VIA is the business telephony and communications specialist that is helping organisations to boost employee efficiency and increase workforce connectivity.

Nature of business

Established in 2012, VIA is a fast-growing organisation that has quadrupled revenue over the past three years.VIA offers flexible, agile and easy-to-install communications solutions that are the perfect fit for companies looking to upgrade their traditional telephony networks, increase efficiency and reduce costs. VIA also provides fully hosted and secure communications solutions to traders and hedge funds.

Locations/also markets they operate

VIA is headquartered in London and it clients span across the UK, US and EMEA, including Plowman Craven, Migrant Help, Stonehedge Partners and Coba Education.  The company will be looking to expand into the APAC region by late 2015.

Contact information

Head office:
27/31 Clerkenwell Close
London
EC1R 0AT

Website:
www.joinvia.com

Telephone:
+44 (0)20 7871 2880

Email:
[email protected]

Key executives

The VIA team is made up of industry specialists that come from a telephony-based background. The company has three directors: Alex Tebbs, Eddie Worthington and Gareth Sobocinski. VIA places huge emphasis on personal relationships and clients liaise frequently with the senior management team. The directors have a hands-on approach and take full responsibility for day-to-day operations.

Brief history of the company

VIA was established in 2012 by Alex Tebbs and Eddie Worthington in order to provide a hosted Microsoft Lync service. Alex and Eddie later brought Gareth Sobocinski on board to head up the development of the company’s unique management portal. The team noticed how the technology was evolving and were impressed with the Lync architecture and design (now known as Skype for Business). Whilst researching the market, the executive team did not find a single company providing a unified, easy to manage hosted communications solution and they wanted to fill that void.

Within the first few months, the company had developed its VIA Voice service and secured its first major deal. VIA currently has a turnover of £400,000, having quadrupled every year since conception. The target for the year ahead is £1,000,000 and the business is currently on track to reach this goal. At present, the average deal size is around 80 users per organisation however the pipeline’s current average seat count is about 300 users.

At the moment, 60% of VIA’s business comes from partners. VIA is currently building an internal sales team to help drive direct sales in order to continue its rapid growth and further its market penetration strategy.

Certifications/licenses

VIA is an official partner of Microsoft, offering its Skype for Business platform as a part of its fully-fledged communications solutions.

Products/ services offered

VIA currently offers two innovative products, VIA Voice and VIA Trade:

VIA Voice is an Internet-based Skype for Business platform that has been customised with added functionality to ensure clients benefit from enhanced communications and increased efficiency, leading to substantial cost savings. It unites voice communication, instant messaging, email, video,audio and conferencing, across a variety of devices, such as landlines, smartphones, PCs, and tablets. The VIA platform also integrates seamlessly with Office 365, Microsoft’s cloud-powered application.

In addition, VIA Trade is the world’s first, fully-hosted trader voice system. The communications solution is easy to install, fast to deploy and offers unrivalled security. As a fully hosted and managed platform, VIA Trade reduces your on-site communications equipment by 90% and works in conjunction with the Speakerbus iTurret.

The adoption of cloud technology is gaining ground day by day and more and more organisations, both large and small, are embracing change. VIA is a very flexible organisation and looks to deliver on all customer requirements. Every time the company develops a new feature, all of its customers benefit, not just one. As a result, VIA is promoting a greater adoption of cloud technology.

VIA has also invested in an unrivalled infrastructure that is supported across two data centres, operating simultaneously to ensure resilience at all times. VIA is the only company within the marketplace to offer this unique and secure platform, and as a result the company has achieved industry-leading results, with zero downtime since July 2013. In addition, VIA ensures that all client information is encrypted to maximise the security of data, whilst its engineering support service removes the need for businesses to invest in their own IT departments and on-call IT technicians.