AGST

AGST’s customers are mostly small and medium businesses with 20 to 500 seats, as well as niche call centers. 

But customers including MSPs, IT integrators, regional ISPs, and vertical-specialist VARs (such as those in healthcare, hospitality, and municipal sectors), faced frustrating limitations. 

Many were stuck on aging on-premises PBX systems that struggled to support today’s hybrid work demands.

Vendors were another major pain point. Rigid and inflexible, with rising seat prices and restrictive lifetime contracts, they offered no real multi-tenant architectures and lacked white-label capabilities.

Resellers couldn’t scale easily, and there was no truly unified solution: voice, chat, video, and CCs rarely worked together seamlessly.

Security and compliance were concerns, too. Hosting outside the EU or lacking GDPR guarantees made some partners wary. 

And for the support, Jean-Pierre puts it simply: “Most vendors just weren’t reactive. You’d raise an issue, and maybe hear back a week later. There was no way to move forward like that.”

Early 2024 was a defining moment for AGST. As more cyber-focused customers began requesting a SIP-native UC platform, and telco partners wanted to integrate cybersecurity into their offerings, AGST’s teams recognized it was time to expand.

At this crossroads, Bicom’s open-standards and white-label approach fit perfectly, offering the flexibility and responsiveness AGST’s partners desperately needed.

And so, in the opening months of 2024, AGST officially became the exclusive distributor of Bicom Systems for France. 

“Bicom’s platform, with its open APIs, helps our team and our partners connect and customize solutions without difficulty,” says Jean-Pierre speaking for the AGST team. 

“Because of this flexibility, AGST became the trusted partner for the French market.”

Being the exclusive distributor goes way beyond selling licenses. 

AGST teams handle everything from local marketing under French brands to onboarding, training, and certifying partners on both sales and technical aspects. 

Customers are required to sign the AGST–Bicom agreement and maintain at least one certified administrator through an online course and exam. Licensing is flexible, with no long-term commitments, allowing partners to adjust seats monthly.

AGST’s teams also provide first and second-level support right in France and keep demo and proof-of-concept systems hosted in local data centers to meet GDPR rules. 

On top of that, AGST actively feeds back partner priorities through quarterly business reviews to help shape the platform’s roadmap.

Reflecting the broader AGST philosophy, Jean-Pierre says simply, “Partners have different needs based on their work and products. Some prefer traditional desktop phone systems, others computers and mobiles, or just mobiles, and what’s great is that Bicom meets them all.”

Talking about more concrete aspects, he pinpointed a few key features of Bicom’s platform that resonate strongly with AGST’s partners:

Multi-Tenant: Allows managing many customers from one system.

White-Label: Resellers keep their logos and domain, with Bicom working quietly in the background.

Omnichannel Contact Center: Voice, email, SMS, chat, and social media all queue into one system.

AGST found that beyond features, their customers also value having control, flexibility, and a solution that adapts to the way they work.

This insight, shared by both the technical and customer-facing teams, has shaped how AGST positions Bicom’s solutions in the French market.

“With the Bicom platform, we help customers who want to run everything under their own brand, with one system handling voice, video, chat, and contact center in a single place,” Jean-Pierre explains.

And a big part of what Bicom offers is flexibility in deployment, whether cloud, on-premise, or hybrid, with data stored in France. This helps customers launch services in weeks (not months), and compete confidently with larger pan-European providers.

One thing AGST’s teams have consistently observed is that the white-label option strongly appeals to French partners. It lets them lead with their own brand while maintaining control over pricing and margins.

“If I had to describe the Bicom platform in three defining words, they would be unified, flexible, and white-label, and those same three qualities are exactly what our customers need most,” Jean-Pierre concludes.

One thing that surprised AGST after becoming a Bicom distributor was how quickly they could get help from support teams and directly from product owners.

Most support tickets get resolved within just a couple of hours locally. If something needs to be escalated, it’s always addressed the same day, thanks to what Jean Pierre calls “Bicom’s amazing global follow-the-sun approach.”

“That makes a big difference,” he notes. “If something’s missing or not quite right, product owners don’t just say no. They find a workaround or promise it’s coming soon. That gives us and our partners confidence.”

Plus, quarterly calls with product teams mean AGST’s feedback shapes future updates.

Since the Bicom partnership began, AGST has grown steadily, now making up 5% of the overall group turnover. 

They’ve added over 30 active reseller partners and support about 150 seats in production. None of this would be possible without the collaborative work of AGST’s teams.

That growth, however, reflects a longer process managed carefully by AGST, since customers in the UC industry rarely make a fast, one-click decision when switching to a new provider.

“It can take months for some partners to move fully,” Jean-Pierre shares honestly. “But when they do, they tend to stick around.” And that loyalty, he says, comes down to the practical advantages Bicom Systems’ products offer.

To illustrate, he recalls a large national company that had tried another system, but was overwhelmed. Now, within six weeks of trying Bicom, they have integrated over 400 users.

Another recent customer tested the system and was so eager with questions and requests that they asked for training before even signing a contract. “That level of interest tells you a lot,” says Jean-Pierre.