Westcon Convergence has outsourced its engineering business to Maintel enabling it to focus more sharply on driving product sales with a services wrap. The partnership also extends the distributor's services capabilities across a much broader range of products, according to Tim Brooks, General Manager at Westcon.

Eight technical service staff have transferred to Maintel under an outsourcing agreement, providing continued support for 1,500 contracted customer sites. A second agreement sees Westcon offer the full range of Maintel's implementation and maintenance services to its resellers in the UK, with wholesale pricing for these services being a big attraction. Brooks explained: "The Westcon Convergence services business grew out of Crane. Although it was relevant and successful in the past, over time it became increasingly detached from the distribution business which has grown much faster than our in-house service capability. Outsourcing to Maintel allows us to focus entirely on driving the distribution business, rather than trying to make a small engineering business work within a large distribution house."

Maintel offers nationwide coverage across a broad base of technologies through over 90 engineers. The agreement bolsters Maintel's Avaya capabilities through Westcon's services staff transitioning to the firm. Under the agreement Westcon partners gain access to Maintel's value-added support offering, including dedicated account management, pricing tools, pre-sales bid support and online web support.

Brooks noted that it was important to find a well established partner that could offer best class maintenance and professional services across a wide range of products. "It was also critical to find a channel-neutral partner that would respect and protect the relationships that our resellers have with their end users and reflect Westcon's approach to channel," he said. "The biggest concern for partners is that Maintel is sometimes seen as a reseller, believing that the Westcon-Maintel partnership might create channel conflict. But this is emphatically not the case. Maintel provides services to channel partners and there is no conflict. Neutrality is fundamental to the Maintel business and has been for 20 years."

Brooks emphasised that Westcon has not sold its maintenance arm, opting instead to outsource the services business to a trusted partner free from channel conflict. To underline the bond of trust and neutrality, Maintel will not renew a contract when a reseller reaches the critical mass to manage the customer in-house. Furthermore, on-site engineers see at close range how the needs of a customer evolve. They are often the first to know about a customer's requirement for additional extensions, moves, or even new systems, and Brooks confirmed that all such requests are passed immediately back to the reseller as sales leads.

Apart from Maintel's scale, capability, geographic reach and wide ranging skill sets, the partnership with Westcon also enables resellers to sell new margin making technologies by working with the distributor on wider elements of its portfolio. One example is the swift arrival of conferencing as a viable option for businesses, with end user demand being driven by the Icelandic volcano that brought air travel across Europe and beyond to an abrupt and lengthy halt.

What the volcano did for conferencing and business meetings was nothing short of miraculous, and Westcon's partnership with Maintel empowers resellers to keep their customers connected via videoconferencing solutions. According to Brooks, demand for videoconferencing is reaching an all time high. "Videoconferencing end points are flying," he said. "We are struggling to keep up with demand following the recent volcanic eruptions in Iceland. There is a definite wave of interest in conferencing which requires specific skills and expertise to implement. Through our partnerships with Polycom and Maintel resellers can capitalise on this opportunity and offer an additional element of UC."

Many resellers have already outsourced and embraced the positive dynamics of forming partnerships, albeit in many cases ad-hoc and small scale. However, the Westcon-Maintel partnership enables resellers to cost-effectively scoop together the multi-faceted elements of outsourced services under one banner for a better wholesale price, meaning that the reseller works with one partner rather than a handful. "We know many of our partners operate numerous third party services agreements, often with smaller service companies," noted Brooks. "Our partnership with Maintel provides an opportunity to unify these separate agreements with a nationwide services provider, making this easier for the partner to manage, obtaining consistent service levels for their customers, and in many cases reducing their costs at the same time."

The partnership also removes the shackles of ‘delivery' that hold back many resellers from chasing more lucrative deals. While many sales people are capable of selling bigger deals, the imperative to deliver on spec on time can be an obstacle to moving up the ladder. "The fast pace of technological development means there is an increasing cost for resellers to bear in terms of engineering salaries, training, spares and accreditation," Brooks observed. "Many resellers are choosing to use services delivery partnerships as their preferred option as they can always offer their customers the latest products without being constrained by the costs of providing in-house support."

He noted that customers with multi-sites housing a diversity of comms kit also present resellers with an opportunity to wrap up the mixed estate and offer the end user a more holistic investment in their telephony. Maintel Sales and Marketing Director, Angus McCaffery, added: "This partnership delivers increased value and new opportunities to Westcon's channel partners, many of whom already work with us. Extending their portfolio not only opens up new opportunities for channel partners, it strengthens their relationship with Westcon and the end customer."