interested to know why you added it to the product portfolio?
James: So, partnerships are really, really important to us. We’ve had a long-term partnership with Gamma. They get us, we get them. But there were some gaps in the market, if you like, that Horizon, as good as it is, didn’t always suit every customer that we dealt with. We’re typically dealing with SMEs, so sort of five to 15 users. But we found that where there was high usage with low users or higher users with low usage, it didn’t always fit. So, the iPECS product, with it being delivered by Gamma and having that relationship and support from them, was great. It filled that little niche that we wanted to serve initially, but it also fits into the areas that we want to grow into with bigger businesses, bigger users, it really suited that.
Elliott: Yeah, excellent. I understand now you’ve onboarded a few customers with the iPECS portfolio. Interested to know what sort of feedback you’ve had from those initial users?
James: The bespoke integration has been absolutely fantastic. Our sales staff have really enjoyed being able to sell that and deliver what customers want. The softphone license has been great, the light license has been great. But then from a support perspective, it’s not just about whether we can sell it. It’s can we deliver it and can we support it. Our reputation is really important to us, and the people we partner with are really important to us, so we have to be able to deliver. If there is an issue, if there is a problem, we have to know we’ve got backup. The feedback from the guys just before we jumped on this podcast has been absolutely excellent. They’ve had every little bit of help they needed. We’ve had you on the phone for hours, talking through issues, helping them out, helping them set things up the right way, teaching them tips and tricks. It’s been a really good experience so far.
Elliott: Excellent. So, sort of the whole holistic approach from sales, technical, installs been perfect.
James: Absolutely perfect.
Elliott: Happy days. And then, from a product perspective, obviously, we’ve got quite a wide product portfolio. What would you say are the areas within the iPECS portfolio that excite customers and sales staff, and what do you look to push out more in the coming 6-12 months?
James: The exciting thing for us is probably different to your previous partner, shall we say, because we were really on board with Horizon. So we’ve really noticed the differences as opposed to the core elements. Integrations have been great. Analytics has been great. The fact that it comes with built-in call recording as standard is perfect. It’s a great option to just try it out, almost that opt in or opt out period for longer terms. And then a big benefit for us, where we’d kind of steered clear of larger users, education sites, hotels, the Light license has been absolutely brilliant. The sales guys are revisiting deals they may have walked away from 12-18 months ago, and now they’re knocking on the door again, going back in there, and there’s business coming out of them. It’s getting bigger and bigger. The consultants are really enjoying the fact that they’ve got more opportunities, and the fact that we can deliver it with the help of you guys has been great. So, the sales guys love it, and we know we’re providing a really good customer experience.
Elliott: Fantastic. And just going on to a different point, I guess a lot today at Gammaverse, we’ve discussed the SIP to UCaaS migration and how that’s going to change over the coming six to 12 months. How do you see that benefit, and how are you guys looking to attack that market at Associated Telecom?
James: So, we’re a little bit of an anomaly because we already got into hosted in 2019. So, we didn’t have this huge ISDN base. We’ve never sold phone systems; we’ve always been UCaaS. So, our benefit is that people who may be a little bit nervous about shifting their customers to UCaaS, we’re going to take them, kind of thing. We’re happy just going with the UCaaS model. But what we really like is the analog to digital switch that we can do with iPECS. Maybe we’ve got a hotel that doesn’t want to recable everything. They can’t close their rooms, replaster everywhere, redecorate. There’s again a product fit. If you’ve got somebody that hasn’t fully written off their customer phone system, we can go in a little bit different to where we were before, suggesting that you’ve got to change all your kit, you got to pay a per-user-per-month model, and we’ve got an alternative now. So yeah, that’s a real opportunity to us to tap into larger opportunities, larger businesses that previously we may have steered away from or not been as competitive with.
Elliott: Interesting. So, that’s the hospitality sector, where you can have that hybrid model.
James: And then there’s a natural fit with education, like schools. Schools that need a handset in the room but don’t want to pay for minutes and bundles and features because it’s only for incoming calls. It really fits that niche for us.
Elliott: Excellent. So again, final question for me. Interested to understand, you’ve touched on hospitality and education there with the iPECS offering. Where do you see other verticals where you can maybe look to push into, whether that be other areas or higher amounts of users that maybe weren’t a priority before?
James: So, compliant call recording has been really, really helpful. We’ve got a couple of opportunities we’re working on with that, and the feedback has been really good from our BDMs. We’re trying to up the average size of our customers, so actually larger users with lower usage per user. Again, those light licenses and the analog-to-digital switch is a really good option. So, the next 12 months for us will be focused on upping the average size of our customers. Which, between the Webex offering on Gamma and the iPECS offering from Pragma, we’re ticking every box, basically.
Elliott: I’m interested to know, obviously at Gammaverse 2024, what benefits do you see for Associated Telecom in events like today?
James: I think we can be really insular as businesses, just focusing on what we do day-to-day. It’s great to step away and engage with others. One of the things I like about Gammaverse and Gamma Partners is that there’s a really good atmosphere amongst us. We’re all competing, but there’s a friendly rivalry. It’s great to see a lot of familiar faces and engage with them, but also to get some ideas that maybe we haven’t thought of. We have businesses that are a little bit further along in their journey that we can learn from. Hearing from independent panelists, like Dom from Cavell, who spoke about how they analyse the market and how it’s changing. As a small business, it’s really key to learn those things. It might not be something that’s on the horizon for our customers right now, but if enterprise businesses are doing it now, you can guess that SMEs will be doing it in three to four years’ time. So, it’s really good to pick up tips and hints on where the market is going, engage with people at Gamma that we don’t get to see as often, and also engage with some other partners and see what they’re doing. Where can we improve our business, and also, work out that a lot of the things we’re doing right are being backed up in these conversations. So, part of it is that confirmation that what we’re doing is the right thing, and part of it is hearing what the next steps should be.
Elliott: Brilliant. Just one thing I want to ask. Our managing director, Will Morey, asked earlier if there was one word you could sum up UCaaS with, what would it be? Interested to know what you would put on that Slido QR code.
James: I didn’t put sausages on there.
Elliott: What would I sum it up with?
James: Well, I put “the future of communication.” It’s kind of that “evolve or die” mentality. John posted a few things about Netflix, for example, as the videotape. Nokia was a key example of a huge business at the top of the peak of its power, but because it didn’t evolve, it was superseded by the Apples and Androids of this world. And that’s where we sit. We’re always trying to re-evolve our business to make sure that, A, we’re winning as much business as possible, but B, that coming to events like this helps us stay ahead of the curve.
Elliott: Fantastic. Cool. Well, that’s it for today, so thank you for your input, and enjoy the rest of Gammaverse.
James: You’re welcome, thank you.
