Loren Cleveland is the owner of BTS Communications. With nearly 30 years in the industry, Loren started with BTS as a technician, then moved into marketing and sales before purchasing the company in 2011.
We sat down with him to ask him about his experiences as being both a Samsung partner and a Wildix partner. Here’s what he had to say:
Wildix and Samsung both have their pros and cons, but I’ve been very impressed with what Wildix has to offer. The option of being totally hardware free definitely has its advantages. For example, there was recently a lightning storm that did some damage to hardware for a few clients I have. I had to drive out and spend hours fixing it all. Had they had Wildix installed, this would have been avoided.
Another huge benefit is that wildix meets the needs of the end user. They’re always hesitant to install a new system because of the time it takes to learn something new, but they seem to grasp the Wildix technology very quickly.
In all honesty, since becoming a Wildix partner, I’m really only offering one Samsung product now. The pricing model of Wildix allows for so much more flexibility, and it’s considerably lower than Samsung. I had a customer that was debating between the two, and Samsung was about double the price of Wildix (excluding the yearly license fee). The base price for Wildix was much lower, but most people don’t like having the yearly fee attached – however, that was the option they went with, because it had a cheaper start up cost and allowed for them to have more flexibility.
Another big difference with Samsung is that I work with a distributor, so the partner program is fairly different. I’m told by Samsung to go to[ we-operations.com|http://we-operations.com/] and look everything up myself in regards to what help or services I may need as a partner – whereas Wildix gives me a name and a direct line to the person available to help me. The Samsung distributors are very helpful, but it’s not the same level of support.
On the topic of support, tech support with Wildix is top notch. With Samsung, we are told to go to the Samsung Wireless enterprise portal which doesn’t do half of what Wildix does; no licensing, no e-commerce, no billing, etc. Jerry and the team over at Wildix are very responsive and aren’t afraid to roll up their sleeves and really tackle the problems head on.
Like anything else, Wildix isn’t without its flaws. An issue I run into on occasion with my customers is that they’re hesitant to work with a company that has very little experience in North America (but this is a relatively small hurdle). Another issue I’ve had is the lack of wifi ability on the 480s. Samsung offers a similar phone with wifi enablement, and there are a lot of customers that are wifi only offices.
Wildix and Samsung are completely different products, making it difficult to even compare the two. Wildix is just on such a different playing field.
When I was first approached by Terry Bloom about becoming a Wildix partner, I had my hesitations. He mentioned that going forward as a business owner in this industry, I needed to partner with a Vendor that was capable of moving me toward the future; I need to be able to do business on a different level.
Well, I have to say that Wildix has absolutely delivered. The days of having an onsite PBX or hardware are slowly coming to an end, and Wildix has provided a product that will help us stay relevant. Samsung isn’t quite there yet.