Fuze builds on user demand for collaboration

The pandemic has accelerated the use of collaboration video tools and the technology looks set to remain a key part of hybrid working as workers move to a different way of working.

Many vendors that operate in this market have become household names and among those, Fuze, which targets the enterprise customer market, has also enjoyed growth over the past 18 months.

To keep that going, the vendor is keen to work with partners and expand its market position in the UK as it taps into an ongoing surge of interest in collaboration tools that will support new ways of working.

Chris Jones, chief revenue office at Fuze, said the firm operated a focused business model, concentrating on the enterprise market, and understood the importance of working with partners and establishing programmes and support.

“You can’t collaborate unless you’ve got enterprise grade voice,” he said. “You can do without video you can do without content sharing. You absolutely cannot do without enterprise grade voice and that’s really the foundational pillar of what we have within us.

“In the world of what we do, obviously we’re selling not only a suite of products, but it really ties to service. So having localised support, especially for enterprise customers so that if they need help, if they need assistance, they know that they’ve got somebody that they can rely on locally.”

The vendor is being selective in building out its UK channel and wants to make sure the investment in delivering customer satisfaction is held throughout the routes to market. “We want to invest in partners that are investing in us, building those collaborative partnerships where we take a vested interest in the partners’ success, they take a vested interest in us,” he said. “That’s where I would say, not only within the UK, but our global partner strategy is. We want to build more value in working with fewer, more impactful partners.

“A lot of partners are viewing this as a tremendous opportunity to jump in and build sustainable, new revenue models, new business models. I would say that as companies, organisations continue to move away from legacy communications technologies, they’ve got to partner with leading firms to ensure the success around digital transformation.”

Prospects for partners that got involved look rosy, said Jones, with the collaboration market continuing to grow. As customers pull together their hybrid work strategies, many are reaching out to partners for guidance about what they can do around comms and collaboration.

“This world of hybrid is absolutely here to say stay and I think what we’ve all learned globally, over the last 18 months, is work is what you do – it’s not where you go,” he said.

“I think we’ve got a lot of tailwinds behind us, we feel very fortunate to be in the space that we’re in. I think we’ve got many years of tremendous growth opportunity ahead of us.”