Purple News_07.15 pages

Purple NewsIssue 09 | Summer 2015 For our Channel Partners

Diary of a Comms Business Awards first-timerSee the glitz and glamour of the industry awards through a newbie’s eyes…

Keep business booming in the summer monthsLeave your business in safe hands while you soak up the sun

GETTHESCOOPOn all the latestNine Wholesale newsand expert views

3News from Summer 2015Success is a journey, together

Welcome to the Summer edition of Purple News.

I expect that, like us here at Nine Wholesale, many of you are looking forward to getting away this summer. Maybe you’re headed for far-flung tropics or planning to make the most of our own stunning country with a ‘stay-cation’, but either way you’ll want to be able to leave the day-to-day running of your business in safe hands. Check out our fantastic new service for resellers, Virtual Office which offers a range of back office support from call-answering to expert billing advice. We’re really excited about the launch of this time and money-saving solution and the impact it will have on our partners’ businesses.

There is also an account of the awards night back in June by a Comms Business Awards first-timer and, of course, the usual thought-provoking insights from our own Marketing, Industry and Operations experts.

Enjoy the summer months and make sure you grab some relaxing ‘me time’. We’re only a call or email away, so if you have any feedback or think we can assist you with anything simply get in touch.

Nick WebsterManaging [email protected]

Hello again

Purple News | Issue 09 | Summer 2015

The sun’s shining and it’s time to kick back and relax, topping up the tank in preparation for what will hopefully be a success-filled Autumn for your business. However, before you jet off to the sun, it would be wise to book yourself a place on one or both of our sales-focused, margin-enhancing workshops in September. These are available to Purple Partners at no charge and have been proven time and again to sharpen resellers’ minds and reveal innovative sales avenues that they’ve never considered before.

Buy Smart Sell CleverWednesday 9 September 2015, Manchester

What’s the difference between margin and mark-up? OK, so the answer to that might be obvious enough, but have you considered ways to boost your margin? The tricks of the trade and the combination of tools you can use? It’s not something many of us spare the time to do yet it is an essential part of growing your business. Our workshop will use real life examples that may surprise you, may shock you, but will definitely benefit you.

Marketing – isn’t that just colouring in?Wednesday 16 September 2015, Stonehouse

Most certainly not! Marketing should be the central point of every business impacting sales, finance, recruitment and business strategy. Our Marketing 101 Masterclass will help you to see how, through clever marketing, you can make a direct impact on your sales figures.

Would like to attend either of our workshops? Have a chat with your CDM or email [email protected]

your sales margin with our results-driven workshops!

5%14%

9%

Shakeup

Not aPurple Partner?

For free admission to these and many other inspiring workshops,

as well as an abundance of other benefits, speak to your CDM about joining the

programme today.


It’s been an interesting couple of months here in Purple Towers watching the big business end of tech and telecom battle it out with disruptive commercial models.

First up was Microsoft who are in the middle of a huge marketing campaign, writing to their consumers offering free upgrades to Windows 10. This was a familiar stomping ground of Apple until very recently, but if you wanted to upgrade from say, Vista to Windows 7, (and let’s face it, why wouldn’t you?) there was a fee. Well no more, providing you qualify with a registered and recent version of Windows the upgrade is free.

Microsoft have actually gone one further, which is to publicly state that this version of Windows is the last one ever. Jerry Nixon a Microsoft developer was quoted at a recent conference as saying… “We’re releasing Windows 10, the last version of Windows”. The industry is widely claiming that the next stage for the software giant is to release and support “Windows as a Service”. The move from CapEx to OpEx is being writ large all over the tech industries, from the very big to the very small. The business model behind Office 365 is now well established. Rather than spend hundreds on a Microsoft office license as a one off, now we are being asked to spend tens of pounds on a monthly basis per user. Easier to manage, less impact on cash flow, more flexible. An ideal solution. In the channel we are seeing the same trend as our customers move more services to an OpEx model; from hosted voice to cloud based computing. It will be very interesting to see how Microsoft apply the WaaS model out to business in the next 12 months.

Apple on the other hand just seem to be content to bite the hand that feeds it as the recent very public spat with Taylor Swift and the record label Beggars Banquet shows. At Nine the timing was uncanny as we had, literally, the day before had a debate about paying for promotional activities.

The debate was around coffee house loyalty schemes, you know the sort; buy 10 cups of coffee and get one free. The question was does the coffee house receive free coffee beans in order to subsidise their free offer or have they worked

their commercials in order to run and support a promotional campaign? The answer is of course the latter, but Apple announced publicly that they intended to run Apple Music on a free 3 month trial for their users and not pay artist royalties for the duration of the campaign. Good news for the consumer, bad news for those supplying the music.

Very much the equivalent of dipping into the proverbial free tub of coffee beans.

Enter Taylor Swift and Beggars Banquet who, suitably disenfranchised, engaged with Social Media so effectively that within 24 hours Apple had completely reversed their position. “We don’t ask for free iPhones”, she said, “please don’t ask us for free music”. Artists are now paid the going rate of 0.2 cents per stream.

Looking at these two approaches one thing stands out. The traditional approach of “you provide a service, I pay you for it” is evolving as technology, communication and collaboration make it easier to share and engage. Something as simple as moving from a lump sum of money upfront to a subscription model may be the commercial edge that we need to provide flexibility for our customers moving forward.


INDUSTRYNOTEBOOKMarcus Dacombe - Group Commercial Product Director

How

not to give som

ething away

for free

I knewyou weretrouble


Early June found your correspondent’s car loaded to the gunnels (what is a gunnel?) and heading off for a trip to Italy and France. The flexibility and unlimited luggage allowance available when driving our own car to Europe compared to the crammed holdall, cattle herding, fellow passenger’s holiday dress sense and inevitable delays of air travel, make this an overwhelmingly favoured option for the Saunders family.

The ability to design and book all the various elements of this kind of holiday online is what has made the difference for me. For example, I used Owners Abroad, Eurotunnel, Holiday Inn, Sanef Tolling, Booking.com, Swiss travel, via Michelin, Trip Advisor, lots of “what to do in the area” websites, as well as Google translate and Apple maps every day. How well have the traditional holiday companies responded? Does anyone still go to the travel agent and return with an armful of brochures, or indeed does anyone still use a phrase book? I suspect not. What has happened to the businesses behind the old ways – did they adapt or perish? With the increase in business mobility, hosted telephony and SIP connectivity, their advocates tell us that our industry faces some similar challenges and opportunities.

The ultimate marketing challenge?

Being a marketing person, I do love a powerful brand and you cannot spend time in Italy without encountering the monolith that is The Catholic Church. My own membership lapsed long ago and even in Italy, church attendance is falling and the demographics of the congregation are not promising. The use of mystery, fear and torture to encourage compliance with the Christian faith was popular in the middle ages, but how do you energise attendance and engagement in the modern world? The Pope is a global brand icon and the current incumbent seems to be livelier than his predecessor, but there is still an almighty (no pun intended) challenge to modernise the appeal of the church – check out The Vatican’s rather low tech website for example. Does The Vatican have a Marketing department? Maybe I should apply for the job?

Postcards on the edge?

One of the holiday memories from my youth is the search for postcards, a suitable post office and the translation for “how much is a stamp to the UK?” The 24/7 digital

landscape has essentially terminated the practice of sending home a postcard, yet postcards themselves survive – so who buys them? I watched a newsagent for 30 minutes from the comfort of a bar across the street and nobody even looked at them – I talked to the owner in my best Italian and apparently there is still a market for postcards as mementos, given the low quality images we acquire on our smartphones and then fail to back up or catalogue correctly.

Smartphone or sunscreen?

Every bar and restaurant now advertises free Wi-Fi to lure in the passing tourist – whatever happened to peace, relaxation and the solitude to “finally write that novel.” The hotel brochure has hastily scribbled out sea view and gourmet restaurant, to be crayoned over by “high speed broadband.” Part of the holiday experience used to be the surprises and stories waiting for you at home after 2 weeks away, but now, apart from the staggering size of the cattery bill and the accompanying indifference from Felix, that mystery has gone.

Maybe I am just addicted to my Smartphone – I have managed a full dry January earlier this year, so maybe what is needed is at least a week a year without the dreaded screen. I have read that it can be harder to kick than smoking or alcohol, so my recent purchase of an Apple watch is not going to help, is it? An amazing gadget by the way and look out for my full review in our soon to be launched blog.

Still about the service?

Stellar service is still the deciding factor for me. The people I encounter regularly make the difference between what is good and great. Everyone seems to be smiling, welcoming, engaging, chatty, interested and always much better at languages than me. Although digital engagement, social media wizardry, content marketing, segmentation and brand personality development are all important, nothing can replace fantastic people and that is true in our industry too.

If you have not yet had your summerbreak, then have a safe and sensationaltime, with or without your smartphone.

at th

e m

oon

Marketing on Holiday – Group Marketing Director, Mark Saunders reflects on how changes in marketing and technology increasingly define our holidays


Wish you

were here

X



Make the most of your summer break with top level back office support

Introducing Virtual Office -The Nine Wholesale service includes:

Diary

There has never been a better time to join our Purple Partner Programme. Along with all the standard benefits such as access to £5 broadband, branded marketing collateral and complimentary training, we are offering a range of fantastic summer specials for new joiners. These value adding features are aimed at increasing your business and giving you the opportunity for more flexibility outside of the office.

For the summer months we are offering our Purple Partners free installation on Premium PSTN lines*. If you add a new PSTN and bring the calls with it you can choose to either offer free installation to your end user customer, or improve your own operating margins. It’s up to you.

Of course, once you have both the calls and lines with Nine Wholesale, as a Purple Partner you automatically qualify for a 20% discount on Exceptional Call Reporting.

If you are planning some time away from the office, or are interested in adding to your office skill sets in the most efficient way, Nine Wholesale’s new Virtual Office team can really help you out. We’re offering Purple Partners THREE MONTHS FREE Virtual Office Premium and Virtual Office Premium Plus if you sign up to a 12 month contract.

We will be in touch soon with a full brochure of new and continuing PPP benefits. In the meantime if you have any questions, please get in touch with your CDM or email [email protected]

. Access to highly trained billing and provisioning administrators

. Professional customer service, with call answering and message taking

. Resolutions to complex customer billing enquiries

. End-to-end fault management

Free Virtual Office

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Summer’s here and it’s time to take some much needed time off to recharge the batteries and soak up the sun. However, we know that, as business owners, it can be difficult to switch off and completely detach yourself. In order to leave work behind for a week or two you need to have recruited, educated and trained your staff to a faultless standard – a process that takes excesses of both time and money. Now there’s an alternative.

Virtual Office is an innovative partnership providing comprehensive, white-labelled back office support for reseller businesses. We employ a team of high calibre customer service agents at our Gloucestershire headquarters who are trained in the complete life cycle of Nine products. From call answering and message taking to fault management complex billing enquiries, their role is to support resellers’ business needs, saving you time and money and meaning you can totally relax on your summer break.

Contact your CDM or email [email protected] to find out just how much Virtual Office could save you in both staffing costs and time, and see below for a discounted starter rate for our Purple Partners.



of a Comms Business Awards first-timer...

Morning after…

Oooofff. Woke up with a slightly fuzzy head, but relatively unscathed. Time to pack up, take some caffeine onboard and head back to the sticks.

I had a great night – it seems like it’s a fantastic opportunity for the stars of the industry to get together for a good old knees up, and was great to see hardworking and ambitious resellers getting recognition from their industry peers.

From the sounds of it, our group was slightly better behaved than those of previous years… but it was a lot of fun all the same!

On the trainMy Comms Business Awards adventure began at Cheltenham Spa station on a sunny Thursday afternoon. Before long I had spotted our sparkly new offices ‘The Hub’ as the train whizzed through Stonehouse, but we were soon leaving the leafy Cotswolds behind as we headed for the bright lights of London.

Getting readyI arrived without delay at Paddington and headed for the hotel to apply a healthy

layer of slap and wriggle into my dress before heading down to meet the rest of the Nine Wholesale gang in the hotel foyer

Celebrity selfies

After a short cab journey we arrived at the Lancaster Hotel. Nine Wholesale, as the main sponsors of the awards, got to meet host David Walliams and have a photo taken with him which was so exciting - as you can see I was a bit star-struck!

James P!

Before long we were ushered into the hall where the awards were taking place. Following a fabulous three-course dinner, James Palmer, CEO of Nine Group, delivered a light-hearted

welcome speech, then David Walliams took to the stage and the awards began.

Awards

Barnes Clutterbuck, Operations Director, presented the Nine Wholesale Good to Great Awards to deserved winner Olive Communications. Our prize is awarded to resellers who have gone above and beyond in the last 12 months.

Congratulations to our partners, Best 4 Business Communications, who won the Reseller of the Year (small) award.

Party time!

Following the awards there was little more to do than mingle, chat and dance – oh and a few celebratory drinks may have been supped…! Here’s me with the lovely Nikki

Freeman* and two of our resellers, Alex and Jonny from My Communications. There was a live band, a brilliant vibe – all in all a great time was had by all!

Having joined both Nine Wholesale and, indeed, the telecoms industry, in February this year I have zero experience of wholesale awards ‘dos’. So I was excited to find out that, as main sponsor we had two tables at the Comms Business Awards (CBAs), and that I had a seat at one of them! After being told numerous tales of debauchery from previous years I was a little apprehensive as the day approached… see how I got on with my account of the brilliant CBAs from the perspective of a first-timer.

Diary

On track for CBA

Yeah but, no but...

Good to Great

Pass the Nurofen. . .

Party time !

Alex

Jonny

Le Grand Fromage !

Ready to go

* One of our CDMs



NOTESFROMTHEENGINEROOM

Barnes ClutterbuckGroup Operations Director

Systemising the ordinary and humanizing the exception – This is a phrase that has been at the heart of our operations development strategy for many years. I’ll apologize to the original author of this terrific sound bite for not crediting them. The principle is simple. The reasonably predictable ‘stuff’ we do often should be systemised; it should just happen. When things go wrong, a freak problem, an exception, then this is where we earn our crust as resellers and carriers.

Are there everyday activities within your organization that aren’t yet automated? It may come as a surprise that there is still a huge amount of manual process within organizations large and small, manual processes that rely on human effort to ensure quality and continuity. Unfortunately us humans are fallible, and even if you are lucky enough to have standout individuals that can be relied on day to day, it’s a fact that people move on and often at the worst times.

Nine’s new portal is already in beta release for Mobile with all other Nine portfolio products hot on its heels. The principle behind this portal is very much about systemizing the ordinary for our partners. We want you to grow your business, and where we can, we want to take care of the ordinary for you. We strive to provide you with tools that help you deliver the service you are capable of.

We have always wanted to lead the way in making life easier for partners not only with portals and tools but in compatibility with the industry; demonstrable in our recent collaboration with FCS and other leading billing houses to agree a standard CDR format. We are one of the first carrier/aggregators to implement this new format across our wholesale business, with the rollout already well underway. This

common format has been driven by the needs of channel resellers and will remove compatibility issues within billing platforms and producers of wholesale CDRs. We love making things easy for resellers and we aren’t selective about it. This move makes it easy for our partners to do business with other providers. That leaves us to concentrate on ensuring that we and other suppliers need to prove their worth in other areas.

Most importantly we need to continue to hear from you about what of your ‘ordinary’ we can systemize. Is it leaving notification handling (hopefully not)? Fraud monitoring? Provisioning updates to customers? Fault updates direct to customers? Apps for quoting? Help us prioritise these by having your say because, believe me, there is tremendous strength that comes from this wonderful principle.

Get in touch with your ‘systemising the ordinary’ wants, needs and general opinions at [email protected]



What do find most enjoyable about your job?As a business we are growing and expanding really quickly. I am enjoying all the new challenges this is throwing up. I love seeing new people join our team, especially when they achieve that first target or goal. We have a real buzz about our office and it makes it a pleasure to come to work.

What parts of your job do you find most challenging? I hate it when things go wrong. As a business we are focused on service. There is nothing more frustrating than when things don’t quite go to plan. Which unfortunately in business does sometimes happen. Our goal is to make sure all of our customers are delighted with us as their telecoms partners and if something happens that doesn’t meet their expectations we try and resolve the issues as soon as we can.

How do you keep your team motivated?We try to create a fun and inspiring atmosphere. We want all our staff to stay with us for a long time. We recruit carefully to make sure people are of good quality and will fit in with the team then encourage an open and enjoyable atmosphere. We give people autonomy to make their own decisions and make them feel part of all our success. Everything we achieve we achieve as a team.

What is the biggest change you have seen in our industry over the last five years?Connectivity. Users now have access to much faster internet connections that are now priced to be within reach of all businesses. This is opening up a raft of new IP and Cloud based opportunities over the entire ICT spectrum.

What is the most valuable piece of advice that you would give to a start-up reseller?Build strong and strategic partnerships with the people you want to work with. Don’t focus on being the cheapest focus on being the best. Put customer service and relationships at the forefront of what you do. Be ready to embrace the connectivity rush and don’t be afraid to take the occasional gamble.

Guest column

Tom McDonaldManaging Director

Would you like to appear in our guest column and offer some advice? Simply email [email protected]

Inside Silverstone 2015We were delighted to be part of the hottest date on the Formula One racing calendar, and to have a large number of our partners join us for the Silverstone weekend. Two groups of 10 resellers attended the two days of the British racing festival on Saturday 4th and Sunday 5th of July. It was a brilliant day out which we look forward to every year.

The presence of Nine-sponsored racing driver, Josh Webster, who was racing in the supporting Porsche Supercup made it even more special. Josh was nudged off the track at high speed following some intense wheel to wheel action but finished the race in a resilient mood saying, “I love to race at Silverstone as it’s the home of British Motorsport and the BRDC so I feel part of the fabric of the circuit.”

Record-breaking attemptMatt Johnson, one of our CDEs, will be taking on a massive challenge in August with the aim of smashing the current World Record for the longest ever Rugby Union match! Matt, a rugby referee in his free time, aims to raise a minimum of £1,000 for two charities: Scotty’s Little Soldiers, and School of Hard Knocks

The event will require a very high level of mental and physical preparation as it equates to refereeing for over five hours of rugby per ref - 30 miles of running! If you’d like to support him in his efforts, please get in touch with us for more details.

Summer SemanticsCan you find 9 telecoms-related words hidden in the word

search? For your chance to WIN take a snap of your completed word search and email it to [email protected]

N B T S D C H A L L N O D S E W A B E S T H E L A S E L O H W E N I N O S T L L Y O B U L T A D R G S U A T A D M H I O R S I P T R U N K I N G B S E I P N B A O T A V O H S U B A V M D F N C W B O L G E T F U M E O R P I S A K T U D S M D E D Y T I V I T C E N N O C S H A I E E B I N R H A G S D E L P R U P N U P B R S H E E C U Z E P M U G B S S I T L L D

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