Opportunities for office wireless solutions and Android BYOD platforms - an interview with ICON

In your view do resellers often miss opportunities to add an office wireless product to their solution proposition?

Wireless solutions are not quoted as often as they could be.

Some resellers sell and support wireless solutions where the handsets are designed and built only for use in office or carpeted areas. Thus, the opportunity to place solutions in areas of the organisation such as production, service delivery, and dispatch is frequently overlooked.

In addition, the perception in some resellers’ minds is that wireless handsets are no more than a mobile alternative for a desk phone. This is often because their experience is mostly of supporting wireless solutions that are not able deliver much beyond that of a simple voice mobility solution.

With enterprise quality wireless solutions, such as those from Spectralink, the handset is frequently used as a component of a business or process solution. And in some cases, such as the Spectralink BYOD type handset PIVOT, its role as an endpoint for a PBX is secondary to its use as a device for running business apps or reporting the real time status of an organisations control, process or monitoring systems.

This extended capability opens up opportunities for the channel reseller to quote a wireless on-site mobility solution as part of a total business solution. The benefit of supporting an enterprise solution such as the Spectralink wireless solution is increased sales opportunities this opens up.

Where are the missed opportunities?

On-site mobility solutions are great tools for leveraging existing business relationships. Upselling, developing new clients, and expanding into new fields are just a few of the opportunities which resellers often miss out on because they are either not alert to the potential or the wireless solution they support cannot deliver the functionality needed by the customer.

One case in particular exemplifies the potential to upsell an opportunity, add value to the customers’ business, and strengthen the customer-supplier relationship.

This is the case of a reseller proposing to install a DECT solution in a hotel. After a call to ICON, the reseller was able to expand his proposal to include the management of the hotels fire control system using Spectralink mobility solutions. For the reseller this resulted in the expanded opportunity to upgrade the existing wireless infrastructure in readiness for an integrated fire control and wireless handset solution.

It is this ability to see and understand the bigger picture that is key to ensuring that opportunities are not missed. Often resellers add an on-site voice mobility solution to a PBX proposal only as a means of increasing the sale value and enhancing the margin.

Many resellers miss or overlook the opportunity to quote wireless handsets as alternatives to desk phones often to their long-term cost.

Quoting a wireless solution can help to lock a customer in to your business. Not quoting a wireless solution is not only a lost opportunity but may also mean the end of your business with that customer.

If you do not quote a wireless solution, the door is open for someone else to offer a solution at a later date. ICON is aware of a number of cases where resellers have displaced the incumbent telecoms supplier by doing just this. Wireless solutions such as the Spectralink voice mobility solutions can be retrofitted to just about any PBX or IP-PBX. This opens the door for a reseller to take the first steps to building a long-term relationship with a client by proposing a voice mobility solution.

However, looking at the bigger picture and adding a wireless handset solution to the proposal as part of a business solution will differentiate the proposal from the competition, deliver greater value to the customer, and produce a better margin than any number of wireless handset sales could.

In which areas of the market are you seeing strongest demand for Wi-Fi and/or IP DECT and what is driving this growth

Demand is strong across all traditional verticals. However, there is particular strong growth in on-site voice mobility solutions for real time messaging.

This is not to be confused with the handset-to-handset text messaging solutions available on many wireless solutions. Real time messaging is the integration of a business’s process and monitoring solutions with the corporate telephone network thus making it possible for staff to be automatically informed of critical events. These internal M2M type solutions can trigger alerts to Spectralink WiFi or DECT handsets whenever a state of a machine, control system or other monitored system changes.


Demand for this type of solutions comes not only from the hospitality vertical where these solutions are important for guest safety and service but also from retail and manufacturing sectors. ICON is seeing increased demand from resellers for Spectralink handset solutions integrated with the real time messaging solutions from companies such as BlueSky Wireless.

The Lync effect is also driving demand for handset solutions. However, this is particular to Spectralink wireless solutions which are the only solutions approved by Microsoft for direct connection to Lync.

The smart phone trend has also spurred growth in demand for the enterprise wireless solutions from Spectralink. As more and more companies look to use intelligent endpoints as part of their of business process it is becoming evident that the smart phone device has some significant drawbacks. Companies are turning to the dedicated enterprise wireless solutions from Spectralink such as the smartphone like PIVOT handset. PIVOT runs android applications like a smart phone but also delivers quality QOS, trouble free roaming and wire line like voice quality.


At brand level, demand for Spectralink solutions is being driven by the global technology and commercial partnerships established by Spectralink.   Channel partners are benefiting form the CISCO and Microsoft Lync technology approvals and the commercial arrangements with Avaya.

What's new and exciting in the office Wi-Fi and IP DECT product stable and what new margin opportunities are available for resellers?

New for 2014 is the Spectralink PIVOT smartphone type handset. Spectralink has combined its renowned handset durability and voice quality with smartphone-like usability in the PIVOT solution. PIVOT is based on the Android platform.

PIVOT is designed to bridge the gap between friendly/familiar/versatile consumer smartphone and purpose-built, enterprise, mobile, voice capable, computing devices. What makes the PIVOT solution different from other smart devices is in part Spectralink's hard-earned skills in on-site mobile voice solutions or what it likes to describe as “the secret sauce of VoWiFi”. PIVOT is built for purpose. Unlike BYOD consumer smart devices it can take the knocks and scraps of the workplace and has the added functionality for running business apps and enabling IT managers to control its data security and access to apps.

Retail, healthcare and hospitality system vendors using BYOD, mobile computing, and PDA devices will particularly benefit from PIVOT.

Does the timeworn voice over Wi-Fi versus IP DECT debate still apply?

WiFi and DECT are no longer competitive technologies.

However, in those cases were simple voice mobility is required the technology attributes do play a significant part in the decision about which solution to select. In these cases, issues of cost prevail and considerations usually focus on the quality of the wireless infrastructure and whether or not it will support a WiFi solution.

However, when the on-site mobility solution is deployed as part of a business solution then each technology is developing its own unique strengths and attributes. Voice over WiFi is best suited to data intensive applications where voice is not the primary requirement. DECT on the other hand is the better option for low data intensive messaging apps and were voice quality and extreme handset robustness is required.

Only in scenarios where DECT and WiFi could deliver equally does it come down to issues of deployment such as legacy infrastructure and choice of handset.

What is your channel strategy for Wi-Fi and/or IP DECT ?

As a value added distributor and solutions based company ICON’s strategy is focused on mobility solutions in general and not on the technologies in specific. Over the past year we have worked closely with our vender partner Spectralink to develop a UK national strategy for its mobility solutions.

The result is a strategy that aims to strengthen ICON’s already close working relationships with channel partners in the telecoms channel and in the converging IT reseller channel.

The aim is to work with the channel to develop sales through classical key account management (KAM#1) and relationship marketing. 

In practical terms this means

• Working through our UK account management team to develop the close relationships with individual channel partners
• Building the people and internal working processes needed to provide the pre-sales and support services our channel partners need.
• Providing a total solutions capability with the ability to deliver not only the voice mobility technologies but also the business solutions with which these integrate and the support services (training, solution workshops, second line support) needed by the reseller to sell, install and support the solutions

#1 “KAM is an approach which includes developing long term relationships with strategic customers whose needs you understand in depth and for whom, you develop a special offer with a differential advantage to offers of competitors” McDonald, MIllman, Roger 1996

Why should resellers focus more on the potential of Wi-Fi and/or IP DECTproducts?

In the medium term telecoms and IT resellers will need to offer some form of voice mobility solution that will support a range of business applications.

There is a fundamental restructuring taking place in the market and voice and solution mobility is key. The BYOD trend has kick started the move to use handset based business apps in the workplace. However, it is becoming evident that this can only happen if specialised and dedicated on-site voice mobility solutions that can integrate with the business solutions to deliver a not only the business app but a robust voice solution are available.

With the application specific solutions introduced by Spectralink PIVOT, this is fast becoming a standard market. Ignoring this trend is choosing to not to succeed.

How would you summarise?

The enterprise quality wireless solutions such as from Spectralink are no longer being used as mere mobile desk phone replacements on a business telephone system. They are being integrated with real time messaging solutions to deliver critical management and control information to staff or in the case of the PIVOT smart phone solution being used to provide an android platform on which to run business applications. The opportunity for the reseller is to exploit these new applications by selling not an on-site mobile handset but a business solution.