Technology Reseller - v30

01732 759725 44 BILLING Europe right now is to grow up into the enterprise space and to sell more software over here as we have done in the US. TR : What prompted your move up into the enterprise space? Was it purely a sales and marketing strategy or was it enabled by some technical development? JA: I had a slide the first time I presented to this very small team at IGEL, but I use it in almost every slide deck; it’s like a famous Jed Ayres thing and it’s all about the importance of a comma. Where there’s a long sales cycle and you have to do all that work to convince a customer, would like to do it for 500 seats or 5,000 or 50,000? It was basically like ‘Let’s go after the biggest companies’. TR : So you already had the technology you needed to win them over? JA: It’s unbelievable. You walk into the biggest corporation in the world and say ‘In five minutes I am going to show you how TR : When might that be? JA: We are looking towards 2022 right now. Part of the challenge for us is that while we are very excited about all the perpetual stuff we are selling, the more of it we sell, the more we will have to convert to subscription. Part of the challenge is to get the right set of tools so we don’t break the business. TR : Are you planning to recruit more resellers? JA: Honestly, we don’t want to be over- distributed, so we are expanding our channel by working with some of the top SIs. We need to build a managed services portfolio and that ties back to having a subscription programme, so we can meet the needs of a customer that takes on 100,000 more people because it’s Christmas and only wants our solution for a month. What we need is fewer, better distributors in Europe and more software- oriented resellers. The big opportunity in to convert that device and connect it to WVD or Citrix’ and it blows their mind. We gave away a Tesla in my first year, because of its software-defined associations and to get people’s attention. Basically, to enter the raffle we would ask people to take a 15-minute meeting over Zoom: this is what the thin client looks like, here’s the console, and now I am going to build this profile, save it, put it in this folder and walk to that machine and completely change its personality. We would take it from there to a ‘come meet me’. Our number one problem, though, is people have never heard of IGEL. Everyone has heard of HP and Dell – that’s the safe thing. TR : Your relationships with the software and hardware vendors supported by IGEL OS and your involvement with Microsoft WVD must be changing that. JA: Absolutely. That is the power of an eco-system. ...continued Billing People, a new private members body created for billing professionals working in the ICT industry by billing solutions provider Union Street Technologies, has postponed September’s inaugural Billing People Summit until June 2021. The Billing People Awards, which were going to be held at the end of the Summit, will still take place on September 24 this year, but as a virtual event. Free events such as these are an important element of the new organisation, both for their ability to foster a sense of community amongst billing professionals and for the educational opportunities they present. Billing People had planned a comprehensive programme of content for the inaugural Billing People Summit, including workshops on revenue assurance, compliance and other topics. In time it hopes to establish an online forum and resource centre to support its networking activities. An essential role Union Street has established Billing People to promote and champion the essential role that billing professionals play in the channel. Head of Sales and Marketing Vincent Disneur said: “Effective billing personnel are essential to the profitability of any reseller business. They’re responsible for margin analysis, revenue assurance, compliance and ensuring smooth service delivery in this crucial area of customer service. “With Billing People, we hope to cultivate a thriving community where billing professionals can meet, network, discuss challenges and bounce ideas off one another. Thanks to numerous disruptive changes to technology and regulations, there have been many occasions over the past few years when billing professionals could have made good use of the sounding board a user community like this provides. It’s our hope that Billing People will become a valuable resource for overcoming similar challenges in the future.” Union Street’s position as an industry leader has been critical to the setting up and establishment of the Billing People organisation. However, it is hoped that with the community’s support, Billing People will eventually become self-sustaining and mature into its own distinct entity. Disneur said: “Union Street’s team numbers over 80 personnel, arguably making it the largest single concentration of billing expertise in the channel. This, in combination with over 3,500 users of our aBILLity billing software, makes us ideally placed to found such a community. In the short term, much of the administrative and managerial tasks will fall to Union Street but as the community grows we expect that volunteers from the billing community will step up and help to drive the organisation forward. We’re also hopeful that sponsorship and support will come from other vendors that, like us, recognise the value of billing professionals and the vital role they perform in the channel.” billingpeople.com Union Street Technologies launches new organisation for billing professionals Billing People Summit postponed Vincent Disneur, Head of Sales and Marketing, Union Street Technologies