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Partner Content: Voice, data and mobility set to become critical services for IT resellers

Exclusive research conducted by CRN in association with Gamma, shows how the pandemic has increased the appetite for Unified Communications

Even though Covid rules have now been relaxed and people are beginning to return to the office, the need for a proper unified communications strategy is becoming more critical for UK firms.

According to the Office for National Statistics (ONS)^[1] a whopping 85 per cent of workers want to use a hybrid approach of both home and office working in the future, and online job adverts which include terms related to ‘homeworking' increased threefold in May when compared with February 2020.

Firms that ignore the wishes of their employees when it comes to home working are going to struggle to retain talent, but instead need to focus on enabling them to work remotely with the right technology in place.

And this is where the trusted IT provider comes into its own. Over the past year, many traditional IT resellers have lost out on crucial revenue streams because they were not offering bespoke voice, data or mobile services to their customers. Many had avoided doing so because of a misguided perception that it is a complex set of technology and a market that is quite closed to newcomers.

However this is not the case, with IT and voice rapidly becoming a single service.

Of the 160 resellers questioned by CRN and Gamma, just 37 per cent said they already offer voice, data and mobile services to their customers. This means 63 per cent of respondents were missing out on earning revenue from this potentially lucrative market.

Mark Lomas, head of new business at Gamma, said the market was changing before the pandemic, but now it has sped up and more IT resellers are realising that adding voice, data and mobility is becoming critical.

"This is for a number of reasons. Firstly, become of the extra revenue, secondly because it enables you to increase the average number of products to clients, and finally because they are protecting against their competitors. There has never been an easier time to step into the voice market because the demand is now actually there," he said.

Read the report

^[1]https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/employmentandemployeetypes/articles/businessandindividualattitudestowardsthefutureofhomeworkinguk/apriltomay2021