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Broadvoice Thursday unveiled its new UCaaS and virtual contact-center platform, delivering cloud communications capabilities for SMBs nationally.

Broadvoice b-hive brings together cloud PBX, UC and collaboration features with virtual contact center in one platform that’s connected to the company’s network and hosting infrastructure. It’s backed by Broadvoice’s customer-success organization.

Broadvoice’s Rebecca Rosen

Rebecca Rosen, Broadvoice’s vice president of marketing, tells Channel Partners that with Broadvoice b-hive, partners can enable their SMB clients to have voice-based call center functionality with “flexible call routing, supervisory controls (like monitoring) as well as dashboard and historical reporting — even if they don’t have a formal call center but a group of folks in care or sales that take calls.”

Many UCaaS providers are abandoning SMB accounts with 10-100 seats because they are looking to serve larger enterprise accounts, she said.

“SMBs are stuck ordering service via online portals with many of these vendors,” Rosen said. “Instead, Broadvoice provides them with hand-holding that larger customers typically get, giving partners a home for their valued SMB clients.”

Broadvoice’s revenue is 90 percent driven by the channel, so “we’re very mindful of the fact that partners are under margin pressure as the retail prices of services are squeezed,” she said.

b-hive integrates multiple functions into a desktop and/or mobile app so customers can place and receive calls on their desk phones, mobile phones or computers using their business-line identity. They also can move calls between their mobile devices and desk phones.

In addition, b-hive can be bundled with Broadvoice’s network infrastructure, including SD-WAN technology, to provide a secure connection that prioritizes voice over data. And the platform will function even when wireline connections go down, the company said.

“The platform is designed with partners in mind, and that starts with creating a simple, intuitive user interface to build quotes in as little as a minute,” Rosen said. “When time is of the essence, we give our partners the tools at their fingertips to quote with confidence. That said, we don’t rely on our partners to create their orders if they don’t want to; in addition to our channel managers, the company offers pre-sales solutions architects for complex applications and partner sales managers to deliver quick quoting for partners.”

As a Broadvoice partner, TruPoint Communication Solutions has seen Broadvoice’s growth in the channel over the past few years and “we have really enjoyed their customer-focused and partner-friendly culture,” said John Berardi, its president.

“With the launch of the b-hive platform, they now have a portal, pricing model and contact-center capability that should allow partners to take them further up market and into more complex opportunities,” he said. “We expect to see significant growth in the number and size of opportunities where TruPoint will be recommending Broadvoice this year.”