Wildix UCC Summit: Partners Asked to Join 'Army' Against 'Vampire Vendors'
Wildix says its rivals want to "take your customer base and put you out of business."
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Wildix’s Steve Osler said the brutal reality for partners is “you are no longer needed.”
“Avaya, Alcatel-Lucent and Atos, and most recently Mitel, the goal of these [vendors] is to take your customer base and put you out of business,” he said. “Now we are past when the three As first arrived on the Magic Quadrant. It’s here and now is the moment for you to decide.”
He said the future is not about reselling, but serving customers.
“Wildix is here to accept you,” Osler said. “Today I personally invite everybody here to take this step to join the army. No doubt our military cry will be ‘I am Wildix.'”
Wildix’s Alberto Carlos Benigno, said “vampire vendors” are still out there stealing partners’ customers and monetizing them for themselves.
“It’s the RingCentral model,” he said. “Build alliances with other older vendors to purchase their channels, cut them out and then take over that existing customer base. They take you out of the exchange completely because they go right to the end user without you. They don’t want you as a partner, but they take your customers anyway. And what if you refuse to give them your [prospect] portfolio? They’ll just buy the information from carriers and SIP providers because SIP providers know your customers’ contact information.”
These vendors are trying to win the war with transactional sales, “hypnotizing” customers with deep discounts and solutions that lack any real value, Benigno said. Partners can now take control of their own destiny more than ever thanks to Wildix being mentioned in the Magic Quadrant.
Also during its UCC summit, Wildix announced a new version of its x-bees sales communication-as-a-service product. The new platform has been designed to follow and support every step of the customer journey, inspired by and integrated with the most effective tools for customer relationship management (CRM) and business intelligence.
The new x-bees is integrated with Salesforce and Gong.io.
Robert Cooper is Wildix’s managing director for the Americas. He said the new x-bees is a “completely different model.”
“We’ll still have the UC platform, but this will be something completely different,” he said. “It’s much more than a collaboration tool. Think of it as a smart browser-based UCaaS platform so that you can manage leads, improve customer service and increase your sales.”
The new x-bees stemmed from continual conversations not only with channel partners, but with end-user customers about being able to use communications tools to help them grow their business, and increase sales and revenues, Cooper said.
“So I have a telephone system, but that’s not what I need,” he said. “I need the right tools to be able to help me grow my business. I have all of these challenges around sales and leads, and now things are going online. How do I manage website presence? How do I communicate more effectively with my customers, internally and externally? And so x-bees came out of that.”
It’s not about just having a CRM because having a CRM is “only as good as people jotting down the information while they’re on the call,” Cooper said.
“So we wanted to give a singular view and a singular platform, one platform to manage leads and customer services, so improving the customer experience,” he said. “We packaged that to help improve that experience, even after the call or the engagement is done. So using artificial intelligence (AI) to give me some feedback about the performance and what we’ve done, and what we heard and what the expectations are in the experience of the customer.”
In 2021, Wildix increased its global revenue 35% year over year.
“In 2021 we also saw a large increase in the channel and along with that came a 36% increase in our headcount, so we’re starting to grow as an organization,” Cooper said. “As we begin to really expand our footprint and our growth in the market, I attribute this obviously to the performance, our market positioning, which is our strong commitment to the channel. I think that really helped.”
During the pandemic when people were scrambling, all of the over-the-top (OTT) players fed off of the channel, he said.
“We have one go-to-market strategy and that’s [channel],” he said. “You are a part of the solution that we deliver. So we’re not working around you. I think that contributed immensely to the performance in the market, so I’m happy about that.”
Cooper said a big benefit for partners is Wildix is continuously improving, enhancing and working on its platform.
“Our focus is always to stay ahead of the industry and we’ve been successful in doing that, staying ahead of the industry, and staying ahead of customer expectations and where we see that the industry is going, so we’re always going to come out with improvements,” he said. “You may consider it new, advanced feature functionality, but we were already thinking about it in advance, so you’re going to see more of that.”
Improvements are coming in the area of billing, Cooper said.
“We’re going to be rolling out a billing platform as well to help our partners,” he said. “We rolled out x-caracal last year, which is our trunking product or our global numbering product. And so now we’re going to be able to build and offer billing services to our partners because we think that’s a significant roadblock for many of them, which is understanding taxing, the tax implications that they have and regulations that they have to comply with. So we want to be able to stay ahead of that and keep them ahead of the curve. And that’s what we’re doing this year.”
Partners want to stay up to date on changes in the market, Cooper said. That’s why Wildix is focused on training and development.
“Digital disruption is not just about the technology, it’s about consumption models,” he said. “It’s about consumer trends and buying habits. So it’s a litany of things that they have to continue to stay ahead of. We want to continue to present them with information, and training and development to help them be prepared. We’re going to continue that focus this year. And we’re going to try and expand that even more. We launched an e-learning platform internally for not only technical training, but solutions training, sales training and go-to-market (GTM) strategies. So we put a lot of training material there and we’re going to continue the focus even on-site training with ValueSelling.”
In addition, many partners are looking to try and bring in other components on the back end, Cooper said.
“We have a lot of MSPs now, but there were a lot of others that have made the transition to MSP and as they made that transition, now they’re trying to expand their portfolio and expand their footprint,” he said. “They’re looking at us in terms of what types of integration, what types of capabilities do we have on the back end to allow them to do that to expand the services to own more of the desktop or more of the infrastructure. And so we’re continually looking at that and adding to that portfolio to help them expand those services as they go.”
Cooper said he hopes Wildix partners leave the summit “completely enthused and understanding completely our total commitment to them.”
“And when you come out of the summit and you hear everything that we want to present to you and everything that we’re offering, and everything that we’re going to be doing today and in the future, I think the partners see how they fit into that picture,” he said. “We have multiple avenues to be able to sell. Everything we do, they fit into the picture. So when they come out of the summit, I’m hoping that they’re really enthused and saying we’ve got a great opportunity going into 2022, going into the future with Wildix. And so that’s what I’m excited to see and we’ve seen it every year after the summit.”
Also during the UCC summit, Wildix announced its top 10 partners.
“Our most successful partners this year found success because they worked hard to make it happen,” Benigno said. “They dug into their customer base and most of all they always work side by side with their area managers. They won contracts working every service model and made more money.”
The top 10 partners are:
RC Line
Elsitel
EmerNet
Danmark Communications & Security
Access Communications
Tel Pro
Itas
Also during the UCC summit, Wildix announced its top 10 partners.
“Our most successful partners this year found success because they worked hard to make it happen,” Benigno said. “They dug into their customer base and most of all they always work side by side with their area managers. They won contracts working every service model and made more money.”
The top 10 partners are:
RC Line
Elsitel
EmerNet
Danmark Communications & Security
Access Communications
Tel Pro
Itas
Wildix kicked off its virtual 2022 UCC Summit by asking partners if they’re ready to ditch “vampire vendors” – many Wildix rivals – and join its “army.”
For the first time, researchers at Gartner included Wildix in their Magic Quadrant for UCaaS. Wildix was as a “niche player” in the 2021 Magic Quadrant.
Alberto Carlos Benigno is Wildix’s chief sales officer. During the Wildix UCC Summit, he said being included in the Magic Quadrant represents a massive achievement and opportunity for partners.
Wildix’s Alberto Carlos Benigno
“New doors are opening and you’ll have the opportunity to approach bigger customers than ever before,” he said. “Being mentioned in the Magic Quadrant will elevate your position from partners of an emerging vendor like many others to partners of the No. 1 European vendor recognized by Gartner.”
Steve Osler is Wildix‘s CEO and co-founder. He said Wildix and its partners have been “futurists” many times lately.
Wildix’s Steve Osler
“First, we adopted webRTC technology when nobody cared about it and now webRTC is the standard,” he said. “Then we focused on sales communication with WebRTC Kite, which is still our customers’ most appreciated feature. Also, we have been revolutionary by insisting on sticking 100% with you. Wildix is the only vendor in the Magic Quadrant that is 100% channel focused. Unfortunately, the fact that we are the only one is not good news.”
Being 100% channel oriented is harder than going directly to the end user, Osler said.
“We need you, our partners, to work with us in order to help you grow,” he said. “That’s why we keep pushing you to join training sessions to help you win more deals than your competitors. We must provide you with more and more new weapons, which are of the utmost importance to win against against the competitors.”
Scroll through our slideshow above for more from the latest Wildix UCC Summit.
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