INSIGHT
It’s time for a revolution in the relationship between wholesale suppliers and partners
Lead the revolution
“The COVID-19 pandemic has had a far-reaching impact on us all over the last three months and required us all to rapidly evolve how we live our lives. The expectation from many in the telecommunications industry is that the relationship between wholesale connectivity suppliers and their partners will be no exception to this. A new, much more collaborative, and agile partnership is required going forward.”
– Diego Tedesco, Director of Commercial Marketing, VMB Wholesale
With increased uncertainty over the next six months, we may find ourselves passing through different stages of recovery and recession, and the timing and extent of these are likely to vary by sector. This will make business planning exceptionally different, but opens up an opportunity for companies that are able to quickly adapt and proactively lead the market changes.
Traditional supplier/partner relationships will be tested as increased digital transformation and liquidity issues transform the installed base and create new sectors and demands, but that’s not going to stop us! We’re here to support you and your customers – and rest assured, that’s not going to change.
Suppliers who are unable to adapt to this demand will risk not only losing customers but also missing out on developing much stronger, long-term value with partners.
So what’s our answer? We want to lead the revolution, together.
This has been a topic that VMB Wholesale’s team has been hard at work on whilst developing new offers and helping our essential services partners adapt during this first critical phase of the pandemic.
“In these times of uncertainty, we are more aware than ever that we must step up and play our part to help the UK back to work. We recognise that the challenge has been laid down by the industry to think and act differently, and we will work closely with our partners to make that a reality.”
– Dale Parkinson, Sales Director, VMB Wholesale
At the beginning of the year, we made a commitment to speeding up how we work with partners, and this situation has accelerated these plans further.
The embodiment of this is our new “Revolutions” model:
This combines our key values of smart disruption with the principles of lean start-up and committing to continual partner feedback. Through this, we have formed a taskforce to transform the way we work, recognising this is no mean feat for anyone involved.
The process hinges on our partner boards, which we launched last year to bring feedback (and needs-based development) into our proposition development.
The benefit of this during this time is that, as organisations go through rapid digital transformation, speed becomes a key driving factor in the success of new opportunities and how threats are handled.
Telehealth will be a leading example of this, as traditional GPs’ practices begin to adopt video and online services to safely interact with patients and increase the volume of and access to patient appointments. This is an area that Virgin Media Business has been hard at work on, delivering years of transformation within months.
This revolution is only just beginning, and the market will look very different in 2021 – so stay flexible, keep listening and ensure you are needs-based in your approach to your customers.
