SBL partners with leading European telecommunications provider Swisscom

Solution Builders Limited (SBL) has entered into a strategic partnership with Swisscom, one of Europe's leading telecommunications providers. SBL will offer Swisscom-hosted cloud-based telephony solutions that use a market leading 'occupancy-based' pricing model that allows organisations to scale their costs up or down relative to business revenue and seasonal peaks – particularly attractive to the hospitality, retail and education markets.

The partnership has already had its first major success, which will see SBL delivering a cloud-based telephony solution into one of the leading global Hotel Group's UK headquarters, with plans to expand this solution to over 100 of the company's UK hotels over the next few years. The strategic alliance with the Swisscom Hospitality Services division is the first to be made by SBL following a recent change management programme and significant new investment. It is part of the company's aggressive growth strategy to deliver state-of-the-art cloud-based unified communications solutions to hospitality, retail and education markets.

"Mobile phones and smart devices have disrupted the old model for hotel phone systems. Telephony systems are quickly becoming a drain on hotel resources, rather than a means for adding value to a hospitality service. New hosted and cloud-based models, especially ones where costs are directly related to occupancy, can tip the balance back in the hotel's favour by reducing expenditure," commented Adam Hardman, Sales Director at SBL. "You can't remove phones from hotel rooms completely because not only are they an important safety feature, but they are still a primary means for guests to contact guest services. What you can do is make the operational cost relative to your usage, and build a solution to support new applications that can offer cost-saving opportunities or new revenue streams."

Chris Brassington, CEO of SBL also commented: "This partnership is bringing state-of-the-art hosted communications solutions to the UK that have the real potential to benefit a company's bottom-line. Across different markets and geographies the shift from CAPEX to OPEX models is offering competitive advantages to many businesses – it's not just hotels where pay-per-use models work. Schools and universities can see dramatic savings during the holidays and retailers can scale their usage up or down in response to fluctuations in the market or seasonal demand."