THE OPPORTUNITY
VoIP is a lucrative industry and has grown immensely, especially since Covid changed the way companies operate. With today’s new standard of business operations including remote communications and work from home, VoIP has become a side-by-side partner to Managed IT offerings.
In 2020 the VoIP services market in North America was nearly $4 billion dollars and through 2030 this market is expected to grow by 13% annually. A major contributor to this projected growth is the decision by incumbent phone carriers in the US to phase out copper land lines, a process that has already begun nationwide.
Perhaps you have already started offering VoIP to your customers. Many PBX manufacturers have approached VARs and MSPs to offer VoIP Software and services to their customers. Many of these resellers have been successful and grown rapidly.
- What if that PBX manufacturer decides to start selling direct?
- What if you missed some of the steps to offering fully compliant VoIP Solutions, and it is too time consuming and expensive to adapt?
- What if your upstream provider suddenly demands that you comply with new "know your customer" regulations, and you can't without the customer finding out who the underlying carrier is?
Cove Central Communications is developing a White Label Program that allows resellers to offer the world class Vodia Multi-tenant PBX platform as a hosted or on premise fully white labeled solution.
Added to the White Label PBX offering will be a White Labeled trunk and billing option, where your company name and contact details will appear on a bill from the underlying carrier that maintains full responsibility for taxes and FCC compliance.
PROTECT YOUR CUSTOMERS
If you are an established business, you have a big investment in your brand and reputation. If you are a startup, you will make a large investment in your brand and reputation.
When you offer another company's brand to your customers, you are trusting them to make good decisions that benefit both your business and your customer's business.
- If they fail to maintain proper security, that puts you and your customers at risk.
- If they decide to sell direct to your customers, you can't easily stop them.
- If they decide to change pricing and notify your customers, it will be difficult for you to maintain your profit margins.
- If you are relying on services that they provide, such as domain name hosting, they are in control of your customer's services.
White Label Services allow you to maintain control of the customer experience. If you don't agree with anything about the underlying service or software, you can substitute another white label offering in its place. Your customers will continue to get the service and performance that they trust from a vendor they know.
WHY WHITE LABEL?
Traditional IT Service providers have many skills required to offer VoIP systems and services, but are simply not familiar with the day to day programming and management of a customer's PBX. While traditional PBX sales and service companies have the PBX skills covered, they often lack the networking knowledge to support what is often a hybrid voice and data network.
VoIP places new demands on network resources and VoIP is intricately integrated in multi-platform communications (from desk phones, web applications, mobile apps, SMS and electronic FAX). Additionally, there’s failover and business continuity that will need to be addressed.
Most importantly, there are FCC mandated fees and service charges, standard operating compliance and tax implications that will also need to be handled.
Added to that, new state and federal laws hold the installer and operator of phones systems liable for proper E911 configuration. So much red tape makes it difficult for MSPs to offer VoIP successfully.
Our Technology Alliance Partner Program was created to address all these issues and complexities to give companies who are ready to expand in to this market a solid foundation to work from.
- Let’s face it. IP-PBX software today is complex and hard to learn. As OEM’s try to keep up with the demands of businesses today, more changes to PBX software will be required. There’s a learning curve that takes to understand how to successfully provision a phone system, then there’s the ongoing end-user training and support.
- Every customer’s communication needs are different so migrations will all be different. Perhaps you already find that your customers each communicate differently internally and externally. Some may be coming from analog systems using POTS or copper lines, some may have already been using VoIP and will just need to migrate to improved software. Then there’s another set of enterprise users that may have their PBX sitting on PRI/T-1 infrastructure or may be using “digital” phones. Yes, this is great opportunity for you to generate a lot of billable hours and to increase your visibility with your customers. But do you sometimes feel like….”I really need someone who can help walk me through all this so I can provide a smooth transition.”
- Usually the one-time costs for on-site installation of new devices, wiring and network infrastructure can be cost prohibitive to the end user. TAPP makes leasing available as a way to provide a high value solution broken up into an affordable monthly installments. Many inexperienced VoIP providers "give away" equipment and services as a way to compete with other vendors, hoping to make up the loss with ongoing service revenue. This is completely unnecessary, because, in most cases, a five year lease on the upfront equipment and services plus the ongoing telephone services will add up to a monthly payment that is far less expensive than the customer's existing phone bill.
- The most complex of all, the ongoing billing and support. You may have or may want to support your customers in their day-to-day voice operations. But what about billing? VoIP providers are required to collect and remit taxes in most locations for phone services. At last count, when combining individual taxes and surcharges by the number of jurisdictions imposing these taxes you could be subject to as many as 5,000 monthly, quarterly or annual tax reports and remittances.
- With today’s FCC mandates to sign every phone call and comply with Stir/Shaken and Messaging campaigns, the risk of your compliance failure to lead to all of your customer's traffic being blocked by the FCC is greater than ever.
In the end, offering VoIP solutions allows you to scale your business into new markets while preserving your hard-earned customers. More importantly, providing high quality services with unlimited support of telecommunications strengthens your customer relationships. The White Label program puts your business in a position to serve your customers, while Cove Central Communications provides answers to your questions and takes care of the complexities of providing compliant VoIP services.
Because the solution is White Labeled, from the PBX to the service and billing, your customer maintains their relationship with you. They can't be lured away by another vendor offering "the same product for less". They can't be contacted by a PBX manufacturer telling them they have arbitrarily decided the new pricing they should pay. You maintain control of your customer relationships and make money without the headaches of going it alone or having a vendor that changes the deal every time you get comfortable in your business.
