01732 759725 26 UNIFIED COMMS process; and we wrap all that with one simple bill, one support team and one control panel.” Everything partners need to do they can do through the UNIVERGE BLUE web-based portal, from accessing sales material, a vast knowledgebase and free online training (delivered in 5, 10, 15-minute snippets) to the generation of quotes and the provisioning of customers’ handsets, call-groups, autoattendants etc.. “This even extends to us offering QoS services,” says Cooper. “Every partner gets free access to Voip Scout network testing, which analyses the infrastructure on a customer’s site and produces a report showing whether that infrastructure is fit for the level of voice they want, with a breakdown of things like packet loss, jitter and other issues. This lets the partner see whether they can deploy straightaway and also gives them scope to offer network services to ensure the customer gets a quality service.” A clear roadmap Finally, Cooper points out that resellers and their customers benefit from the reassurance of partnering with a financially stable organisation that has a clear roadmap for the future development of UNIVERGE BLUE. Integrating the contact centre application is a big part of this, but there is a lot more to come, he says. “We have spent time looking at what partners require and what end users are looking to achieve and we have wrapped that all up in UNIVERGE BLUE. But we are not sitting back on what we have got today; we are pushing forward, for example by integrating the contact centre application fully, and analytics is going to be a big strength for us. We have high aspirations to become one of the dominant players in this marketplace.” To find out more about becoming an NEC UNIVERGE BLUE reseller, please contact NEC on https://www.nec-enterprise.com/ partners/Become-a-Business-Partner. are effectively agency models, where a vendor encourages a partner to transfer their base from on-premises to cloud and, while doing so, effectively transfers the ownership of that customer to the cloud vendor. In contrast, NEC provides a solution that the reseller can provide with their own branding; the reseller controls the billing, so commercially that relationship remains between the reseller and the end customer; and they control the pricing. We’ve got data showing that company valuations for businesses with that kind of customer ownership model are two to three times higher than they are for partners with an agency model, where they take a revenue share from the vendor,” he explains. “Another benefit is that we are an indirect-only business and very much have this ethos that we work for the partner, so behind the technology there is a lot of support. This isn’t just for sales and marketing; we also provide deployment support; we can help with integrations; we can help with the migration story and ...continued Ten reasons to take a closer look at NEC’s UNIVERGE BLUE platform for UCaaS and CCaaS. UNIVERGE BLUE differentials q One complete platform It is a true all-in-one solution, with almost every feature accessed via a single application offering the same experience whether you are using a PC or a mobile device, with one control panel for management and one contact for support. w One predictable monthly subscription For visibility and easy financial planning, users pay one monthly subscription covering almost everything, including call minutes, cloud storage (up to 1TB per user) and anti-malware/antivirus protection. e No-compromise telephony Some UC solutions are very good at desktop applications like fileshare, videoconferencing, meetings and collaboration but don’t have the full-blown PBX functionality that businesses require. UNIVERGE BLUE Connect is at heart a great phone system with more than 100 enterprise-level telephony features, including hunt groups, call recording, routing to a receptionist/receptionists, operator console, unified messaging, call recording and much more. The system even has a webfax capability. r Five 9s Reliability UNIVERGE BLUE Connect provides 99.999% uptime reliability, with standards-based QoS, full failover and global geo-redundancy. t Integrated contact centre The integration of UNIVERGE BLUE Engage brings sophisticated omnichannel contact centre functionality to the same platform. y Built-in AI Built-in AI provides useful time-saving productivity features such as voicemail transcription, so that you can read voice messages on email and text, and the transcription of entire meetings by Meet module’s Virtual Assistant. u Easy integrations Out-of-the-box integrations with common productivity, ERP and CRM solutions like Office 365, Chrome, Google, Salesforce, Sugar, Microsoft Dynamics, NetSuite, amongst others add useful features like click to call, click to chat, presence, contacts synchronisation and screen popping to those applications. NEC also offers APIs for custom integrations. i Security Security is provided as standard. This includes the encryption of files in transit and at rest and anti-malware/antivirus scanning of documents stored in UNIVERGE BLUE’s cloud storage, as well as the ability to set access permissions and time-limits for the viewing and sharing of documents. The optional Protect App offers an additional security layer through two factor authentication. o Business continuity Data stored in UNIVERGE BLUE’s cloud environment is safe thanks to back-ups and the ability to restore individual files or whole folders to a point in time prior to a fault, loss or ransomware attack. In addition, there is the ability to push desktop and mobile back-up policies out to users. a A proven solution UNIVERGE BLUE is a tried and tested solution. A joint venture between Intermedia Cloud Communications, which developed the system, and NEC, which is rolling it out globally, the platform is already widely used in North America, where it has in the region of one and a half million users and 6,500 resellers. Andrew Cooper
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