Wildix – an SMB-focused UCC firm you have never heard of – but you should

Founded by brothers Steve and Dimitri Osler in 2005 in Italy, Wildix created the industry's first browser-based Unified Communications and Collaboration (UCC) solution for small and medium enterprises with between 50 and 1000 employees. Deriving 100% revenue from its 1000+ certified channel partners, Wildix grew by 32% YoY with MRR at +274%. Its UCC solution is accessible with a simple click from a browser or via a smartphone App. The solution with webRTC technology has multiple integrations, native encryption, and proprietary hardware to deliver high-quality sound and video.

Techaisle's SMB and the midmarket survey show that Unified communications and collaboration are an IT priority for 68% of SMBs in the 50-1000 employee size segment. Unified communications adoption is likely to increase by 129% in 2021. Although there has been a high percentage of adoption and usage of individual components of communications and messaging, the adoption has been low when combined in one service. It has been a domain of midmarket businesses. Unified communications within small businesses has many inhibitors. At the top of the list are overall cost, lack of IT staff to manage, and lack of interoperability with other on-premise and cloud systems. Besides, similar to most other daily-use technologies, unified communications adoption suffers from internal staff resistance to learn and use. Adopting UCC solutions, like the adoption of most technology solutions, starts with a point of business pain: how can suppliers address an issue that impedes SMB business success.

Wildix is in the right market segment, with the right solution, at the right time. However, WebRTC is not a rarity anymore. Wildix may have been the pioneer, but almost all communication solution providers use WebRTC, including Wildix's main US competitors, Vonage and RingCentral. Wildix focuses on its positioning, not based on products, pricing, and features, oriented towards SMB business issues. It is a conscious shift from being features-oriented to value-oriented, which means understanding business problems, designing profitable solutions, and delivering the value that matches the SMB customer's business issues.

As a result, Wildix is becoming a sales-oriented unified communications solution and has created "boosters" for each step of an SMB's buying journey with a mission to sell growth, revenue, and productivity. All three are the top SMB business issues as per Techaisle's latest global survey. Wildix has over fifty integrations, including sales solutions such as Salesforce, Zoho, SugarCRM, Microsoft Dynamics, Teams, Poly, Freshdesk, HubSpot, InfusionSoft, SAP, and Zendesk.

Over the last year, Wildix has "invested 125,000 person-hours of over 80 developers, QA engineers, and UX specialists in launching new and enhanced products to improve its positioning in the market. WebRTC KITE, Wizyconf, Wizywebinar, x-bees, and x-caracal form the centerpiece of Wildix's sales-oriented UCC solution. The objective is to help SMBs convert strangers into customers turning any website into the core of an SMB's sales efforts.

• Wizyconf and Wizywebinar: Most of the leads require nurturing. Perhaps not yet interested in the SMB's business, once users land on the website, they turn from strangers into visitors. Wildix provides a tool that SMBs can send relevant information, including links to webinars, at any time. However, webinars and video-conferencing have many competitive leaders, such as Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and WebEx. Today there is extreme fatigue and burnout with webinars. As a result, all video conferencing solutions providers are focusing on experience over the platform. To differentiate itself from its larger-sized competitors, Wildix "has created an automated studio for webinars where hardware and software ingrate in a platform that allows movie quality online events." Even when a webinar is live, a participant can invite colleagues to join by sending a link who can participate without downloading and installing a client or a lengthy registration process. A critical failure point of webinars is the rate of participation – high registration but low attendance. A simple email reminder is not enough. Since the platform fully integrates with the Wildix communication system, SMBs can easily communicate with registrants through x-bees.

• WebRTC KITE: is a lead generation chat tool that allows a website visitor to get in touch with the SMB right from the browser, which can help SMBs be responsive to a potential customer, manage leads and increase sales. An SMB employee engaged in the chat can add more participants to help the customer. Even the external visitor can invite additional people, thereby having all decision-makers in one place to expedite the decision-making process. The SMB support employee can also see all previous communications with the same external user, irrespective of the device in use. Wildix's Wizyconf, a video-conferencing tool, is fully integrated with WebRTC KITE, enabling an instantaneous face to face meeting to help further convert leads into customers.

• x-bees: is a web-based platform for internal and external communications (chats) to convert leads from a single access point. It enables sales teams to collaborate on how to provide the best service and turn a sales lead into a customer, both at the front-end and back-end. There are many web- chat applications on the market, but x-bees has two differentiated features. First is the capability to recognize a website visitor as a qualified lead or a current customer. It keeps track of all previous interactions with customers and natively integrates with Salesforce. The second is recognizing an existing customer and putting them in contact with the same sales or support person or team they were in touch with previously. Wildix relies on Amazon Cognito, a powerful service for user identification and access control for this functionality. x-bees integration with calendars allows external users to select a time slot and book a meeting with the sales rep on their own. x-bees offers many more useful features, such as users can mute chats, prioritize notifications, and reset and manage passwords.

• x-caracal: is a tool that empowers the SMB sales and support team with constant feedback on the quality of their customers' interactions by dashboarding the elements of customer communications requiring improvement with an eye towards improving customer satisfaction. For 42% of SMBs, attracting new customers is a business challenge, but retaining them is an issue. x-caracal has embedded business intelligence in Wildix communications.
  It is clear from Techaisle's SMB survey research work that smart working relies on speed, security, and agility. In the SMB context, the future of work is not about incorporating an office-grade infrastructure for the home, which is akin to moving employees from one place to another building. The future of work is to take advantage of new opportunities and get up and sprint. Challenges such as finding an appropriate MPLS circuit or SIP trunk or getting a VPN to work are difficult to resolve for SMBs. Specifically, when SMBs are hiring talent irrespective of their location. Wildix is building its solution to be an efficient and effective supplier of smart working solutions. As online sales continue to grow, Wildix empowers SMBs to move to an efficient e-commerce solution to manage, convert and retain sales leads.

Although Wildix has customers in 135 countries, Italy is where it started in 2009 and has a substantial partner base. France is the second biggest country in terms of revenue. Wildix has been growing steadily within the US market and plans to target Asia/Pacific in 2021. Unlike many IT suppliers, Wildix utilizes a highly targeted recruiting strategy in seeking channel partners, emphasizing overall adaptability in addition to more specific data such as revenue and number of customers. The structure of the partner's sales and marketing teams and current business strategy are critical. Wildix's objective is to help create customer value over value addition. It is prepping to become the sales UCC solution for SMBs.

Wildix momentum is building. If you have not heard of Wildix, you should.