Telstra has announced Digital Business, an offering that combines traditional telco services with cloud computing elements in a simple proposition for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Digital Business presages a shift from face-to-face to online sales, which will usher in a wave of change to established channel partners.
Digital Business integrates UC and SaaS, as well as the shop/office and home
Telstra announced a new Digital Business offering last week that provides a bundled unified communications (UC) and IT offering for the SME market. Digital Business is a complete virtual office over fixed and mobile broadband, including integrated fixed and mobile voice services, video collaboration, support services, and software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications delivered through T-Suite.
T-Suite was launched last year as Telstra’s retail shop for SaaS applications for the SME market. It provides a range of apps for common business needs, such as office productivity/email, CRM, finance, HR, and IT security. Telstra claims that more than 700 customers have purchased apps from T-Suite, including Australia’s market-leading online real estate company Realestate.com.au, which recently signed up for 750 seats of Microsoft Exchange Online.
Digital Business will primarily target the "S" part of the SME market – a sector traditionally underserved by most providers. A key part of the offering is to bring together a bundle of services in a simplified, pre-configured offering that supports mobility and the home office as well as the shop or business-office location. This aligns well with the common situation where the back-office activities of SMEs are carried out from the home at the end of the working day or by a spouse or partner. Bringing together an offering that explicitly integrates the shop/office and the home is a sensible move on Telstra’s part.
SaaS will eventually force channel partners to rethink their role
Telstra’s distribution approach for Digital Business is two-pronged – online via T-Suite and face-to-face via its SME Telstra Business Centre channel partners. This reflects the experience to date with T-Suite, where most SMEs require some “handholding” to become comfortable with the SaaS model for applications, and even more so to decide on an integrated UC solution.
Telstra expects that T-Suite will become an effective low-cost channel for upselling new services to Digital Business customers over time as customers select new apps from the T-Suite menu.
While face-to-face channel partners will be essential for creating momentum for Digital Business, they will need to adapt as SMEs become more comfortable with a purely online channel.
Digital Business is a good example of the impact of cloud computing on the industry and its sales channels. As more services are bought and managed online, traditional channel partners will need to develop skills beyond selling and distributing devices and shrink-wrapped software. They will need to move upstream into assisting their clients to integrate the systems and use them effectively to grow their businesses.
The change will not happen overnight, but growth in the number of customers using T-Suite will be like the proverbial canary in the coalmine for the face-to-face channel partners. As devices become simpler, and as more functionality becomes embedded in SaaS solutions, channel partners will need to move with the changing times or be left behind.
Developers may become a new sales force
The portfolio of SaaS apps in T-Suite is currently somewhat limited – essentially some Microsoft online apps, a few locally specific HR and finance apps, and some IT security software.
However, Telstra has also announced that it plans to create a services and applications marketplace and developer centre. We think this is an important step. Telstra would benefit from creating a predefined framework for a larger number of application developers and entrepreneurs that would use T-Suite as a way to reach their customers.
A large base of application developers will help Telstra to address a growing number of verticals and specific applications, and also multiply the sales force. Successful developers will not just sit down and wait for the online orders to come; they will chase customers and ultimately drive the network infrastructure and services that are part of the offering.
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