The three day course is classroom based at the VanillaIP Training facility in Bury St Edmunds. The course is split between Sales, Engineering and Provisioning training to allow partners to gear the sessions to the relevant staff in their business.
VanillaIP say that resellers from a wide range of sectors will find the course relevant. No prior telecoms knowledge is required, though an understanding of networking is useful for the sales module and mandatory for engineering.
Dave Dadds, MD of VanillaIP says “It is important for us not to make assumptions about our partners background and their preferred route to market. Equally we have to address the applicable VoIP deployment models from PBX replacement to Business Trunking. This course is an organic process that we have been refining as we have taken Partners onboard.
The first day focuses on an introduction to VoIP technology, feature sets, user benefits, deployment models and sales techniques. The second day looks at provisioning users, managing the billing system, XML integration and trouble ticketing. The Engineering day focuses on PBX integration, configuring edge devices, redundancy options and quality management. It is a requirement that a Partner complete all three sessions, though not with the same member of staff.”
The training cost is £995 and includes a range of handsets and demo licenses to enable VanillaIP resellers to take the service to market. VanillaIP will refund £500 of the training cost once Partners have 250 active end users connected to VanillaIP.