Strong global demand for UCaaS sees Telviva expand its offering in the UK
CAPE TOWN – Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) has enjoyed good growth globally and will continue to show upward momentum until at least 2030, according to leading research company Cavell Group. To meet this growing demand, leading unified communications and collaboration (UC&C) company, Telviva, has extended its offering in the UK, which is enabled from AWS in Ireland, to both existing customers with UK requirements and in-country channel partners.
“UCaaS is enjoying robust growth globally,” says Telviva CEO David Meintjes. He explains that during Telviva’s most recent presence at the Channel Live conference in the UK, it became abundantly clear that not only is Telviva delivering world-class UCaaS in the form of Telviva One, but there is also robust demand from channel partners for the types of solutions Telviva already offers to sub-Saharan businesses and its AWS-enabled customer in North America.
“The growth in UCaaS globally is driven by a number of factors. Businesses are moving from on-premise to the cloud for various reasons, but one of the most prominent growth drivers is the increasingly important requirement of dealing with multiple channels of communication.” He explains that while the UK is further along the road of cloud adoption than SA, it is still only ahead by about 10 percentage points, so there is a long way to go yet.
Meintjes says that businesses are fast adopting text-based communication channels, such as live chat via a website or WhatsApp to augment traditional voice calls. “To obtain a single view of customer engagements over multiple channels, a business requires a solution that aggregates that view over various channels and presents that information into the underlying business systems. Once that is in place then automation of high volume, low complexity interactions is often considered to create business efficiencies,” he says.
Another factor driving the adoption of UCaaS is the desire to move from a reactive to proactive service. Outbound communication triggered by events could be optimised over text-based channels, yet at all times offering the flexibility for a customer to move to another channel, such as voice.
Speaking to Telviva’s own growth, Meintjes says: “We currently have operations in South Africa, Lesotho, UK, Canada and are busy extending the service to Australia. We largely follow a partnership model in jurisdictions other than South Africa.
“For the UK market, our focus is to service South African business process outsourcing (BPO) businesses and companies that have a UK head office or UK branch offices, as well as mid-sized UK channel partners,” he explains.
Giving more detail into how the offering works for companies that have requirements in both SA and the UK, Meintjes says that in an instance where a customer that has a registered entity in SA and the UK, and requires services in both jurisdictions, they only pay for the services in the primary jurisdiction in which they operate from and get the service in the other free. He explains that each employee has the ability to dynamically register to two cloud PBXs – one in South Africa and one in the UK, which enables regulatory compliance alongside seamless communication at the lowest call costs. This is in addition to free on-net calling between teams.
In a nod of confidence for South African technology, he says channel partners in the UK have responded overwhelmingly positively to Telviva and its offerings, from UCaaS through to Contact Centre as a Service (CCaaS). “The first response is that the competitive product offering offers great margins to partners and that they can label the offering with their own brand. Partners see it as a future-proofing decision because they are dealing with an actual operator and not just someone selling software,” he says.
“The fact that it is a complete business communication solution is also attractive to partners, as is the scalability of the service from within the AWS environment. Then, in our engagements, we have certainly picked up that useability matters, as does full training and onboarding. Partners like that the solution is easy to adopt, and that they can start small and grow as needed with ease of integration.”
Author: Dave Meintjes
Barbera Shift
While studying to be a CA, Nicholas Bell developed a merchandising app for SAB (South African Breweries), once he built one solution, he quickly acquired more clients and by the time he was preparing to do his articles, SAB gave him a three-year deal as part of their merchandising programme. At 22, while still living with his parents, his first business comprising four people had a turnover of R700 000. By the second year, turnover grew to R1.6 million. After six years, his turnover was R21 million, he employed 25 people with clients including Simba, Harmony, ArcelorMittal, SAB, and Sibanye Gold. Eight years later, Bell hit R100 million, then pivoted the business to ensure they couldn\’t be disrupted. He implemented an investor-led strategy, which will see the business doing 40% of its work offshore with a R500 million turnover in five years.