Midlands-based PMS Networks has 20 years’ experience in providing quality telecommunications services to businesses of all sizes.
From a background in cabling telephone solutions and on-premise telephony, PMS has evolved to offer a diverse range of broadband and cloud-hosted telephony to businesses nationwide.
PMS has a long-standing relationship with Onecom Partners, which provides them with access to a range of products and services from leading networks and carriers, along with back-office support including managed billing services.
PMS is a member of the Onecom Partner Programme (OPP) which provides a range of additional business support including a marketing concierge service. PMS have also recently started to provide BT WHC (Wholesale Hosted Communications) to their customers via Onecom Partners Elite Partner programme with BT Wholesale.
Here we chat to Paul Timmings, MD at PMS Networks, about how the relationship with Onecom Partners has driven the growth of his business and the strength of its customer offering.
Hi Paul. Tell us how the relationship between PMS Networks and Onecom Partners began?
We have a relationship that goes way back – in the early days we were a dealer for Channel Telecom which was acquired by 9 Group, which more recently became Onecom Partners.
In those days we were mainly selling on-premise telephony from a single provider and taking commission, but around six years ago we moved to a much more strategic footing, onto the reseller model – and we’ve never looked back.
How did that decision change your business?
Moving from a dealer model to becoming a reseller was a complete transformation, and it came just at the time when a lot of businesses began to move away from on-premise phone systems and into the cloud.
Previously we were getting our commission and our biggest income from maintenance of on-premise phone systems. Now we’re not chasing for a big maintenance invoice once a year – it’s a cloud subscription service on direct debit and we have a direct relationship with customers day to day. That’s what we sell to new customers, and the relationship with Onecom Partners greatly increases our versatility in doing that.
We still have legacy customers for whom on-premise solutions are their preferred model, but where they may have had a BT line, for example, we’ve now swapped that for SIP trunks, so calls still go through the same system but are made through the internet.
We’re a relatively small business and we’re turning over an average £1.5m a year, around double what we were seeing six or seven years ago. That hasn’t been down to any company acquisitions – it’s all organic, driven by our amazing team and down to looking after our existing customers and being able to make a compelling offer to prospective ones.
How has the relationship with Onecom Partners supported your businesses’ growth?
It’s given us the new model and access to systems, solutions and connectivity that quite simply we wouldn’t have been able to offer otherwise. If we came across an opportunity previously, we might not have known where to go – maybe you’d get a copy of a customer’s phone bill and take it from there to do a deal and make a bit of commission.
Now, through Onecom Partners, we have expertise on tap and access to an incredible range of providers and products, like SIP trunking, cloud services and broadband. I’d say the biggest driver of growth in the last five years has been the emergence of affordable high end internet lease lines which are now much more accessible for businesses. Only five years ago, dedicated fibre connections cost £4-500 a month and were only affordable for larger businesses and corporates – now they are a hugely accessible product, and the marketplace has completely opened up.
The same goes for cloud telephony, which the market is now demanding because of its cost-effectiveness and flexibility. That’s partly driven by the fallout from the pandemic and the trend towards remote and flexible working – it forced all businesses to look at their systems and their flexibility – and, even more importantly, their resilience.
The WLR and ISDN switch-off will be the next major change, and a huge opportunity for telecoms providers. How are you preparing PMS Networks for this?
It’s the first priority for us when we speak to customers – educating them about this huge change and what they are going to need to do.
Many are engaging with us and looking at the alternatives with us, but there is a core who are surprisingly resistant to change – even if it will be change for the better! If it wasn’t for the switch-off, they wouldn’t necessarily change anything.
Our message to customers is that despite this being a forced switch-off, this is an opportunity for them. Everything about the technology we can provide them is better, more flexible and, in most cases, either cost neutral or cheaper.
Being able to choose from several options through Onecom Partners, and to talk to our customers from a position of market knowledge, strengthens that message for us, and we can select a solution that works best for them. So, it’s a win-win for everyone.
Tell us about your message to customers – what do you say to them about why they should choose PMS Networks?
That’s always the important question. In an industry where there are lot of competitors, you can focus on customer service, and of course the products are an important message.
But ultimately it comes down to people – our team. We are very fortunate to have a fantastic team of people including many who have been with us for a long time. We all have a similar attitude and the same care for our customers, and we all see retaining our existing customers as our priority, then obtaining new ones.
It’s not a simple sign-up model where you never hear from us again until it’s time for renewal. It’s a commitment to them and their business, and that is reflected in the way we work with Onecom Partners.
What do you value most in your relationship with Onecom Partners?
It’s something that is personal to me and very important – and that’s trust. I trust our team completely, and I need to trust out suppliers and partners completely too.
With Onecom Partners we have that trust, that they value our commitment to customers in the same way we do. We trust that an order will be delivered perfectly, and that if things do ever go wrong then we work together until it is perfect.
There’s no doubt that we see the people at Onecom Partners as an extension of our own team. We’re not just speaking to a different person every time in a central team and having to explain who we are each time – we can pick up the phone or drop an email to them any time and communicate with someone who understands our requirements and the way we work. That's priceless.
You use Onecom Partners for billing services. What are the benefits of this service for you?
It takes all the headaches away! We have a service that is bespoke to us, so the bills are loaded onto the system by Onecom Partners, and we then do some topping and tailing before they are sent back to be pushed out on our behalf. It works the way we want it to, and as far as the customer is concerned, they retain and value that direct relationship with us as their provider.
What other support do you receive from Onecom Partners?
We are a member of the Onecom Partner Programme and using it more and more for support with marketing and information about products, services and innovations in the channel.
We have been chosen to be part of Onecom Partners Elite Partner programme for BT Wholesale’s WHC cloud solution and had the training which gives us an edge over competitors. With the ability to offer our customers preferential rates, and a direct partition to access on the BT platform, which is hugely powerful.
If a customer wants to make a change – for example change the name of an extension, tweak a hunt group or something like that – there is control in the platform to do that directly rather than having to go through a support desk. It’s an example of how working with Onecom Partners helps us continuously bring our customers new products that save them a lot of time and effort as well.
We get calls all the time from other industry providers who want us to enter into the kind of relationship we have with Onecom Partners, and those conversations end very quickly because I’m not interested!
The trust is there, and it just works – the results speak for themselves.
