There are perhaps a number of reasons why we have won BT Partner of the Year 2016/17. In this article, we discuss our thoughts. The award is recognition for our work across BT MPLS, VPLS and our BT Reseller Program.
The ‘something else’ is actually tangible and easily demonsrated to clients via our step-by-step sales process. The technological world around us is changing so incredibly rapidly but the actual fundamental building blocks of networks remains challenging to deliver. We’ll be clear - we’re not able to fix all of these challenges but we are able to understand each vector, providing insights into the typical issues and problems that occur. This, we believe, is our value.
As a BT Partner, it is our remit to ensure clients are forewarned and understand how their business is impacted by the procurement of connectivity. And of course, where possible, put in place a solution to mitigate against issues. And this is where our value continues to reside and I believe how we have ended up winning an award.There’s no real drama here, our ability to bring ‘something else’ to our client relationships has brought us to this point. (Car Phone Warehouse won the mobile award, congratulations to them)
We take our experience and challenge our clients to consider and understand where the WAN provides a major competitive advantage but also where the service is often a bottleneck to productivity.
Our understanding of the pitfalls, risks and opportunities associated with the BT buying process continues to move forward. We know far more about how to identify risks and the dangers they pose to business in the form of delays, outages and general application performance. But the fundamental frustrations exist and continue to blight the industry. For firms and their IT Managers, this creates a problem: Although we have become quite savvy about the threats and opportunities with BT WAN services we have very little ability to change the overall process of Open Reach and the alarming regularity of associated wayleave, council traffic management and other issues.
If this all sounds a little negative when announcing the new partner award then forgive us.
However, marketing often leads the Enterprise to believe these problems will somehow just disappear if we ‘just partner with the right organisation’. Our whole approach is designed to add value and convey both the positive and negative aspects of WAN procurement. The award reflects our honesty and sales process. The accolade also demonstrates that if we become an extension of your team, we enable your business and peers to understand where the WAN will enable new ways of working (think voice, video and cloud) but also where there may be risks in terms of outages, delays and security.
About our BT Partner sales process and research
In short, we developed and explored the ideas mentioned in this article over the last 15 years. We studied where things go wrong and how design decisions impact and produce real benefits to application performance and customer relationships. We studied past experiences and noticed a pattern. Where ‘things’ go wrong are pretty much identifiable. In some cases, connectivity is delivered without many issues. In others, not so much. If we could help clients by identifying these risks and building the right ‘checklist’, we know the results are that business becomes more aware and informed.
Our analysis demonstrated that while delays were frustrating, the knowledge base allows decisions to be made that consider other methods of delivery during lengthy lead times. This is but one example demonstrating how collecting data on past experiences allows us to make more more informed decisions to the benefit of our clients.
And the above is why we’ve become a successful BT partner. Not by re-inventing the wheel but by challenging clients to think deeper about their network.
An exciting time to Partner with BT
As we approach 2017, we are beginning to see the benefits of the EE acquisition as their business mobile portfolio reaches the channel. Network Union is set on leveraging the power of EE’s business service next year along side WAN connectivity. The alignment of mobile and connectivity makes perfect sense. The Cloud Phone proposition rounds up the BT portfolio allowing us to meet the demands of the key telecoms procurement areas.
We remain positive about all of our channel partner relationships and are excited to continue our work moving forward.
Our BT Reseller Program
We mentioned that part of our award is attributed to our work within the BT Reseller program. If your organisation is interested in selling BT products and services, take a look at our reseller page to learn more. In 2016, we've improved our reseller onboarding process and product training.
