On October 29^th, we hosted another fantastic iPECS Insights session. With attendees from across our global partner community, these monthly meetings are a chance for our partners to meet and learn from each other’s successes.

This session was presented by Will Morey, Managing Director of Pragma, our UK partner. Will was joining us in person in our Seoul office, and gave a brilliant presentation titled “Success story in a changing business landscape.”

This was an overview of the UK market and the opportunities and challenges it presents as a significant adopter of cloud technologies.

About Pragma

Pragma is our longstanding UK partner, and the leading provider of iPECS Cloud. In addition to leading the way in cloud transformation, Pragma has shown a flair for innovation and creativity.

In January this year, Pragma was acquired by Gamma, one of the UK and Europe’s most successful telecoms company. Will began his talk by outlining the exciting possibilities this entails.

Gamma and Pragma

Will outlined Gamma’s scale with some key statistics. Financial year 2023 revenue was £521.7 million (approximately $679.2 million US), with 79% coming from a reseller channel. Gamma has around 1.4 million businesses on its UCaaS platform, with almost 10 million users across Europe.

Gamma has strengthened its business through other acquisitions in addition to Pragma. These include Placetel (a UCaaS provider in Germany), BrightCloud Group (a CCaaS specialist with operations across Europe) and Coolwave Communications (a carrier enabler based in Ireland and serving markets across the world).

Potential in the UK market

Will then moved onto a discussion of the UK market and the potential for Pragma to continue its successes as part of the Gamma Group.

As he pointed out, the UK is a leader in cloud adoption. According to a report from Cavell, UCaaS seats are forecast to grow from 9.5 million at the end of 2023 to 15.9 million in 2028. In the same period, cloud market penetration should rise from 49% to 88%.

As much as 50% of that growth is expected to come from large enterprises (defined as businesses with 250+ employees), which have been slower to adopt cloud than smaller, more nimble businesses.

Challenges in the UK market

Discussing challenges in the UK market, Will pointed out that churn can be a problem for cloud businesses. Understanding churn has been a significant, ongoing project for Will and the Pragma team.

He advised attendees to use Power BI to better understand what drives churn and how it can be avoided. Pragma has been a leader in driving cloud adoption, and he advised attendees earlier in their cloud journeys to address this early, by ensuring they collect and organize the data required to understand what makes customers choose to leave.

The digital switch-on

The talk then moved to the ongoing project in the UK to replace the country’s PSTN infrastructure. This process, known as the PSTN switch-off, is scheduled for completion by 2027. Gamma has positioned this with a more positive name, calling it the “digital switch-on” to emphasize the benefits of the project.

This has presented opportunities and challenges. The strength of iPECS as a PBX provider was very beneficial, because iPECS Cloud represented a natural upgrade. There have been challenges too, with more competition for SME users. Will and the Pragma team have met these challenges through innovation and differentiation.  

The benefits of differentiation

Pragma has thrived by differentiating its offering from competitors, using the power of iPECS alongside additional solutions that use the iPECS API to create new innovations.

Teaming up with third party developers and using the power of the iPECS API, the business has devised multiple additional solutions to tailor iPECS to different use cases.

These include omni-channel contact center (CONTACT for iPECS), an AI assistant (Sidekick) and a complete bespoke integration service that connects iPECS to other cloud software (CONNECT for iPECS).

Overall, these and many other innovations have created an end-to-end ecosystem that enables Pragma partners to tailor to any users.

Integration and innovation

Will discussed CONNECT for iPECS further. He observed that the ability to integrate more deeply with third-party tools is a major selling point. As he pointed out, users will spend large monthly sums on CRM software such as Salesforce, which they become highly dependent on.

By offering bespoke integrations designed for specific end user needs, CONNECT has enabled Pragma to increase customer retention by providing something genuinely unique.

Conclusions

Will’s talk was extremely valuable for our partners, especially those who are at an earlier point in the journey to cloud transformation.

Pragma has been a pioneer in this process, and their successes and learnings are a benefit to all our partners.

We would like to thank Will for sharing his insights for showing the success and innovation that iPECS enables.

iPECS insights is a forum where we can collaborate, share ideas and learn best practices to drive success and growth of the iPECS brand and portfolio globally. We will invite subject matter experts to lead each of the iPECS insights sessions which will last for approximately an hour and cover a range of technical and marketing focus areas.