BT offers ebusiness expertise to partners

BT Alternative Channels is enabling its channel partners to offer ebusiness products and services to their customers through its Indirect Channels eVolution programme.

BT Alternative Channels is enabling its channel partners to offer ebusiness products and services to their customers through its Indirect Channels eVolution programme.

The company started to hold meetings with its partners this month to help them establish customers' ebusiness needs and their ability to support them.

Andrew Hargreaves, head of internet and ebusiness at BT Indirect Channels, said: "Our strategy is to develop long-term relationships with partners and take them into new markets.

"We are helping resellers seize the opportunities of ebusiness by tapping into BT's expertise. This avoids risks because we are providing support and they do not face the cost of acquiring new skills."

George Sanger, sales director at BT partner Xpert Systems, said: "From a reseller's perspective, it shows that BT is trying to be different and is looking at new areas where it can grow its business.

"A lot of resellers do not have expertise in the ebusiness arena and BT is enabling these partners to fulfil existing customer demand and gain new business in this area. The ebusiness arena is very important because everybody wants to do business electronically now."

Hargreaves said that the new initiative is gaining momentum, and that the company's six year-old Indirect Channels division is seeing an annual growth rate of 30 per cent.