Automated Transcript
Alex Ayers, Sales Director at Gamma:
Chris. Straight off the stage.
Chris Wade, Chief Marketing and Product Officer at Gamma:
Straight off the stage.
Alex Ayers:
Have you found?
Chris Wade:
It? It’s been brilliant. Yeah. Really exciting. I mean, even just walking here this morning, you could see the backdrop of Westminster. The purple Gamma flags outside the front of the venue. It’s just something else. So striking, so energetic. You get here before customers, you get here before anyone else turns up. You’ve got this space, and it’s certainly filled up through the course of the morning.
Chris Wade:
And you get into the main room, you listen to your keynote today, setting the scene, big picture stuff, and there’s energy that’s flowing through the room. It’s just, it’s just been absolutely spot on.
Alex Ayers:
So there’s been a lot we’ve unpacked. Yeah, I want to switch the lens on things I know that you’re really, really very passionate about. And the first one, which for me is, I think, has been a long time coming, if I’m completely honest with you, because what we sell, if you look at it through that lens, is a lot.
Chris Wade:
Yes.
Alex Ayers:
And it’s quite hard to really bring that into more of a simplistic view. Yeah. So we launched the Gamma Elements. Okay. Talk us through the process that you and the team went through to arrive at that. Yeah. And then I’d like you to just lead into why you felt it was so important and why you’ve been so passionate about getting us to this point.
Chris Wade:
Sure. So if you think, one of the ethics sessions today has been ‘ask why?’. So when Andrew joined, we were really lucky to get her to come in and we asked one of her first jobs was to name a product. And like you say, you look at that, well, of all the things that we can do, and you kind of go, show me where it is. What does it mean? And you are very passionate about customer outcomes, speaking the language of the customer. And you realise when you look at everything we do written down in black and white on a piece of paper, and it’s got FTTP, this, ADSL that, ISDN, this. No one, no one knows. That’s not true. Of course, CIOs know it.
Chris Wade:
They know it inside and out. But you’re not always speaking to a CIO. You’ve got to convince a procurement guy, a business guy, you need to speak the customer’s language. And so you then go, okay, what actually do we do? What problems do we solve? And you then go down that route to become a bit more human about things, and you realise that there’s groups of things that we do, you know, we enable, connect, experience, secure—a toolbox for a reason.
Chris Wade:
They are descriptors of what each element does. And if you can speak that language, then it sort of doesn’t matter what products you have. Because obviously, we’re today talking about enterprise public sector clients, larger organisations. But actually, your telephone call’s a telephone call. We need Gamma to be able to speak the language of any of our customers so that if, you know, a large government department comes to us, or the garage around the corner, they know that Gamma’s a place where they can get connected.
Chris Wade:
And it’s our job, then, as an organisation to work out, as they step towards this, well, actually, if you’re in the market for a connect solution, then you’re a 10,000 employee business. You need to go here. And if you’re a ten-employee business, you need to go here. So for me, Elements is critical in helping us put together the portfolio in a way that resonates with customers.
Chris Wade:
Now, there’s also everybody who can argue about the labels and the names. That’s just life, isn’t it? But for me, you get one label. You can organise and focus and drive the whole organisation behind a set of strategies that bring together those elements into the final piece, which is solutions. Yep. Which is obviously where your passion lies.
Chris Wade:
And you go, you know what, that is the key, isn’t it? Solve that problem. Put the elements together to solve the problem. And that’s, for me, where it really stands up. You go back to human language, solving problems, driving outcomes, making it consumable, and giving us, as an organisation, the chance to drive people to the best outcome for themselves and for us.
Chris Wade:
And that, for me, is where Elements sits—in that consolidating focal point that everything we have runs through. And it takes away, ‘What is a name?’ Actually, we’ve got a category. It doesn’t matter what’s under the category; you go into it, and I’ll know exactly.
Alex Ayers:
That is a little bit—you set that up, I’ll say because it could come together.
Chris Wade:
Yeah, I could pick Elements together.
Alex Ayers:
That could come together. Yeah. Well, that solution domain. So for me, the clarity that it’s given us—we’ve always been very, very focused on the business problems. We’ve always been good at that. That overarching value narrative, I’ve always thought, is Gamma. We’ve then jumped straight into the weeds. Yeah. So we’ve gone from the sort of the high-level business value straight into the data.
Alex Ayers:
And it kind of feels that we’ve got this connecting layer now with Gamma Elements that allows you to deal with the sort of the pyramid of detail, because you do need to get down to the details, don’t you? Yeah. And this especially when we think about what we do in enterprise markets. I mean, we’re selling to, you know, 15, 20, 30 different people potentially in a single account.
Alex Ayers:
And each one is a different layer of detail. And they want to really, really operate. And so it’s been certainly been a long time coming, Chris. It feels like it’s been the missing piece.
Chris Wade:
Credit to the teams. I mean, you said something, actually, which enables this. If you can describe what you do simply, then it’s easy to go to a customer you’ve already got and go, how do you solve this problem? And actually, for me, it’s an enabler of that land and expand inside of customers as well.
Chris Wade:
If you can show them a real simple picture on a page, we can do these things for you. Then you’ve got that journey that you can go on with that customer as well.
Alex Ayers:
I’m going to go to the next piece of it. So now we’ve spoken about Cisco today. Before we get to that, because in previous GCSs, we’ve spent a lot of time with some of our other very large tech giants, very important partners, and Amazon AWS. So when we look at those three, certainly within the markets that we operate within, yeah, they really are the big three that we see all of our customers leading into.
Alex Ayers:
Yeah, certainly we say our role is helping to de-conflict some of the things that they’re saying and to contextualise and bring the values together to make sure they get the most out of that relationship. How important are those big three vendors to us?
Chris Wade:
I mean, they’re critical. The reason that Gamma has identified those partners as the places to go is just the level of investment that they can put behind the things that they are interested in. And if you put them together, Amazon, Microsoft, Cisco—you know, when we think about providing that forward-looking, flexible, scalable, secure communications infrastructure, none of them are totally complete in that. Each of them has strengths and weaknesses, but actually, each of them are driven to excellence in the categories that they’re in.
Chris Wade:
So as an organisation like Gamma, you know, we can identify places where our own IP or our own uniqueness can add value. But it’s not in the hyperscale, you know, technology-driven innovation type things. It’s about business model innovation for us with ease of use. So those partners are absolutely critical. They’re the people who can go out and spend billions of dollars on an acquisition that changes their game overnight.
Chris Wade:
And we, by being partners with them, are able to benefit from that too. And back to the Elements and solutions, you’re able to go, well, actually, this is the right vendor for this one. This is the right vendor for this one. We can create a solution that allows you to leverage those two best-in-class and three best-in-class experiences.
Chris Wade:
And like you say, who else do you pick? The only other name that you know, which is Google. And they’re not really touched on in that business communication space. So I think we’ve picked the three people who’ve got the greatest investment and greatest interest in the problems that we want to solve.
Alex Ayers:
If we look forward a little bit—and I know this came out in the close earlier—I think bringing out the inner geek in all of us in terms of obviously being curious, which I never was. I’ve always leaned into being curious. I think you’ve always got to be doing that and think about what’s next. Before I get to the question, and I appreciate, you know, you might not be able to tell us everything about what’s next because, clearly, for obvious reasons, but just being curious in that sense, is that something you resonate with?
Alex Ayers:
And if you were to kind of sort of unpack, how can you be more curious? What do you think of as the skill sets or mindsets, or how can others lean into that? There’s a bit of a superpower.
Chris Wade:
If you like. Sure. Answer. Oh, I go back to my past. I’m a physicist by training, so you can argue the scientific sort of quest is curiosity about a problem. Yeah. So you kind of, kind of can’t get away from it. So I am a geek, and I’ve got no, no problem with that. So there’s a bigger question of why on earth you’re reading marketing. But that’s a different beast. So then curiosity, it’s in some people, and it’s trained in others. And then they learn through experience. Actually, I get to develop a better understanding of a problem, and I’m better able to explain why. The answer that I think is the answer is correct. If you can answer the questions that somebody else will pose to you, and you can only do that if you’re curious about the problem, you’re curious about the options that could solve that problem in our context.
Chris Wade:
And part of that, I mean, I say so because technology is brilliant, isn’t it? I mean, you think about the change, what has happened in our lives, how can you not be fascinated with it? So my default position, but obviously doesn’t work for everybody. So it’s playing those roles where you can go, what is that? That’s exciting. That’s interesting.
Chris Wade:
I talked about the Real-Time Media Model and the AI audio codec. That’s this code and very, very abstract things. But actually, when you think about both the real creative genius technologically behind it, but actually the problems that you can solve, that curiosity for me is looking for, you know, two data points and being able to go, ooh, you know, well, there’s something common here, something we can solve together.
Alex Ayers:
So let’s look forward, and I appreciate I’m probably going to take you to the edge here, but let’s go.
Chris Wade:
Let’s go. Hold hands.
Alex Ayers:
Let’s look forward, I guess. What have customers got to look forward to as far as the product landscape from Gamma?
Chris Wade:
I think they’ve got a bright future to look forward to. And obviously, I would say that, but I think if you go back to those three partnerships that we talked about, I think Gamma didn’t lose its way because we know exactly what we want to be, but we have changed how we’re going to go and solve those problems.
Chris Wade:
We’ve gone from thinking we can do more of it ourselves to going to, well, we really can’t. And I think if you think about what drives the sort of customer value that will come out of that, it’s the investment that people are prepared to make. The hyperscalers, the virtue of picking those three organisations is that they understand that global scale is nothing without local touch.
Chris Wade:
So for me, Gamma is in this really unique and interesting place with the relationships that the enterprise business has with the companies we have serving SMEs with our direct customer relationships, that we can be a real accelerator for their knowledge. And I think they understand that too. So I think the future is bright. I think if you look at the level of investment that people have made behind those platforms, there’s so much mileage coming in terms of delivering outstanding experiences for employees, for customers. You know, I’ve sat and listened to various keynotes from each of them, and they talk about, you know, not just what is the next cyber threat, but what is quantum networking.
Chris Wade:
You know, where does IoT really go? And you kind of go, I mean, it blows your mind. You just don’t know. You can’t possibly know some of those futures. You talked a lot about AI—who knows what that’s going on, you know, actually. So for me, the key for Gamma in this is remaining agile, flexible, very close to the needs of our customers, but also very close to a group, to a wide range of people who can provide technology so that we can work our magic, which is stitching the technology into a solution.
Chris Wade:
So I agree, it’s very bright. We, as consumers, will drive a lot of that—the way that we want to communicate with businesses. And I think by being aware of, by being curious about what your kids are doing, your families, your extended families, your partners—that will help drive this towards those creative solutions.
Alex Ayers:
You mentioned something there, which is just going to take us, I think, nicely to ‘Good Together’ and the dog. Yeah, we’re very customer-focused. We’re very customer-led. Yeah. We listen to our customers, and that’s what makes us pivot. Yeah. And we’ve pivoted many, many, many different times. I think that is the essence of ‘Good Together’.
Alex Ayers:
Yeah. Before we get to the dog though. Yeah. ‘Good Together’. Yeah. Why ‘Good Together’? And what does being ‘Good Together’ mean to you?
Chris Wade:
So why ‘Good Together’ is, as I said, nothing in any of the things we’ve created—the purpose, vision, mission and values, the embodiment into the dog—has been our internal intellectually stimulating conversation. We’ve gone out and we’ve talked to our customers, to our partners, to our people, to prospective people, people who know us, people who don’t know us. And what they told us is, what is Gamma famous for?
Chris Wade:
What are the things which, despite the pivots, we’ve remained true to? We’ve been consistent in how we’ve turned up. And what they said was, yeah, we want… you’re in the business of communications. You enable that. You’re good people. You see opportunities, and you help us address them, and you’re with us and make decisions that are in the best interest of the partnership. So that, you know, the word which describes that is ‘Good Together’. And if you think about what good means, it actually has multiple different layers to it, doesn’t it? Good business, profit, caring. It’s a relationship that persists. But actually, we want to make a positive difference to the environment. We want to make a positive difference to the communities that we’re part of. So we’re really committed to making sustainability core to what we do, to, you know, foundation and making sure we’ve got charitable giving and that sort of good. And together, it really comes together to describe this organisation which—jumping ahead to the dog, the metaphor, the okay—
Chris Wade:
Okay. It’s that loyal, trusted, supportive figure that gives you confidence, and you know will be with you through thick and thin. And that’s what we want to be. So the customers who take time out of their day to come visit us today—part of what we want them to buy into is what is Gamma? It’s Alex, and it’s Chris, but it’s everybody who works for us as well.
Chris Wade:
And that drive to work with each other to get through problems, ideally to fix the problems before they arise, of course, but making sure you’ve got that and it’s not just one and done. We get the money, and we disappear. ‘Good Together’, for me, is all of its environmental, social, good business, repeatable business. People trust us. You want all of that wrapped in.
Alex Ayers:
So we’ve got the Euro championships just around the corner. Obviously, you’ve done a lot of work expanding in all geographies. Yeah. Where’s that going to take us? What can we expect from our ambition there over the next sort of 12 to 2024, I’m sure.
Chris Wade:
I mean, if you think—the way Andrew, our CEO, describes it is, you know, we want to be the leading UCaaS provider in Western Europe. And I think we’ve got that in us now. You’ve seen some of the acquisitions talked about today, like, for example, really below the radar and like in that infrastructure layer but so enabling because telephone calls are difficult and different in different countries.
Chris Wade:
So you’ve got to embrace that local difference if you’re going to fulfil that ambition. But we’re also, again, working with Microsoft, for example, and you put those together. You’ve got Microsoft’s global reach with Teams, and you put Call2Teams’ voice infrastructure into all these different countries. And we’ve got the ability, I think, to create something which is, you know, unique in that it’s got a truly pan-European footprint, and it will break out beyond even that.
Chris Wade:
You’ve got customers in much more far-flung places than that. I think you can see it getting to the point where we’re seeing Gamma as much more credible and much more on that sort of day-one list for consideration. If people are going, who’s the person to go to to solve my regional communication needs? And I think that’s a place where your partners will see us moving towards. Customers, rather, will see us moving much more towards over the next couple of years.
Alex Ayers:
So, closing comments. I think if you look at the experience, I can’t think of a better internal example where we’ve been ‘Good Together’. The way it took business some time to galvanise itself and it’s come together, and the high standards that we hold ourselves to. But it’s not, it’s not just the ‘Good Together’. It’s about our culture and our values as well, isn’t it?
Alex Ayers:
Because unlike a lot of other organisations, I’m sure we can all resonate, having been in them, we actually really do live off our culture and our values. And I think, I think that’s what does set us apart. But I just want to just take some closing remarks and comments to give us a wrap on that really. So what are your closing thoughts?
Chris Wade:
So I think if I always think of ISE, if you’re going to pitch it to someone who hasn’t been, what’s the reason to come? The reason to come is not because we’re Gamma. It’s because we’re able to gather the people together who can help you think about your communication and connection problems, and we can give you both practical, today advice.
Chris Wade:
We can help you with tomorrow’s problem, but we’re actually already thinking a year or two down the track on that. So for me, like you say, there’s two obvious things: there’s a human element. Our teams working together within Gamma to bring it to life. You listen to some of the conversation amongst Gamma people—watch them interact. There’s an energy. We can harness that energy for long-term good in the business. You’ve got the customers together talking about their experiences with Gamma and with others, creating a community again. And then you’ve got this genuine technological innovation—thought leadership, an overused phrase, but it’s true—and interest and curiosity about where the future goes.
Chris Wade:
So you’ve got those three levels—the people, the problems, and the solutions—coming together in one place. And I don’t think there’s an event like it in terms of where you get that balance of input and an ability to share in our industry.
Alex Ayers:
Spot on. So, the dog.
Chris Wade:
The dog.
Alex Ayers:
Put it on the spot, you know. Yeah, it’s the biggest cliffhanger, isn’t it, since, since like a Hollywood movie? This is the… Yeah. Any ideas? The name?
Chris Wade:
So, the story of the dog is—it was the weirdest meeting I’ve ever been through. The genesis of the dog. I never believed I’d be arguing about the shape of a snout, shepherd lips, ears, hair, all sorts. But it’s so captivating. And whether you love it or you hate it, you’re talking about it. And the evidence from the 700 suggestions in the poll before we came here today from Gamma people of what the dog’s name should be—we’ve obviously added to it, given the people here the chance to contribute to that.
Chris Wade:
It doesn’t have a name. We will work out the name through that process because we want it to have a life; we want it to bring that curiosity, to bring that engagement. Watch this space.
Alex Ayers:
Because I’ve got to ask—I know it’s not going to be Noyce, but I asked Bernie, actually. When I say that, I don’t actually know, but I asked Bernie. She said…
Chris Wade:
Dave. Dave.
Alex Ayers:
You couldn’t make it up, could you? You couldn’t make it up. She said Dave. Apparently, one of the customer suggestions is ‘Alex Ayers’.
Chris Wade:
Oh, I’d rather not. Please, please tell me what to say.
Alex Ayers:
Well, let’s see. Can be told because there’s a team of people vetting—pardon the pun—the suggestions. I think ‘Alex Ayers’ won’t make the list.
Chris Wade:
Yeah, it would be good to see some of the funny ones as well. When we do land on what I’m sure will be a wonderful name for a wonderful dog. But thanks for joining us.
Alex Ayers:
That’s a pleasure. I loved it. Thanks for having me.
