Several economic and social crises are currently overlapping. How is this affecting sentiment and your distributor’s business?
Florian Buzan: The use of Starface communication solutions ensures improved cooperation and more efficient communication processes for our customers or the customers of our partners. This helps to exploit potential in everyday work and to become more efficient in the processes. The benefit of using our products is very quickly noticeable also economically.
For this reason, we are fortunately not directly affected by the current crises. If medium-sized companies are generally doing badly, this naturally has an impact on our business and that of our partners.
How do you support your partner in these challenges?
Florian Buzan: Among other things, we counter this with an intensification of the Starface Community idea. So you should always be on the lookout for distributors to network with. It is often helpful to exchange information with other Starface partners about how they deal with challenges and what solutions they have developed. We are observing that there is considerable potential for synergy in this.
Photo: Star Face
Furthermore, we also offer financing solutions in our portfolio, such as Starface 365, with which it is possible to rent the entire telephone system including end devices and thus protect the customer’s liquidity.
I met Starface in October 2021 Estos and teamphone get two sister companies. What has happened since then?
Florian Buzan: Starface and Estos continue to operate separately on the market. But of course we have started to expand our product portfolio together and to benefit from each other in the interests of our customers. Since October, Estos has had its own cloud telephone system with the new product Procall Voice Services.
Conversely, at Starface we offer our partner a Starface white label solution based on the know-how and expertise of our Teamfon colleagues.
As far as our internal structures are concerned, we as a group have already benefited from each other in a number of areas. Among other things, Starface now has a second location in Munich together with Teamfon and Estos. Here, teams from all three companies work together under one roof.
The integration of Microsoft teams into the Starface system in May 2022 will be of particular importance due to the expansion of the IT partners. How has the response from the Microsoft partner community been so far?
Florian Buzan: We are seeing a lot of interest in our Starface MS Teams integration. We all will be able to offer the choice between integration and integration with SBC solution. Customers can then select the right solution for them from this range.
To what extent do you promote cooperation between the historical partners that have grown out of TC and classic IT partners who have now become aware of Starface primarily through the MS Teams integration?
Florian Buzan: We encourage Starface Sales to bring the right partners together. In this context, we offer a large networking event with our Starface Congress, which we use to better network the partners with each other.
UCC solutions form the technological basis for modern work. In order to exploit all the advantages in corporate use, the introduction must also be Change management measures to be accompanied. Are you planning to support partners in this regard alongside the marketing of the Starface solutions?
Florian Buzan: Especially in the project business, our sales team provides intensive support to the Starface partners. In addition, our presales team provides advice on the implementation of customer projects. Even though our influence as a manufacturer is limited, we offer our partners support in finding relevant cooperation partners from the Starface community.
What are your planes for the laudable 12 months?
Florian Buzan: 2023 is Starface under the star of a new major release. In connection with this, the revision of our Starface App for Windows will be a highlight of this year. Adapted to the latest requirements of our users, we redesign the Starface App based on the feedback from our users and partners. The focus is on user-friendliness.
In this context, however, it is extremely important to us that even long-standing users have the feeling that they can find themselves in the user environment and still recognize themselves. In this respect, the Starface gets a new look, a new face from its users.
, Starface CEO Florian Buzin: “Networking of partners synergy promotes potential”
