JB Hi-Fi moves into selling telco services to business

Consumer electronics giant JB Hi-Fi will move into selling telco services to small business, with the business appointing a B2B telecommunications manager to oversee the new expansion.

The announcement comes after the company delivered its full-year result, with net profit down 4.6% to $104.6 million.

Chief executive Terry Smart said this morning that moving into the B2B space is a “natural extension” of the company’s services.

“When you combine what we have with the growing commercial business, it’s a good fit,” he says.

“We’ve built up a strong relationship with Telstra during the last four or five years, and we have a good understanding of the consumer market. At the end of the day it’s an area of interest to us, and we knew we needed the talent here.”

The new manager, Tony Nikolovski, previously worked as a national dealer manager for Telstra.

The business already offers telco services at it stores, but mostly to consumers. Smart says these services will be one step above that, catering to the sole operator or the very small business.

The business telco market is already close to saturated. But Smart says the services will focus on the low-end first, and then slowly scale up over time.

“We already have some fairly smaller sized business services through the stores. This enables us to build on those relationships.”

“We plan to build this slowly over time. We’ve got a great commercial business here and a strong focus on customer service. This will enable us to compete effectively in this space.”

The business telecommunications market is expected to grow even more over the next few years with the rollout of the National Broadband Network. While services in metro areas will see a benefit, businesses in more rural areas will benefit the most from increased competition.

This article was first published on LeadingCompany’s sister site, SmartCompany.