Automated Transcript
Chris Wade, Chief Marketing & Product Officer: Hi John. We’ve just come off stage, or you’ve just come off stage at Gammaverse. First time presenting, what was it like?
John Murphy, Managing Director of Gamma Business: It was a little bit nerve-wracking at first, but I must admit, it was just warming to see Andy and Matt presenting before me. They did a great job, and actually standing up there and seeing so many partners in the room, it really does hit you, you know, how successful we are collectively, I think, with the partner. So yeah, it felt good. Felt good thanks.
Chris: I mean it was amazing, coming across, you know, Andy and Matt and then yourself talking about things that are exciting. So you talked a bit about your priorities on stage. Just reiterate, what are your priorities? How do you see the next year ,18 months, two years, rolling out for us?
John: Yeah, so I mean I see, I think we’re in a fantastic place right now at Gamma. I think we’ve got to a point now where we’ve got some fantastic products to offer and I think, let’s face it, we’ve been a little bit behind on a few things. But it feels like a great place to be right now, and my priorities really are about giving more to the channel to sell… and I think we’re doing that. I think we’re doing that really well, and the second priority is to get them into new markets, you know, to markets like IoT, cyber, Microsoft. These are all markets that are important, and markets the channel I think, some of the big Channel partners are already in. But actually there’s a huge opportunity for a lot of Channel partners that aren’t in those markets to get into them, and that’s about future-proofing, you know, their businesses for the future. So that’s my second priority. Thirdly, I think for me it’s actually just trying to make things a bit more straightforward for the channel as well. It’s quite hard to onboard quite a few products from multiple different companies into one business. It creates lots of complexity, and actually can slow you down if you’re not careful. So one of the things that I think is really important is to offer a suite of managed services to the channel to really help them hand over the complexity to Gamma, and actually get them into a position where they’ve got a real simple business model to market, which gives them much more speed and agility. So I think that’s a really important point, and although it’s not, at the moment, a mature thing that we’re out there selling we, you know, we’re in a couple of really good conversations with the channel already, so I’m hoping to bring some more information around that very soon.
Chris: Cool. And what’s your vision, I guess, for how Gamma aligns itself with the channel? What is it, you think, Gamma needs to do more of, or less of, or differently to what we’ve done in the past and what do we take with us to sort of bring that vision to life?
John: Yeah, well, I think, and I said it on stage, I think we are a partner business, a partner first business, and that will never change. One of the things I always remember about, when I first joined Gamma, about sort of 12 years ago, 12, 13 years ago, was our CEO back then, Bob Falconer, he used to bang on actually about, you know, the fact that any small partner could be the next big partner. So he talked about the likes of Daisy and Focus and others, and he would say, you know, a tiny partner is just as important as the big ones. You know, that really stuck with me over the years, and I think for me, what’s really important moving ahead is that we’ve got the right services and the right products and the right go to market and support for different types of partners we have in the channel, and I think it’s easy to kind of sit there and treat everyone the same, and offer them the same things. But the reality is they are all slightly different, they have different businesses, and their needs to grow are slightly different, so actually one of my priorities in the team and how, where I want to go with the channel, I guess the vision for it is that we start to recognise those differences quite clearly, and we start to orientate our products services and marketing, our support as well, operational support, and make sure they are appropriate for the partners that are kind of going through those high growth phases.
Chris: You stood up on stage and talked about Webex, about iPECS, about IoT, about Microsoft, about Candio… I mean, I’ve not been here at Gamma as long as you have. It’s the first time we’ve ever, I think, been able to do those sort of big product announcements in that time. What do you think the channel are looking at us to provide to them? How do we manage that complexity for them? Because, you know, you’re consuming five new things into like, you say, a relatively small business. What’s your sort of passion about making that easy to consume for the channel?
John: Yeah, well I think, there’s some practical things which I’ll talk about in a moment, but I do think the channel look to Gamma as being the, you know, the team that are kind of looking in the market, you know, bringing back some of what we’re seeing in the market and really allowing them to think about how they want to, where they want to point their businesses, what are the priorities they need to set. So I like to think that we can offer that to the channel a bit more broadly. In terms of getting, making those things really simple, obviously we are, well, not obviously, but we are investing a huge amount in terms of our portals and our technology in Gamma as well to really make sure that the whole onboarding of new products is really straight forward, the provisioning of those products and the support is really there, and that’s been one of our strengths over the years. We’ve really done that well through the Gamma portal, but actually it’s something we’re going to constantly need to reinvent like every business. We need to constantly reinvent how we’re doing things and make sure that we’re up to speed on the latest technologies, and the latest ways in which we can make sure that our products and services are even more consumable to the channel, so I think that’s a key part of it. But outside of that, it’s actually the human factor, you know. I think people in Gamma are straight talking, they’re open, they’re honest, they’re transparent, they don’t actually, you know, we don’t hear people trying to over complicate things… and yes, we fall into the same jargon that everyone does in the industry, but we don’t try and over complicate it. Actually, what I see the Gamma team around us doing is trying to simplify things and trying to make sure it’s as easy as possible for partners to consume and take to their customers as well, because frankly an end business, most end businesses don’t know what the hell UCaaS is right. Let’s face it, they’ve got a specific business problem they want to solve, and actually our ability to really kind of simplify that down, distill it down to how what we have through the channel can solve those business problems is, I think, what we do really well.
Chris: Yeah, and you’ve run your own business in the past. What’s it like as an end user looking into the market that we operate in? My take on it is the pace of change is going up, not down at the moment. How does Gamma, in our Channel, how do we think about that when we come to talking to those businesses out there and helping them wrestle with, you know, things that are critical to their business, but so not core to what they do?
John: Yeah, it’s a really good question. I would say there are different reasons why businesses will want to adapt to change, and it really depends on the scenario of the business and it really depends how reliant they are on, let’s say, a communication solution or a connectivity solution. You know, in order to function, you know, usually businesses will do something when they’re forced to do something, because they like consistency, they like to know that actually there are, there’s reliability in what they’re using, and they don’t really want to be changing their business model every two seconds to adjust to the evolving landscape of tech. However, what the technology landscape does open up though is huge opportunity for businesses to innovate and really reinvent themselves as well, and for those businesses that have a real kind of entrepreneurial spirit, they will not, you know, just settle with a decade old technology. They will be looking out there and working on how technology and communications really does future proof their business and make sure that they can stay really competitive, because in the end, we are selling to business customers. Businesses are selling to consumers, and or other businesses, and actually, you know, in order to stay competitive in those markets, they need to focus on the experience of customers at the end, as the end result. Can they provide the experience in what is quite a competitive environment? That’s where I think communications and technology comes in. So from my perspective, there’s a number of different reasons why businesses will want to change, but it’s the one that really kind of… laser focus themselves on what the end customer wants, are the ones that really kind of embrace that change.
Chris: Yeah, and I guess on that embrace and change point, if you had like one message you were able to put to Channel Partners about facing into this environment of constant technological change, experience change, consumer behaviours, what are you saying? Is it watch and see or, is it be bold and go for it?
John: It’s definitely be bold, it’s definitely be bold. I think it’s easy in communications, in our industry as well, because although the technology industry is moving at a huge pace, sometimes adoption doesn’t move as quickly as the technology landscape is moving, and therefore there can be a lethargy I think in the desire to want to move. But the winners, you know, history tells us the winners are the people that are bold. The winners are the people that take those risks, and sometimes more often than not actually, those risks never turn out to be as big a risk as you think they are. When you stood there on something that you think is working, it always looks like a much bigger risk than it actually is, so I’m absolutely the advocate of being bold and moving in, you know, moving with the times and really driving that transformation forward for end customers, and be the company that is advocating that into end businesses as well, because everyone is busy. They will be focused on everything else, and it’s not, you know, communications is not the forefront of everyone’s mind in every business, clearly. So it’s important, I think, that the channel are that kind of team that really help open the eyes of end businesses, and make sure that they are innovating and they’re being bold and brave.
Chris: Cool, thanks John. Appreciate you taking a bit of time out on a day so packed with partners, sort of asking you where’s the guide, where’s the direction of the business, what’s your vision. I really appreciate you sharing with this and look forward to sort of picking this up again as we continue to drive Gamma and the channel forward through 2025 and beyond.
John: Thanks Chris, my pleasure.
