The evolution of Gamma Business
Communications
Gamma Business Communications continues to show
increasing signs of being one of the UK's leading comms
providers.
Customers are far more aware nowadays in terms of what they
require from a telecoms supplier than they were five years ago. The
ability to 'one stop shop' for all fixed telephony, data and
business mobile from a single supplier is now more important than
ever. But we understand that every customer is different, and it is
important to retain the flexibility in terms of the control and
management of those products, so that either we can do this at
network level, or the customer can.
One key trend that is clearly coming through right now is the
growth in mobile data. These market drivers translate into our
near/midterm go-to-market strategy and have prompted us to undergo
something of a business transformation. Gamma Business
Communications has changed significantly from where it was two or
three years ago. The business has been transformed from being a
successful but simple fixed line and minutes provider, and this in
turn brings its own challenges and opportunities.
We now have a much more sophisticated and complete set of
telecoms and data products which means we have to be a lot smarter,
not just in the way that we sell these products but in how we
provision and support them post sale. We put a lot of emphasis on
training not just our own staff, but also our channel partners who
are selling on our behalf.
During the last 12 months Gamma Business Communications has
revamped its training and product collateral and launched monthly
training webinars and face-to-face training sessions for partners.
The profile of many of our channel partners has also changed over
the same period, with many more IT based consultants seeing the
opportunity that the convergence of voice and data can offer.
Our revenue line now has a much higher proportion of IP
telephony products than it did two years ago, and our channel
partners benefit from selling a wider range of higher margin
products which help to make their customer bases stickier.
Gamma Business Communications' major supplier relationship is
with our parent company Gamma. Our traffic is carried over the
Gamma network and that gives us great confidence when it comes to
reliability, quality and responsiveness. Gamma has invested heavily
in developing in-house software development capabilities, which in
turn continues to produce new and innovative products. So over the
last 12 months we have seen huge growth in our IP telephony
products, and are able to use the expertise within Gamma to support
these newer and, in some peoples' minds, more complex
offerings.
Gamma recently signed an MVNA agreement with Vodafone that has
enabled us to move into the mobile space, offering a business class
mobile network, with competitive tariffs and hardware funds. Our
partners can now offer a true fixed/mobile convergence
solution, providing outstanding cost savings.
Our fixed line telephony lines and minutes base continues
to be at the core of the business. We are still able to offer
significant cost savings to SMEs and larger businesses. In addition
we have a range of inbound services which help businesses achieve
greater efficiency flexibility and better customer service. We have
recently launched a new mobile phone app that enables businesses to
manage their inbound services via their mobile. It is this kind of
development that really does add value.
Add to this our IP products - FeaturePlus, Communicator, IP
DirectConnect and our Assured Services and you can start to see how
our range has evolved over the last couple of years.
The evolving pipeline for product development is bursting with
opportunity. Two key launches due for imminent release are new
mobile packages and the launch of a hosted product called Horizon,
a complete comms service that provides a range of fixed telephony
and business mobile capabilities via an easy to use web portal.
Our greatest challenges are to make sure that we retain and
develop the expertise that we have in-house to support our
expanding product range, while at the same time continue to bring
to market products that excite our channel partners and offer real
value and business solutions to our customers. We are in a great
position to do all of the above, and 2012 looks like it will be a
very exciting year.