Gamma is a business-only network provider. The company drives innovation on the back of strong network and product foundations (carrier grade, high availability and rock solid end-user performance).
The combination of network investment, a digital-first approach and in-house development skills has enabled Gamma to develop a comprehensive portfolio of communications services with a significant amount of intellectual property. This has provided Gamma with a heritage of disrupting the market with innovative cloud-based services, such as SIP Trunking and Hosted PBX in the UK.
Boosting business with a network of Dealer Partners
The Dealer partner model is designed to enable those who have the appetite to add a new revenue stream to their business, without the additional workload. It enables the Dealer to offer their customer more value, with a business-critical solution that they would be buying elsewhere already.
The partnership model itself offers much more support than alternative models and comes with full sales enablement, end-to-end marketing support and a complete service wrap, meaning that it needn’t put any strain on the quality of service provided to the Dealer’s core service users.
So, how does it work? Whether a comms opportunity is generated organically or via our sales and marketing support, the lead is passed over from the Dealer to our sales specialist to sit as a prospect meeting. If the business is won, the end user would contract and bill with Gamma directly.
The Partner is there as an escalation point and, depending on the technology or the sector that that partner is in, may ask us to deal with everything. If they have an IT Dealer provided to that customer, the customer may still go to that Dealer because they manage their network infrastructure on site and may want the Dealer to be the first port of call. In that scenario, the Dealer comes to us to report faults or service issues. Our Dealers get an upfront recurring revenue stream.
Collaborating with different industries
The lines of demarcation for the IT and telecoms industries have been very much blurred with hosted telephony and IP telephony. It's quite natural for an IT Dealer to now be selling telecommunications services, whereas 20 years ago, you would've had two distinct organisations with a telecoms provider and a network provider: now, these lines are really blurred.
They will, more often than not, know what the customer needs and Gamma will then provide a proposal and deliver that solution to the customer. Those in industries that are further removed from telecoms tend to require more of our support and expertise – this is where the capabilities of the Dealer model really comes into its own.
The Dealer will introduce us to their customers as their comms partner and identify a need – we will then get the meeting booked and sat. In this scenario, we get involved with more of the qualifying process and, in some cases, even unearth the opportunities by canvassing the Dealers customer base ourselves from their offices.
The importance of being adaptable and open to diversifying a business
COVID-19 has taught us all to have the right solutions in place and the need to be adaptable. If you think back to pre-COVID times and you asked a majority of our customers what their business continuity plan was, they would have been able to tell you what they needed to do in the event of a power cut that lasted a few hours. That's important, but with COVID causing offices to be closed for months on end, it showed us that a lot of business continuity plans were not fit for purpose.
We found that – certainly in the first wave of COVID and lockdown – it was a case of just keeping the lights on. People wanted to route their work calls to their mobile phone initially, but when you're getting thousands of calls to a mobile, it can get pretty onerous for that person.
When the second lockdown came around, we started to see people changing their solutions because they realised that their current infrastructure needed to enable what is now ‘business as usual’ – hybrid working. Our development team work continuously to ensure our solutions support the structure of a modern workforce. We’re very proud to provide solutions that have helped businesses to stay connected in such difficult times.
Some industries, such as printers, had their income turned off overnight because of the pandemic. This sparked the interest in adding a new revenue stream, to help the business to remain profitable while the core industry recovered. When they're talking to their customers, it's fairly easy for them to enquire about their current comms infrastructure, any plans for change or pain points, and then introduce Gamma where appropriate.
Offering communications solutions to your customer base
How the UK business market uses telecoms has been changing for the last 10 years, and now a bigger milestone is approaching: the legacy telecoms network that BT owns and operates is going to be turned off in 2025. With this in mind, I think now is a great time to start talking to customers about what their plans are around this change, and give them more options to plan for a future-proof comms solution.
We've still got COVID to contend with and everybody wants to have the ability to work flexibly, so it's not too late to jump on that wave. In addition, the big switch off means that businesses need to start planning now and looking at changing their technology.
There's no need to wait until nearer the time to do this as the technology is already here. The legacy customers out there working in offices – who still have a temporary telephone system that was, perhaps, put in place for COVID) – will need to upgrade their solution ahead of the big switch off. Right now, we can engage with these businesses with plenty of notice to ensure a smooth and simple transition.
Maddyness UK, media partner of Gamma
