Posts Tagged ‘VoIP Billing’

Learning from our international telecom MSPs and partners

April 29, 2021

One of the things I enjoy most about Datagate Telecom Billing, is that we are an international business, with an international team and international partners, serving an international group of MSP clients. With an ecosystem like we have at Datagate, we’ve learned, and continue to learn so much about how the MSP Telecom business operates around the world.

The MSP industry itself is strong on networking, learning and sharing experiences & knowhow. This is evident in the online forum Reddit and in the great selection of well-attended MSP industry conferences, such as IT Nation, DattoCon, ConnectIT, Channel Partners, ITExpo, Canadian Channel Partners and the list goes on.

At Datagate, we’ve established a series of monthly webinars called “Talking VoIP with Datagate” where we talk with selected partners and clients about their experiences, offerings and business in general. This month we’re talking with Allegiant Technology about telecom offerings to the MSP community, and next month we’ll be talking with Eric Hernaez, the founder and former president of SkySwitch, who recently joined Datagate’s board of directors and is now the CEO of a new technology business called RabbitRun.

Our observations – what is common to all and specific to some MSP geographies

Here is some of what Datagate has observed about the MSP Telecom industry in the countries we operate in, which are the USA, Canada, UK, Europe, Australia and New Zealand.

  1. Worldwide, the demand for MSP services appears to be at an all-time high. Most MSPs serve businesses, and the Covid-19 pandemic has increased business reliance on IT and communication systems. The main challenge for most MSPs appears to be keeping up with demand.
  2. More and more businesses are preferring to buy their telecom systems and services from their IT provider. Increasingly, IT and telecommunications are becoming one and the same.
  3. In the United States, telecom tax and regulatory compliance is a big topic and major concern for MSPs who sell telecom services. This is why Datagate has invested so heavily in this area, supporting the best telecom tax engines and partnering with the best telecom tax & compliance service providers. Tax and regulatory compliance is not a major concern for MSPs outside of the United States, however.
  4. MSPs who provide IT and Telecom services commonly use a PSA (Professional Service Automation) system, such as ConnectWise Manage, Datto AutoTask, Kaseya BMS and others. They typically want to process and be able to see both their IT and their telecom business in the same PSA environment. This is actually why Datagate is so successful, because our strategy is to enable telecom billing for these PSA’s.
  5. Inside the United States, the most popular accounting system for MSPs is QuickBooks by a big margin. In second place would be Xero.
  6. Outside the United States (particularly Canada, UK, Australia and New Zealand), MSPs more commonly use Xero for their accounting system, by a big margin.
  7. Globally, most MSPs resell UCaaS (Unified Communications as a Service) or VoIP telecom services provided by a wholesale provider. Wholesale providers can either be “White Label” (where MSPs sell the service to their customers on their own invoice and take responsibility for the tax and regulatory compliance), or have an Agency or Referral model (where the MSP effectively outsources the billing, tax and compliance to the provider). Examples of White Label wholesale providers are SkySwitch (US & Canada), OITVoIP (US), Gamma (UK), Access4 (AU) and Spark Wholesale (NZ). Examples of Agency wholesale providers are Allegiant Technology (US), MedTel Communications (US) and WaveFly (US).
  8. Microsoft Teams is a very strong driver of business for MSPs and the ability of Teams to act as a softphone for making telephone calls through a Cloud PBX is the most popular product offering around for MSPs around the world. The interesting thing about Teams is that it further unifies the worlds of IT and communications – so much so that we’ve added the ability to bill Teams calling to the Datagate telecom billing engine. Microsoft Teams is introducing a lot of MSPs to the world of telecom. TeamMate Technology in the US are doing great things enabling telecom providers to support Teams, as are TeleSmart (NZ & AU) with their Teams calling offer to MSPs. Teams calling is now a “must have” and most of Datagate’s telecom partners are offering this.

It’s a great time to be part of the MSP world, and we look forward to continuing our learning process, especially through Datagate’s “Talking VoIP with Datagate” monthly webinar series. I hope you’ll join us.

Posted in Billing, Cloud, Communication, Datagate, MSPs, New Zealand IT Industry, SaaS, TELCO | Leave a Comment »
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New Webinar Series: “Talking VoIP with Datagate”

January 25, 2021

One of the great things about the telecom – MSP industry is that there is no shortage of interesting topics within it to learn about and apply to your business to make it more successful. These include technical, product, business and regulatory subjects (yes, regulatory subjects can be interesting too).

This year Datagate has decided to run a series of webinars called “Talking VoIP with Datagate” where we delve into what we believe are the most interesting subjects to us and our MSP community. In effect, it’s a learning exercise that we want to share with anyone who wants to join us and we will be talking with some of the most interesting and qualified people in the industry on the topics we cover.

At the time of writing, we are still compiling our list of topics and guests for the year, but our first topic will be “Using Microsoft Teams as a softphone” and we’ll be talking with Micah Singer of TeamMate Technology. TeamMate develops the software that connects Microsoft Teams to phone systems and so Micah is on the cutting edge of what can be done with Teams and telecom.

Other topics that we’re considering for the series include “Building a successful telecom business”, “Telecom tax and compliance in the United States”, “Digital marketing for MSPs”, “Data analytics for MSPs”, “Adding value with professional voices” and others. We’re open to suggestions for further topics that would be interesting to our MSP community.

I hope you’ll join us in this series. It should be fun, interesting and educational.

Posted in Billing, Datagate, MSPs, Networking, New Zealand IT Industry, TELCO | Leave a Comment »
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Datagate featuring at IT Nation Connect 2020 – Virtual

November 2, 2020

Next week (November 10th, 11th & 12th) Datagate will be a gold-level booth sponsor for the fourth time in a row at the ConnectWise IT Nation Connect conference, which is traditionally held in Orlando, Florida each year.

This year, due to Coronavirus-related health & safely concerns, the event will be “virtual” for the first time, instead of in-person. This presents a great opportunity for MSPs around the world to “attend”, what I believe to be the greatest industry event for MSPs, without the expense and time commitment that is normally required.

Datagate wins “Best Newcomer” award at IT Nation 2017 in Orlando, Florida

Datagate’s first appearance at IT Nation was in November 2017, which marked the first time that we connected face to face with American MSPs and started to understand their requirements for a telecom-billing solution that would integrate deeply with ConnectWise Manage and handle the inclusion of numerous telecom taxes at the federal, state, county and city level.

We also won the “Best Newcomer” award from ConnectWise and along with that, received a lot of publicity within the ConnectWise MSP world.

We came away from IT Nation 2017 with over a hundred sales leads for MSPs wanting a solution like Datagate, that would save them days of work each month, share its data with ConnectWise Manage and make the complicated task of telecom billing very easy and quick.

This started the ball rolling for Datagate with ConnectWise, and since then we’ve grown to serving over 150 MSP clients using Datagate for telecom billing with ConnectWise Manage. We’ve sponsored each IT Nation Connect event since then, and this year we’re doing the same – except for the first time, it will be a virtual event.

Anyone wanting to virtually attend IT Nation Connect 2020 can register here.

I hope to see you there.

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The as-a-Service partnership as a long-term journey

September 21, 2019

As an XaaS (Anything as a Service) provider, you engage your customers for at least the term of your contract, but your real goal is to keep them with you for much longer than that.

If your billing model is fully or partly usage-based, then not only are you motivated to keep your customers longer-term, but you are also motivated to ensure their successful and increased usage of your product or service, because more usage translates to more revenue for your business.

This is why I like the usage-based billing model. It motivates service providers to provide better long-term service to their customers, whilst it also gives more power to the customers, where they can take their business elsewhere, if they’re not getting the service levels or value for money they desire.

When my company Datagate signs up a new client for our billing solution, we view it as a commitment to a very long-term partnership. Our own charge model is based on a small percentage of what our clients bill, so our success is mathematically linked to their success.

We invest heavily in providing services and support for our clients and the ongoing improvement of our product. I see this as an investment in generating more business for our clients and us, rather than as just an overhead cost. The average Datagate client grows their business by 22% per year and so as long as we keep our churn rate to be minimal (as it is), then our revenue would grow by about 22% each year, even if we didn’t make any new sales.

My recommendation to any business that has a recurring revenue model, is to include at least some usage-based component to your billing, because it will drive better behavior in your client relationships and increased revenue growth opportunities for your business.

Good luck on your XaaS journeys!

Posted in Billing, Datagate, MSPs, SaaS, TELCO, Utilities, Water Utilities | Leave a Comment »
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Vancouver as an ANZ beachhead to North America

May 10, 2019
Vancouver’s other airport

When high-growth businesses from Australia and New Zealand (ANZ) look to expand their presence into North America, they have a range of cities to choose from. Sometimes they don’t even need to choose a single location, when staff can work remotely from different locations. When they do need to choose a beachhead location, most will choose a west coast city within easy reach of ANZ. This will ideally have a major airport close by that has good access to the rest of North America and of course New Zealand or Australia.

My SaaS billing software company, Datagate (which was established in New Zealand), looked at all the following location criteria for setting up a new presence in North America, to complement our existing sales office in Jacksonville, Florida and extend our reach from our base in Auckland, New Zealand;

  • Good time-zone overlap with New Zealand (we still have a many of our customers, partners and key staff located in Auckland, New Zealand).
  • Good time-zone overlap with the North American continent (our major focus and we have customers, partners and prospects spread throughout the wider USA).
  • Some workday time overlap with Australia and the UK (where we also have important customers and prospects).
  • Easy access to a major airport, whereby we can take a single flight to most major cities in North America, UK, Europe, Australia and of course New Zealand (multi-leg flights with stopovers are far more time-consuming and energy-draining)
  • Ease of getting established (incorporating a company, setting up bank accounts, renting premises, telephone systems, utilities etc).
  • Good public transport.
  • The costs of running a business are not overly high.
  • A great place to live, where we can easily attract talented, high-grade employees.

We ended up choosing Vancouver, Canada, ahead of other west coast cities that also met our time-zone and accessibility criteria. We liked that we could set up here relatively quickly and everyone we engaged with was positive, friendly and very helpful.

For me personally, the speed of getting established in Vancouver was boosted by my dual citizenship of Canada and New Zealand, but regardless of this, Vancouver still stacked up well as a place to live and work in North America.

Canada Place

The shift to Vancouver from Auckland, New Zealand has been a positive experience for my wife Lee and I. Vancouver is a beautiful, vibrant, multi-cultural city, surrounded by water, snow-capped mountains and the great outdoors. We live near our office in the downtown city area, where everything we need is within walking distance, including a train to the airport. People here are friendly, helpful and welcoming of newcomers.

From a business perspective, we’ve found it easier to communicate with our North American customers, prospects and partners for longer periods of the day than we could from New Zealand, plus it’s been very convenient to have closer access to the conferences and trade shows that we regularly attend.

Coordination and collaboration with our US sales office in Jacksonville, Florida has also improved greatly. American customers no-longer say our time-zone is “on the dark side of the moon”.

It was fast and easy to register a British Columbia company and open an account with the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC), who can handle both Canadian and American banking. American business is easy from here and most Canadian establishments are experienced at supporting businesses that operate in the USA.

We’ve had great assistance in getting set up here from New Zealand Trade & Enterprise (NZTE), Nick Fleming the New Zealand Trade Commissioner, Callaghan Innovation and our local Canadian immigration consultants Sas & Ing.

Lee on the Vancouver waterfront

My advice to high-growth businesses from New Zealand and Australia, who want to set up in North America is… make sure you check out Vancouver!

Posted in Billing, Datagate, New Zealand IT Industry, SaaS, TELCO, Utilities, Water Utilities | Leave a Comment »
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Why “owning” the customer relationship is so important for service re-sellers

November 15, 2017

Sales and billing models have been top of mind for me recently, particularly as Datagate is in the process of expanding into the North American market and getting an understanding the dynamics of the service re-sellers and vendors who operate there.

Relationship_1

In the ICT industry – in particular, business computing and communications – we have seen a huge shift towards the “as-a-Service” model and a shift away from the earlier model of selling hardware and desktop software solutions.  This has brought about what we refer to as the age of the service re-seller.  Service re-sellers are everywhere at this time – you just need to know how to recognize them.

Service Re-sellers

Within the ICT industry, service re-sellers are businesses that sell on-line services that are built, owned and supplied by another another party – a service vendor.  Typically in the ICT Industry,  service re-seller are Managed Service Providers (MSPs), Business Solution Providers, Value-Added Re-sellers (VARs) and Telecommunications specialists.

Often, service re-sellers have the advantage of being able to offer a closer, more personalized service than what the large service vendors can offer. MSPs can often position themselves as a single point of contact for all ICT services to their end-customers. Service re-sellers will often combine and bundle services together from different vendors to create unique value offerings – which are more difficult for competitors to displace.

With any online service sold by re-sellers, such as cloud solutions, telecommunication and data services there are a number of different marketing, sales, billing and support models that are possible.  Each is model is significant as to who “owns” the customer relationship.

Who “owns” the customer relationship?

Any relationship has at least two parties and obviously the customer owns one side of the relationship.  But on the the other side, the ongoing supplier relationship; who “owns” it will depend on who controls it and who is more visible to and engaged with the customer.  Most important is the flow of money; who bills the customer and under what brand?

If the re-seller sells, bills and supports the service under the re-seller’s brand and also holds the supply agreement with the customer, then clearly the re-seller fronts and owns the supplier side of the customer relationship.  If the re-seller allows the service vendor to perform any of these functions under the vendor’s brand (particularly billing and the flow of money), then it cannot be said that the re-seller owns the relationship.  If the service vendor performs all or nearly all of these functions under their brand, then the service vendor owns the relationship.

Why is owning the customer relationship so important?

The “owner” ultimately gets the most business value from customer relationship, in terms of control of the service and also the boost in valuation of their own business.

If the re-seller is the relationship owner, then the re-seller has more power in negotiations with service vendors and is often able to change or re-negotiate service contracts or change vendors in the background to the customer relationship.

Business valuations are most often calculated on multiples of revenue.  Locked-in monthly recurring revenue  (MRR), such as what you have with contracted on-line services, is valued significantly higher than other types of revenue.  This is because MRR is the best quality revenue – in that it is regular, ongoing and largely predictable – a solid cash platform for building valuable businesses on.

How to own customer relationships in the service re-selling model

For a service re-seller to “own” a service relationship (such as telecoms, Cloud software & services etc), those services must be named, billed and supported under the re-seller’s name and/or brand.

This typically requires a white-label service-billing solution, such as Datagate that can plug into usage data supplied by service vendors, apply pricing plans created by the re-seller and the automatically create & distribute re-seller-branded bills to the end-customers.  Datagate also provides re-seller branded portals where the end-customer can view invoices, reports and analysis of their service consumption.

Datagate’s mission is to enable service re-sellers (who are typically MSPs in the ICT industry) to maximize the value of their business and “own” their customer relationships in the areas of telephony and other on-line utility services.

We are also committed to helping service vendors maximize their sales channel growth through service re-sellers.

 

 

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