Network management tool maker Highlight has pulled in a comms expert to boost its channel. With Bimal Modha as its new Director of Sales, it is looking to double the company’s revenues by end of 2021 by developing sales with existing clients, drive new business and introduce new channel partners.
During his time at BT Retail and BT Global Services, Bimal was responsible for channel management, marketing strategy and business development, delivering the Indirect Channel activity for BT Retail to achieve its target. Prior to BT, Bimal developed Tiscali’s business broadband on-line portal alongside search engine marketing, driving cost effective brand awareness and direct response mechanics.
He has a two-year plan to double market size, he tells IT Europa: “My background has been with Tier 1 comms and services providers, where there is fierce competition and margin erosion, delivering a physical product. As connectivity is commoditised, it is increasingly difficult for MSPs to maintain margins. Providers looking at enterprise clients are looking to have part of the workforce at home, and the paradigm shift in the current backdrop means there is an added requirement for security.
“Home working is not going to change back to how it was. This is the new norm, and many companies will say that unless you absolutely need to be in the office, you may only go into the office for fundamentals.”
MSPs are having to adapt their portfolios and upsell and cross-sell. Tier-1 carriers are having to prioritise business and there will be a backlog of work. So part of the Highlight proposition is to help MSPs understand their traffic, monitor networking loading and help them retain customers having a more distributed workforce, he says.
“Our strategy is consistent - that we have a base of key partners with a dozen major partners and twenty others and we want to engage some key Tier-1s and around 80% with the MSPs who have their own networks or work through Openreach provision. I see us engaging and driving the portfolio through a handful of Tier-1s but predominantly through MSPs.”
“Connectivity is a race to the bottom unless you can add value. I think the MSPs are thinking about how they adapt their proposition so as not to be based just on ethernet, and into the cloud.”Highlight has been operating as usual in the crisis," he says. “It is a clear example of how to operate; SaaS means we don’t need to have engineering moving equipment – it can all happen efficiently in a remote environment.”
“Our perspective is to start with the why – understand the changes but also the goals – growth, managing opex or consolidation and engage with the C-suite. That is a different tack from talking to the IT manager.”
He believes Highlight will be a game changer for the current challenges facing the channel. “With home working and demand for less profitable broadband connections replacing high value ethernet services, providers are having to rethink how they can continue to operate, retain customers, and grow their businesses,” he explains.
His plans for the rest of the year involve some internal changes: “I think we are embracing account-based marketing to work with about 100 partners in the UK to understand the challenges and drivers – talking operational efficiency, managing systems. It is a top-down approach rather than bottom-up.
The big plan is implementing account marketing in the next two months so we are ready to go face-to-face when we can.”
This means engaging at the C-suite with a non-technical approach. They can reduce costs and automate using self-serving which is a big driver for MSPs: “In the current climate it is more important to work with existing customers and not net-new adds, to show how we want to continue working with them. And getting decisions from a C-suite currently is easier because they can’t go anywhere. I have already had half a dozen C-level discussions since lockdown, which is unheard of.”
