(L to R):Tradewinds' Tony Heywood; 17 Ways' Tim Mallyon and John Tufts, and Telarus' Scott Forbush
Unified communications and contact centre master agent Tradewinds Brokerage has landed its 100th Australian partner as it continues to build momentum in the Australian market.
The company ventured out of the US and on to Australian shores almost 12 months ago, appointing Tony Heywood to lead the local charge.
The company changed its name in Australia from Telarus to Tradewinds Brokerage, and has since been ramping up its partner base, recently marking its 100th partner with Sydney-based technology services provider 17 Ways.
Heywood said it will continue to slowly grow its vendor base, which now includes companies such as AT&T, Cato Networks, Mitel, Rackspace, Nice inContact, RingCentral, Fuze, OBT Anywhere and 8x8.
“We’ve had a fast start and really wanted to build a specialisation around unified communications and contact centre as a service, which we’ve done and we’ll continue to build that out,” Heywood said.
Heywood was keen to add more suppliers aligned within the contact centre arena and turning his attention to local ISVs.
“For every vendor brought on, I need to create more of an audience. So the biggest thing we need to do is grow our partner base,” Heywood said. “ I have a goal in mind, but increasingly we’ll look to develop inbound partner recruitment strategy.
“We need to increase our digital presence and look at how we associate our brand more with the vendors.
“We’re the best kept secret - we’re not a distributor, vendor or reseller, we don’t fit into the traditional bucket - so we’ve got to create our own space for the master agency model.”
Visiting senior vice president of sales, Scott Forbush commended Heywood’s efforts in the Australian market, and was looking at replicating their experience as it expands into Canada and begins scouting the UK for potential talent.
“We’ve realigned our sales organisation so we’ve got one global view of the business,” Forbush said. “What Tony and Francis Choy have done will become a baseline for a repeatable process as we go into other countries as well.
“There have been a lot of things that Tony has learned and uncovered along the way in the past 11 months that will be very useful as we launch into other areas.”
