BT woos SMEs with one-stop comms shop

BT is encouraging SMEs to single-source all their technology needs with the launch of a one-stop shop for fixed-line telephony, mobile services and broadband.

The announcement of BT Business One Plan marks an extension to the telco's Business Plan telephony offering, and follows hot on the heels of BT's debut of its IT outsourcing service aimed at SMEs, called Business IT Manager.

The two announcements mean businesses can now buy telephony, broadband and IT support services all from BT.

Bill Murphy, managing director of BT Business, said: "We recognise that SMEs will benefit hugely from consolidated communications services. This simplifies things by reducing the number of suppliers they have to manage. Add to this our new BT Business IT Manager service and we can uniquely offer our customers a true one-stop shop for all their communications and IT management."

Industry experts reacted positively to the new package.

Pauline Trotter, principal analyst at Ovum said: "We have found that there is quite a lot of interest in buying from one service provider. SMEs don't get a great deal of support at the moment, they don't tend to use consultancies and they have no experience in-house. They single-source for the avoidance of hassle."

Ovum's research found 40 per cent of small businesses currently single-source their voice and data needs, and a further 33 per cent are interested in doing so.

But Trotter added there is a risk involved in single-sourcing, if the supplier turns out to offer a poor service.

She also said BT is probably not the cheapest supplier for each part of the bundle.

OnePlan is paid through one aggregated bill and it offers some discounted pricing compared with Business Plan, including a cap of 5p per hour for landline calls.

Richard Thurston writes for ZDNet UK