Tectrix

Reseller case study as contribution to Comms Business Channel Guide to VoIP, March 2008

Reseller experience of selling Timico hosted VoIP for Business:
- Experience Vs Margin
- What's In It For Me?

Tectrix Solutions, based in Altrincham, Cheshire, is a leading UK independent supplier of business telecoms solutions. The company works in partnership with IT decision makers from businesses of all sizes across the UK to offer one point of contact for all datacomms needs.

Tectrix has been a Timico Business Partner since 2005 and has sold 46 Timico VoIP for Business seats into 16 customers, which typically are small and medium sized businesses with under five employees, often with home-workers or a fragmented office set up.

"In our experience more and more people are asking us about VoIP and the Timico solution is becoming increasingly prevalent in our product range. We expect this situation to continue to grow and I would say that the only challenge has been that at the beginning, our telecoms engineers could have done with more IT knowledge. Now we send them on Timico's accreditation programme so they are completely up to speed," says Peter Thornicroft, Director at Tectrix Solutions.

Fitting VoIP into the Telecoms Reseller Portfolio

Tectrix Solutions' background is in data cabling and telecoms systems. A few years ago the company identified that VoIP was going to become important in the industry and, always wanting to provide its customers with the widest choice and most up to date solutions, it looked around to find a product that would sit comfortably within its business portfolio.

Peter Thornicroft explains why Tectrix chose Timico: "Few other companies are able to provide a true business-strength VoIP product with a feature set that is comparable to a traditional phone system. It is very important to us that we provide our customers with a top quality products, as well as service, so we were looking to partner with a VoIP services provider that shared this same ethos. Timico and its VoIP for Business product fitted this profile and the company has been our premier VoIP partner for the past two and a half years."

Other factors in Timico's favour, which helped draw Tectrix to them as a VoIP partner included the fact that Timico could supply the whole convergence package including ADSL, fixed line, collocation services, PWAN and more. "We also knew Timico wouldn't undermine our core business or customer base," adds Peter Thornicroft.

Why Hosted VoIP?

When researching a VoIP service to add to its portfolio, Tectrix started to recognise that the benefits of a hosted solution would fit best with the needs of its customers.

"Our target customers for VoIP are small scale operations or start-ups with one or very few employees. This type of customer is very mobile, often moving office location several times as the business grows. Timico's hosted VoIP for Business service, which can simply be plugged in and ready to go at any new location once the ADSL line is installed, is therefore perfect. It also has a very low cost of capital expenditure, again perfect for a small business or start-up, and low maintenance costs because everything is looked after offsite by Timico. This also provides it with an inbuilt disaster/recovery solution, as all the customer's data is held offsite too," continues Peter Thornicroft.

Revenue

Tectrix added VoIP to its product portfolio because it had the vision to see that IP voice technology is the future and the direction in which the industry is moving. When it comes to the question: "is VoIP generating profit for Tectrix," Peter Thornicroft is candid:

"It's true that traditional telecoms systems deliver the highest margin. However, there is more to it than that. Our job is to provide the best possible solution for our customers' requirement and for our smaller end clients that means VoIP. I could sell them a traditional phone system, knowing that I can try and sell them a new system a few years down the line but there is a moral aspect here. A traditional system, providing the same feature set as the Timico VoIP solution, would be very expensive and difficult to install and maintain. On the other hand, if I sell this type of customer a top class solution like Timico VoIP for Business then, because it is such an excellent solution, I am more likely to keep that customer for a good three to five years, which then makes it financially worth while. Of course we are in business to make money but we are also in business for the long haul and Timico VoIP enables us to build strong, long term relationships with customers."