Hosted IP Telephony from Hipcom

Hipcom specialises in the provision of high-quality Hosted IP Telephony solutions, sold through a network of channel partners in the UK and supported by a range of carefully-selected strategic partnerships with leading VoIP vendors worldwide, including BroadSoft, Atreus, VegaStream, Polycom and Nextone. We are at the forefront of the industry, producing innovative solutions which have been created specifically for the UK reseller channel and the UK SMB marketplace. Our solution is unique in the UK and is based on the well-established BroadSoft BroadWorks platform, offering robust, fully-featured IP telephony capability and a carrier grade, five nines service with full enterprise telephony features. This allows you to enter a rapidly-growing market, secure new business and provide your customers with advanced, feature-rich telephony services.

To find out more about Hipcom, please visit our website at www.hipcom.co.uk .

Hosted IP Telephony is the technological Gold Rush. Demand for IP telephony is growing rapidly in both the corporate and SME markets – and within the next three years it is estimated that more than 50% of corporate telecommunications will be run over IP networks. Education and innovation have lead to a greater understanding and demand for IP telephony - and we are currently on the edge of an unprecedented increase in its use across all industry sectors. With a hosted offering based on user-friendly software, Hipcom can help you move into this exploding market right now.

Why work with Hipcom ?

Hipcom is at the cutting edge of Hosted IP Telephony. Our technology is stable, mature and thoroughly tested – as well as being backed by the world's leading providers. We have the highest quality white label solutions available in the UK today, with the best and most reliable software and architecture. We work with you, providing bespoke packages at the best possible price and giving you the ability to secure quality customers quickly - and to keep them long-term. Our service is flexible and tailored to you, so with our support, knowledge and partner service, you can trust us to be with you now and in the future as a long-term partner, evolving and growing with the market.

At Hipcom we understand that for many resellers this ever-increasing part of the VoIP story is probably raising more questions than it is delivering answers. As pioneers in a new space, our aim is to help you to understand VoIP technology, to learn how to implement the right solutions for customers and to ultimately grow your businesses as a result. So, if you are starting to think about adding a hosted offering to your portfolio, what questions do you need to ask of potential providers? We think that these 10 are key:

1. How much money am I going to make out of selling these solutions – and at what stage in the sales cycle?

2. With no cap-ex for the customer, how long will it be before my cost of sale is covered and I start to make a profit?

3. Can I talk to one of your partners to gain an understanding of the benefits of the relationship?

4. Can you show me a real live customer situation and explain how it is working for them?

5. What is the pedigree of your chosen vendor partners for elements like base platform, provisioning, media gateways,     IP handsets and so on?

6. Does your solution enable me to offer not only a completely hosted solution, but also a migratory approach using     business trunking that will enable my customers to keep their existing PBXs?

7. What support will you offer me if I want to take a white label solution and re-brand this as my own?

8. Will your provisioning software enable me to offer the service without my partners even being aware that it's not     entirely my own?

9. If everything goes really well, can you actually sell me an entire platform – and let me migrate my existing customer     licenses with it?

10. How detailed a level of technical expertise do I need to have before I can start implementing these solutions – and       do you have the right background and skill-set to help me to fill the gaps in my knowledge base?

We cannot answer all of these in detail right here of course, but if this is the type of information that you are seeking, we invite you to ask us – and then ask every other hosted VoIP vendor out there in the marketplace today. We believe that the differentiation will soon start to become apparent.

Partner benefits

All services that Hipcom provides can be fully branded, which means that as far as your customers are concerned, it is you who is delivering and tailoring your own product. This highly scalable and reliable service provides hosted telephony and softswitch services, a hosted provisioning portal, a hosted billing application, full control of customers, accounts, rates and services – and a comprehensive range of CPE, IADs and phone devices, all backed up by flexible financial and leasing arrangements. Becoming a Hipcom Certified Partner can provide your business with a wide range of benefits, including:

•  Stable, recurring monthly revenue streams with 40 to 50% margin

•  Low start-up cost and rapid market entry

•  Complete white label service

•  Flexible customer-by-customer customisation

•  Full partner support from our experienced team

•  Ability to up-sell through additional features like voicemail and call centre applications

•  Business VoIP and Consumer VoIP offerings

•  A unique provisioning portal that makes branding and managing your Hosted IP Telephony offering simple

Training

Hipcom offer a range training courses, including the Hipcom VoIP Foundation Course , Hipcom Certified VoIP Technician, Hipcom Certified VoIP Engineer, Hipcom Certified VoIP Administrator and the Hipcom Go-to-market Training Course. Many of the players who want to get into VoIP are coming from the voice side, whereas IP Telephony is basically a data communications technology. Traditional PBX resellers know that they need to move into this space to protect their businesses and their customer bases, but do not always have the skills which are required to make this possible. And on the other side, even though it is much easier for a data reseller to absorb the knowledge needed to successfully sell and implement VoIP solutions, even data integrators and service providers are lacking some of these core skills - although the gap is undoubtedly not as large.

The Hipcom VoIP Skills Training programme addresses these issues and equips you with the necessary skills to confidently deploy, troubleshoot and support hosted VoIP solutions - whatever their start-point - bridging the knowledge gap between traditional telephony and IP Telephony. Based on our experience of working with the channel we know that a skills gap does exist and that lack of technical knowledge is a real issue which needs to be addressed. We have done this by bringing to market a training programme that aims to bridge this knowledge gap, allowing you to enter the Hosted VoIP market armed with not only a market-leading hosted offering but also with the appropriate skills to get to market quickly and to succeed in this new space.