Direct Telecom proves you can. 

 

Having received the Gold Partner Status with Avaya, Direct Telecom have now been recognised as a Direct Touch Partner. This means Direct Telecom have a direct relationship with Avaya and are able to call upon a dedicated team within Avaya for fast response and support. 

Through working closely with Avaya we feel as though we now have a focused relationship and they have invested their support within the telecoms industry to Direct Telecom to further enhance our offering. 

Direct Telecom have taken to the podium with the Avaya Gold Partner Status. They have achieved this through developing their business techniques, training their personnel and stretching the sales to go the extra mile. 

Direct Telecom say “It was hard but we all feel that making the effort to lift the bar was worth it to provide our customers with a more comprehensive range of products and solutions.”   

The Avaya Gold Partner accreditation means Direct Telecom are now in an even more enviable position within the country.

When Mark Twain  read his own obituary in the New York Times he was delighted to point out that reports of his death were greatly exaggerated. Direct Telecom’s Managing Director, Dave Henderson, knows how he felt.

 Henderson was alarmed by recent news that he had ’sold-up’. “Last month the phone was ringing off the hook with calls from just about everyone I know in the industry. They had read that Direct Telecom had been taken over and wondered why I hadn’t mentioned that I was selling up. When I investigated I realised that the company that was sold was Telecom Direct,” he said. “I’m happy to set the record straight and I accept that in the rush to get the magazine out, the odd slip will happen. But two things were noticeable. The first was that callers were concerned about the possible reasons for what they had read. The second was that the Comms Dealer readership clearly has strength in depth.” The fact is that it is just too early for Henderson to consider a sale. “Direct Telecom goes back a long way. It was set up in 1983 and has turned in steady profits from a loyal SME customer base for years. I joined in 2002 to head the administration function and then moved on to sales. In 2005, when the founders wanted to exit, I bought the company. I still have targets to meet.” When Henderson took control, Direct Telecom was staid, settled, profitable, but hardly in full scale expansion mode. “We’re changing that. We may sound like Stalin but we have put a five year plan in place. This follows two years of consolidation, process analysis and the recruitment of key people, which is one of the hardest things for an ambitious SME to tackle successfully. We now have everything in place and in this fiscal, the first in which the new strategy is fully operational, we have increased revenues by over 40 per cent,” he added.  Direct Telecom shows clearly that size isn’t everything. “We have a comprehensive portfolio of products and services,” says Henderson. “On the systems  

As with any industry, every channel player has to be alert to change side, we specialise in Panasonic, Avaya and Alcatel Lucent.   

 “A significant proportion of revenues come from installation, maintenance and cabling, and we have recently developed a substantial business in CCTV. Our network offering covers Wholesale Line Rental, Leased Lines, Hosted Services and, more recently, a business mobile proposition utilising the four major networks. We changed our carrier relationship recently and went back to BT. It is, after all, the most reliable national carrier and when allied to the personal service that companies such as ours can deliver, makes on ideal end user proposition. ’The advantage we have is that our flexibility is a bull point. We’re privately owned, we don’t have to subject ourselves to shareholders’ ;scrutiny and so can operate at a highly personal level. We’re not ;laves to corporate procedures.”  the result is that Direct Telecom s quick on its feet. As Henderson outs it: “We are able to engage with our customers and adaptable enough to concentrate on what they need rather than push what -night be convenient for us. ’While we are not a big corporate organisation, we do work nationally Our home turf is, broadly, the M62/M1 corridor, but we follow our customers as far afield as Southampton and Glasgow. Then again, we’re of a size that fits comfortably with our core customer base. The beauty of the channel is that while a publicly quoted reseller s geared almost exclusively to talk to an organisation such as a major oil company - and we operate n the corporate space too – we tend to get a clearer run in the heavily populated SME sector.”  The company is based in Skelmanthorpe near Huddersfield. Henderson is sometimes tempted to move to a city centre site but resists it consistently. “We’re better off in our attractive rural retreat, and in any case, customers seem to enjoy the trip out to see us.”  As the company expands, Henderson is aware of potential challenges. “As with any industry, every channel player has to be alert to change but by keeping on top of new technologies we are well placed to continue profitable growth. There has been a great deal of discussion, for example, about hosted services and in time they will certainly achieve significant market penetration. At the moment, however, many customers are wary of quality standards and costs. We needn’t be too concerned about their impact yet.”    Despite having had to keep repeating that Direct Telecom is still in his hands, Henderson does have an interest in mergers and acquisitions. He is, in fact, on the acquisition trail himself, so as he becomes the hunter and not the hunted, he’ll be getting a press release ready to mail to Comms Dealer sometime in the future. 

 As reported in Comms Dealer March 08     

 

 

CHRISTMAS CLOSURE TIMES 2007 

To all of our Customers

I would like to inform you of our dates of closure for the Festive period 2007:

Direct Telecom offices will close at 5.00pm on Friday 21^st December 2007 re-opening at 9.00am Wednesday 2^nd January 2008.

Please ensure that any changes required to your telephone system to cater for your festive closure times are submitted to the Helpdesk by e-mail (support@directtelecom.co.uk) in as much advance as possible before 21^st December.

Our on call engineer will be available for faults only outside of the Bank Holidays and customers who need to report  a fault should telephone 01484 867867 and an engineer will respond. 

Please do not hesitate in contacting your Account Manager or Customer Service Team should you have any queries regarding these arrangements.

Thank you for your support during 2007 and can we take this opportunity to wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Kind Regards,

Direct Telecom Support Team

0870:  Ofcom has announced a delay in the implementation of 0870 regulations due to concerns about pre-call announcements. The 1st February, 2008 is therefore not applicable; no firm date has yet been set.

0871:  Ofcom has also announced a delay in the implementation of the 0871 regulations until the summer 2008, due to the late submission of the PhonepayPlus (ICSTIS) Statement. The 1st February, 2008 is therefore not applicable; no firm date has yet been set.

We are currently waiting upon a formal statement from Ofcom regarding the above changes and will keep you fully informed when further information becomes available.
If you wish to find out more then please contact us by clicking here and entering the nature of your enquiry / email header as Delay in Ofcom Legislation.

Direct Telecom, the utmost professional, independent, telephone systems supplier has announced that it has been awarded NHS Purchasing and Supply Agency (PASA) Framework Agreement status in the UK.  

NHS PASA is an executive agency of the Department of Health and over the past five years, the NHS Purchasing and Supply Agency (NHS PASA) has delivered savings of over £1 billion to the NHS and is used by NHS telecoms managers in 400 NHS Trusts and Health Authorities. 

To gain NHS PASA accreditation Direct Telecom successfully completed an EU compliant process and agreed to all NHS terms and conditions. This was an involved process but one that Direct Telecom was glad to be included in. 

Alcatel-Lucent joined efforts to provide Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) trunking services to businesses in the UK. The new services allow Direct Telecom to provide small-to-medium-sized enterprises with next generation network connectivity, helping them to reduce business costs and achieve greater efficiencies with minimal disruption. To read how Direct Telecom can save you money with SIP trunking services click here to register for our downloads section and read the full article

Alcatel-Lucent announced that it has been selected to provide IP telephony solutions for the new Park Plaza County Hall Hotel in central London. By utilising new technologies, the hotel will be able to offer superior guest services while increasing the efficiency of its day-to-day processes for improved business results.  To find out more click here to register to our downloads page to read the full article or call free phone 0808 165 86 86 to find out how Direct Telecom can improve your guest services.
 

In the IP telephony world where this business critical application has to travel through a multi-vendor world to be effective, resiliency is a key differentiating feature. Learn how the Avaya solution provides multiple levels of resiliency and how the Avaya solution far exceeds the capabilities of Cisco. All solutions are not created equal…. Click here to register for our downloads page to read the full document.

Direct Telecom present leading edge business telecom solutions with the Alcatel-Lucent 300/400 Digital Enhanced Cordless Telecommunications (DECT) handsets. Easy-to-use, cost-effective and reliable voice communication solutions that address the mobility needs of your ever evolving business environments.  To read more click here to register to our downloads page or call free phone 0808 165 86 86.