Michelle Ryder spoke to Michael Lloyd, CEO at Nuvola Distribution about unified communications, cloud and video audio conferencing, and the opportunity for print and IT resellers to expand share of wallet and provide customers with a fully integrated IT offering
Michelle Ryder (MR): Tell me a little bit about Nuvola Distribution. Michael Lloyd
(ML): We started out as a white-label professional services business serving the comms world, that was 12 years ago. We would typically subcontract our engineers to resellers and they would sell white-label services around some of the traditional UC products that dealers hadn’t been able to offer in the past because they didn’t necessarily have the skill-set. Then about nine years ago, we were approached to take on distribution for a number of our vendors.
At that time there weren’t many specialist valueadded distributors in the sector and our partners were looking for a full service that went beyond traditional box shifting. We rebranded as Nuvola Distribution and we now offer a wide range of communications solutions from desktop handsets, all the way to full network monitoring solutions and everything in between. We also have an office, warehousing facility and staff in Galway, Ireland. We set the company up before Brexit which means that we can trade seamlessly with Europe. We also conduct a lot of business where the product comes from America and goes straight to Europe, so having a presence in Ireland makes life a lot easier.
MR: How has COVID impacted the business and team and has it changed your go-to-market strategy?
ML: In the UCaaS world there was talk about the cloud about eight years ago, but the pandemic accelerated its adoption probably by five to ten years. Face-to-face meetings were by necessity replaced with video calls, and what we have seen is an appetite within the traditional print and IT channel to take on something new. We found a number of print resellers talking to their customers about voice and data. It’s a natural fit for this channel, they have built strong customer relationships, they are used to completing multi-year deals, recurring revenue, etc.
To some extent there is still some hesitancy among print specialists saying: “let’s talk about UCaaS” because it’s out of their comfort zone. But there are a number of customers out there who are interested and it’s not a big stretch to take it on and add a new service to their monthly bill. The challenge perhaps is a change in mind-set and maybe that will come as the next generation take the helm? There’s also questions around commission, gross profit etc. So, there’s still a bit of education to be done. What we try to do as a value-added distributor is to support in a consultative role.
In the print world, there is no one-sizefits- all solution, and that’s very much the same in the cloud. Feature-sets differ, as do customers’ requirements and our job is to support and consult in delivering the right solution. Partners keep talking to their customers and own the relationships, they don’t have to invest in training or upskilling their sales teams, we do the heavy lifting, and ultimately that means partners can onboard very quickly.
MR: What would you say are the biggest challenges for vendors at the moment?
ML: We are operating in a busy, congested market and differentiating is difficult for vendors. We all know that trying to compete on price is a route to nowhere. It’ll be how cheap can you do? And then the business owners will question whether or not it will increase the bottom line. And when you’re trying to encourage new partners along, the margin opportunity is key. The challenge is to differentiate in the quality of the product, while also ensuring that everyone can make some money along the way.
MR: Are there any opportunities that you think resellers could be exploiting right now?
ML: I think there is a fear that resellers might lose control of their customer where the cloud is concerned. They might feel the vendor will come along and take over. But there are many ways to avoid that. As a distributor, our route to market is solely through channel partners, we do not deal with end customers.
The opportunity is there for them to expand their offering and give it a go. Print dealerships have been traditionally owner-managed businesses and they have a long history of being nimble and diversifying into new areas. We’ve seen the emergence of bigger organisations as a result of acquisitions within the sector, and among these there is an appetite to expand and grow their customer offering.
The opportunity lies in ensuring the sales teams can see the potential for their commission to grow and the SaaS model works in that respect. The market has shifted, buyers used to favour specialist suppliers in different silos, in the UCaaS world for sure that is changing. Buyers are realising the value of close single vendor relationships in terms of the service levels and support they receive. We have to be careful that we don’t commoditise the product in the UCaaS world.
To some extent the fact that adoption and accessibility of these solutions has risen exponentially is a challenge. But there still needs to be some interaction with understanding the right product fit. For resellers, the opportunity is not just around UCaaS, there is also the Microsoft and in particular, the Teams opportunity. Initially probably two years ago, we saw a lot of the big UCaaS players competing against it – now they realise they can’t compete – they’ve got to work with it. What we have done is build an ecosystem of products that are Teams-ready.
So all the products we sell across contact centre, call recording, phone plans, devices etc. are all Teamsready, so that means when a customer is using O365 and Teams, there’s a whole suite of compatible comms solutions that resellers can offer.
We can help resellers to capitalise on this massive opportunity to upsell and cross-sell a suite of certified products and solutions across their customer base rather than open up the door to competition. They don’t need to be Microsoft specialists, that’s where we come in to support. We’re not a vendor, and we’re not going to push one product, our role is always centred around a consultative approach. And again with the SaaS model, it’s really easy to tack on an incremental monthly charge which increases the recuring revenue stream.
Incidentally, we still sell a lot of on-premise products, and there’s margin opportunity in that area too, it’s not a million miles away from the printer sales model, resellers can lease, sell and install hardware on-premise. I think from our perspective, we would urge print and IT channel vendors to not walk away from these opportunities. You need to jump on this because there is a fantastic opportunity to secure new revenue streams.
MR: Looking ahead to the future, what could things look like in one to three years’ time?
ML: Digital transformation will continue, Teams will become even more of a prominent player, especially around applications and artificial intelligence will come even more to the fore. I think vendors’ future focus will be on helping people understand how these technologies will help their business especially around enabling employees to have a balanced approach to work and to leverage technologies with the same look and feel wherever they are. I see IT as driving the comms world and if we get the education piece right, we will see the print, IT and comms channels coming together.
https://nuvoladistribution.com
