Getting the balance right

Richard Bligh of Gamma

On the back of a solid set of financial results for the year just passed Gamma looks set fair to achieve further growth throughout the next two to three years. Marketing Director Richard Bligh talks to Comms Business Magazine.

Comms Business Magazine (CBM): What is the story behind the results you have just published?

Richard Bligh (RB): In a nutshell the success we have achieved is down to being driven by selling new products to existing channel partners whilst at the same time retaining current legacy revenues.

This achievement has not happened by accident. Rather it is as the result of Gamma making the right product innovation choices and introductions over the last three years. For example, SIP trunking, our MVNO offering with Vodafone and the development of our own data capabilities.

The hardest thing to achieve has been to get the balance right between

developing new services and innovating our traditional voice services. For example, we recently launched a new fraud service on traditional phone lines where Gamma will automatically shut down lines if there is a sudden or significant surge in traffic patterns. From a carrier perspective we believe that Gamma is unique in providing this kind of service.

The other challenge has been to keep intact our ‘can do’ culture as we continue to grow. Together with a channel-only focus we will work hard to ensure this ethos of getting things done for our resellers and their customers is maintained.

CBM: What plans do you have for the immediate future?

RB: Gamma will continue to innovate and I can reveal that the next wave of introductions will involve better integrating voice, data and mobile products. For example, we want to, in one transaction, one click of the mouse and on one bill, enable our partners to order say, 50 mobile phones, 20 deskphones and provision Ethernet services. And for all of these products and services to be supplied in the sequence required by the reseller and their user. That’s our vision.

When it comes to traditional voice services we will again continue to innovate. We have a rolling 12-month road map of developments and new product introductions already in the pipeline.

CBM: We work in a very dynamic market so where do you see the challenges ahead for the reseller community?

RB: Resellers today face many challenges and to succeed they need to get their own service/product balance right. The balance needs to be between broadening their own portfolio to capture more customer spend and expanding in to new areas where they currently lack skill sets, confidence and ultimately, credibility. Allied to that is the sales model needed for different types of services, so even if the reseller has the technical skills to launch new services, can the existing sales force adapt?

Secondly resellers need to consider how they position themselves against new competitive threats. This includes different resellers entering their markets as well as resellers selling newer applications such as cloud based services and different business models.

Gamma will absolutely continue to support our resellers through these challenges and provide the breadth of services to choose from so that their portfolio is balanced.

CBM: Do you think that there is too much hype or fluff surrounding some new applications, say cloud or is there real demand building?

RB: Let’s be honest – there’s always too much fluff around the new trends in telecoms, so that’s taken as read. That said, cloud is real and some businesses are starting to move to a model where technology services and equipment are no longer on site but ‘housed’ elsewhere. The key word is some businesses. Just as hosted telephony hasn’t killed the PBX, or SIP hasn’t killed off ISDN, nor will cloudbased services be bought by every business in the UK.