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James Luce, Director for Mobile at Enreach, discusses the group’s mobile strategy ahead of Mobile World Congress, including the benefits to users and the channel.
According to James, “In the world of business communications, one of the most significant changes of the past two years has been the continued growth of mobile traffic for business use, despite the pandemic. Whether working in the office or at home, people increasingly use their mobile devices for business communications, and we expect the growth to accelerate even further once we enter the new post-pandemic normal of hybrid working.”
Mobile has traditionally been a bolt-on to the rest of business communication. 
However, this no longer makes sense as it is inefficient and does not reflect how people now work and misses out on an opportunity to drive productivity gains. “After all, people have so much of their lives involved with their mobiles, both personally and at work. Plus, many of them prefer the user-experience that mobiles provide, when compared to types of device.”
Instead, Enreach envisions a world in which mobile plays a starring role. James describes some of the advantages: “With our approach, the user experience will be consistent, regardless of device, network or location. As a result, users will benefit from increased efficiency and productivity, with simplified communications that work around people in a context-based way, whatever the location. In addition, businesses will be able to accelerate the transition to successful hybrid working, and enable a more geographically diverse workforce, with access to a larger talent pool.”
James explains what this means in practice: “You no longer need to make compromises when relying solely on your mobile subscription for all your business communication needs, whether for functionality or reachability. Our unified communication solutions are integrated directly into our fixed voice and mobile core, which means that you do not need an over-the-top app. This matters because businesses cannot rely on their employees being reachable only when they have a mobile data connection. Also, costs are reduced by removing the need to pay for two subscriptions.”
Furthermore, mobile numbers and calls can be integrated into CRM, ERP or vertical market solutions. Another benefit is mobile voice recording combined with those solutions, supporting compliance requirements or customer service enhancements.
Technically, Enreach’s mobile strategy is underpinned by the group’s cloud-native unified communications platform for converged communications, collaboration and productivity. Its innovative design will enable rapid innovation and roll-out of new services, and from the start, the design has been smartphone-driven.
Here are a couple of examples of what that might mean in practice:
The co-owner of a customised glasses webshop is always on the go, moving between home, the office and the workshop. Her smartphone has become her mobile office, giving her access to everything she needs and multiple contact channels integrated with her essential business apps. Not only can she easily organise her working day around her needs, but she can also separate her personas.
For example, on the train home, she first calls from her office extension number to a customer. Next, she calls a colleague using her mobile ID. Though her mobile data signal is poor, she can remain connected and even hop on a quick Teams call. Finally, she calls her daughter using her personal ID to say she will be home in half an hour. As soon as she reaches home, all incoming contact is automatically routed to a colleague so that she can focus on family quality time.
These examples reflect how Enreach is enriching mobile. Native SIMs can support multiple IDs, and integration with PBXs means a seamless experience across fixed and mobile voice. UCaaS and CCaaS become blended across both inbound and outbound.
James adds, “We are unique in Europe. There is no other organisation with all our capabilities, with end-to-end connectivity, productivity, and contact solutions available in eight countries and growing. So, we can provide everything for business users’ contact needs, reducing the number of their suppliers and costs. Plus, we can do that in a very scalable and customisable way; that’s important because we know that one size will not fit all.”
James also points out that there is no need for rip-and-replace and that, depending on the customer, there can be different starting points. “You could add mobile to your existing on-premise PBX, or a Microsoft Teams Direct Routing solution, for instance. Our role is to help businesses and resellers migrate to cloud-based contact solutions and support fixed-mobile convergence (FMC) simultaneously. As a business-focused MVNO, we are best placed to deliver solutions for companies of all kinds, from two-person SMBs up to multi-national organisations with thousands of staff.”
Various options are available to suit different resellers, depending on their size and capability, including white labelling and turnkey MVNO solutions, to provide everything a channel partner might need. “You don’t need to be a mobile expert to start selling converged solutions with us.”
Enreach’s track record in mobile is something James is keen to emphasise. “Mobile is core to our DNA. We have been pioneering ‘mobile first’ for years, such as supporting Elisa, one of the world’s largest mobile-first cloud PBX/UC deployments. We have also created some of our own mobile technologies, such as developing a next-generation HSS and HLR to enable our solutions to work natively over the mobile network, when we could not find anything on the market that fitted our criteria.”
The group is also its own customer for supporting hybrid working. “We have employees in offices across Europe, but in March 2020, we moved to remote working without missing a step, and now we are embracing hybrid working. That would not have been possible without our mobile-centric unified communications strategy. We want to help users and resellers across Europe discover some of the powerful advantages we have experienced ourselves. It is time to bring mobile into the heart of the business.”
This article was published on CommsBusiness on 28 February 2022.
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