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May - June 2016 | ChannelVision
2016 Master Agent Directory
agents, keeping up with this transition requires sig-
nificant investment in specialized personnel, product
education and training, back office processes and pre-
and post-sales support.
“We’ve had to increase our headcount in sales en-
gineering, order fulfillment and project management as
well as our help desk support,” said Raue. “We have
had to invest in training and certification for our employ-
ees such as CompTIA training certifications in Security,
Project Management and Cloud Essentials, as well as
master trainings and fulfillment processes for most all
prominent hosted PBX providers, and invest in
systems such as ”
“For the past four years, we have
been assembling a team of very ac-
complished people with specialized
expertise,” said Praske. “We have
been doing tons of client education
– mostly one-on-one but also semi-
nars for our clients and prospects.”
Those experts include business
consultant types who can discuss
business strategies with the C-Level
executives who are increasingly part
of the technology purchasing pro-
cess and are leading organizations’
digital transformations. “We make
these (business consultants) available to our subagents
to go on-site for their meetings,” said Praske.
“Sales engineering will also be more important in the
coming years,” emphasized Vince Bradley, WTG CEO.
“WTG has a sales engineering practice that continues
to identify the best solutions for our agent community’s
clients and assist with supporting their implementation.”
Automation, likewise, will be an important corner-
stone of the transition, said Bradley. “WTG has been
constantly updating the PartnerEdge system to meet
that increasing demand. For example, in addition to
being able to identify fiber in an automated way, we are
now utilizing a tool whereby our distribution can find out
what hosting provider a client is using.”
It’s an expensive proposition, masters agents tell
us, but it’s a transition that must be made, and one
that, all the while, relies on maintaining significant
growth in access revenues from traditional and pri-
mary providers to subsidize the investments.
“I’m not sure how somebody who is getting started
today can jump into this world,” said Praske.
“I believe it is a barrier to entry to scale now for
new master agent entrants to the marketplace,” Raue
concurred. (Although Raue does see room for special-
ized smaller agencies to work targeted sub-agents of
masters that do not possess the skill and knowledge to
make the transition themselves.)
• Cloud Services
• Desktop-as-a-Service
• Managed Services
• Traditional Telecom
• Hosted PBX
• Global Connectivity
• Disaster Recovery
• Security & Compliance
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