A recent report in the FT states that smartphone sales are up 48%.

The sharp rise in smartphone sales surely reflects the fact that we are becoming increasingly dependent on servicing our ‘life on the move’.  The Economist earlier this year highlighted that “mobile-broadband services [will] overtake fixed-line ones in a few years’ time.” (Economist, January 30th-February 5th 2010).

We’re very pleased to be support channel partners within this fast-moving market segment for a number of clients. 

For example, this week saw the addition of MobileDemand warranty support across the UK and Ireland for the MobileDemand xTablet T7000 and xTablet T8700 Rugged Mini Tablet PCs, to our portfolio of mobile devices from Motorola, Bluebird, Janam, and Trimble/TDS, and various mobile printers such as Zebra and Datamax-O’Neil, among others.

Mobile Demand’s President, Matt Miller, explains: “We were looking for a partner that could provide reliable services and support to our growing number of multi-national customers deploying MobileDemand xTablets throughout Europe.

“We selected QCom because they have the same high standards for customer service and support as MobileDemand. They also have the resources to scale to meet our needs as we continue to expand sales in the European arena.”

Elsewhere, we are also seeing high levels of uptake for our recently re-launched commissioning service for partners. By using our engineers to configure and deploy units, resellers are not tying up expensive developers on repetitive and mundane roll-out tasks, nor do they have to invest substantially in their own pool of installers to cater for (what are clearly) the irregular peak of such projects.  We can be brought on board to provide flexible resource as required, often accelerating the speed of both configuration and roll-out. Commissioning services is another example of how the benefits of our utility-based pricing model can be realised by resellers.

We continue to seek fresh vendors to add to our portfolio and would welcome hearing from our clients concerning other devices they would like supported.

Neil Anderson
MD, Qcom

One measure of increased business confidence came recently when the National Outsourcing Association (NOA) released its quarterly Outsourcing Confidence Index.

The results showed that more than half of end-users are more confident with using outsourcing to support their businesses than they were in 2009.

Thanks to increasing confidence, 60% of respondents said they planned to outsource services that had not been previously outsourced during 2010, with 56% of planning to increase the scope of pre-existing contracts.

The Index also showed an increasing focus by end-users on costs, which is hardly a big surprise but the concern is clearly that this should not lead to higher-volume, low cost contracts over shorter timeframes.

Our view is that the decision to outsource is a strategic one for our clients.  We work with them from the outset to ensure that the partnership delivers the outcomes that they are looking for. Typically, this focuses on helping manufacturers, resellers and distributors improve their service delivery, enhance their profitability, and if required, it can support business development and expansion.

Our relationship as an outsourcer goes way beyond being placed in a ‘supplier box’ with clients, or indeed just white labelling our services.  We often collaborate with clients when they are pitching for new business, helping to formulate strategy around areas such as customer service.

Achieving this requires the relationship to go far beyond that of supplier-client, but instead brings best of both companies as an outsourcing partnership to bear in order to deliver a superior outcome.  And that, surely, will be a partnership that ultimately serves the customer better. 

Neil Anderson
MD, Qcom

We’ve been quiet on the blog recently, so you may have been wondering what has been going on at Qcom.

Well, rather than getting distracted both by the fog of the recent political processes, as well as in all the debates on the general economic malaise, we have been focusing on our business - the part of the economy we can control.

I was quoted in an FT article about the recession and how businesses could gear up for a successful recovery.  I said that businesses are better to respond to mapped out market opportunities to minimise risks, and “companies that talk to their customers and deliver the right solutions will always prosper”.

And that’s exactly what we’ve been doing.

Qcom’s vision is driven by a passion for great customer service and a quality ethos.  It’s the little details that count and we’re not happy if we don’t achieve the high standards we set ourselves. Clearly, it’s been a challenging winter for all UK-based field service operations but that notwithstanding, our focus is always on seeking opportunities for improvement. 

We differentiate ourselves for our partners by not only understanding the service problems that we solve for customers though outsourcing, but also on understanding the importance of delivering our solutions with consistency and reliability.

These are standards of excellence that can only be achieved by slick, effective operational processes, and our focus over the last few months has been on reviewing these processes to ensure we meet our promises against service delivery to you.

This meant that in January, we signed off a £60k investment on a new software platform from Armstrong, the first phase of which has now gone live.

The software will provide mobile reporting and a customer portal going forward, making the benefits of the investment visible to both you, our customer, and to your clients.

We have also been recruiting yet more engineers and revamping our training programme to ensure our service solutions stay aligned with your own ever-changing service needs over the next decade.

But to achieve this we need your input, so please let me know what skills you need us to have and how we can improve our business to you.  Our latest customer survey is launched this week, and we are looking for your feedback.  I would very much appreciate it if you could find time to complete one either here QcomPartnerSurvey2010. 

Neil Anderson
MD, Qcom

Reflecting on the various things I heard on my show tour last week, I was particularly taken with the presentation at Channel Expo from Gartner’s Tiffani Bova, VP for research into IT Channel Strategies.

She outlined the Gartner model to distinguish IT spend in end-users into pockets of ‘Run, Grow and Transform’ – the run is the cost to operate/maintain the IT system and normally takes up 2/3^rd of the IT budget.

With such a big chunk of the budget taken up with the ‘run’ it is not surprising in these difficult economic times that Gartner’s research has also identified that the number one business driver for IT at the moment was operational efficiency delivering operational cost savings ie. cuts to the big ‘run’ budget. Only through these changes could the budget for the crucial positive IT projects – that ‘grow and transform’ the host business – be kept alive, when overall IT budgets were seeing cutbacks.

For the outsource provision, this represents a tremendous opportunity as our raison d’etre is concerned with delivering these efficiencies savings by focusing on what we are good it, leaving the host company to focus on its core business.

Of course things are never that simple, and the other message from Gartner was that to unlock these efficiency savings it was important for us to get close to our clients and operate more as business solution providers/consultants rather than sales professionals. We need to truly understand our clients’ key business drivers and then outline how an outsourcing project could help them achieve the outcomes they desire.

Neil Anderson

MD, Qcom

Just returned from a couple of days on the road visiting Channel Expo and Wireless-Mobile 09 to catch up on a few clients, find some new prospects ( if one is lucky!) and most importantly find out where the market is going…

I heard some great future thoughts from Matthew Poyiadgi VP EMEA, CompTIA – who was trying to help us make sense of the ever-faster speed of change. He started with some fascinating facts – Sony produces 5,000 new products a year; you can order a customised car from Toyota in Japan on a Monday and have it delivered by Friday; in 2007 there were 3m mobile broadband users, now there are 50m; by 2010 Cisco think the top 20 business will produce as much data/content as the whole of the global internet in 1995 – speed, speed, speed….

Matthew suggested the fast-paced world was like a fast-moving rapid river being navigated by a kayak, you can’t go backwards, you only choice was how to steer yourself around the rocks. And, furthermore, the key to that was very much your people (they are, afterall, holding the paddle)…..made me think; do we train our people enough? Do we look after all our people enough? A call to action perhaps?

At the end of the day, it is our people that make the difference in a service-based company and in the modern age, increasingly it is our collective people who will unlock the power of technology and give our clients the superior customised experience they undoubtedly seek.

“You can imitate our services and our technology but not the quality of our people” Richard Reed – Innocent drinks.

One of the best speeches I’ve heard for a while. Indeed, tons more good stuff that I can’t get in the blog….if you get the chance go and hear him somewhere.

PS An interesting side note from the speech was that perhaps after all the new big things of ‘collaboration’ and creating ‘blue oceans’ are actually as old as humankind….Matthew recounted an old story of how the ice cream cone came about when two stalls side by side got together; Stall one was selling ice cream in cups but ran out, but meanwhile his neighbour a waffle seller starting rolling his waffles into a ‘cone’ shape so ice cream could be put in them….the wafer cone as we know it was born. Two new things coming together to make a new market, and great collaboration between two businesses.

Neil Anderson

MD, Qcom