Stuart Corner
Sunday, 15 July 2007 17:51
Opinion and Analysis
Page 1 of 3
My
column on Telstra's latest initiative to provide complex telecommunications services to the small business market struck a chord:
a letter from Deena Shiff, head of Telstra Business and an email from Phil Sykes, CEO of iProvide.
I seemed to have hit the nail on the head. "I think you must have been eavesdropping on our business planning meetings," Sykes said jokingly. iProvide. Who are they? Do I hear you say. Well, iProvide represents a radically different approach by a large carrier, AAPT, to the problems of serving the small business market.
iProvide is a company quite separate from AAPT (and in which AAPT holds no equity) yet it was formed specifically to be AAPT's channel to the small business market and works exclusively in this role.
This approach addresses many of the problems and issues I identified in my earlier column. iProvide selects, trains and manages, currently, around 130 resellers some of whom sell services under their own brand and some under the iProvide brand. Yet iProvide does not actually wholesale AAPT services: the reseller buy these direct from AAPT. "It is strictly a management contract," Sykes says. "We are developing AAPT's channel business. We have put the whole programme together: we bring orders and revenue to AAPT. These don't go through our books."
iProvide's core value-add is twofold. Firstly, it develops product tailored for small business based on the full gamut of AAPT offerings: from simple resale of fixed line and mobile telephone services through broadband to hosted IP telephony from AAPT's BroadSoft BroadWorks platform.
Secondly it has built systems that automate the ordering and provisioning of these services by resellers, via a web-based interface and interfaces into AAPT's systems and that enable them to easily track the progress of customers' orders.
iProvide now employs around 50 people, around half of whom are engaged on product and systems development. The core group developed their channel expertise as the founding senior executives of RequestDSL - on of the first companies to rollout DSLAM networks extensively. Request's focus was the SME market and its go-to-market strategy was to go exclusively through channel partners who rebranded the services as their own.
