The completion of ScanSource Europe's purchase of Algol Europe was marked by Patrick Zaman's appointment as Managing Director of ScanSource Communications UK. In an exclusive interview, Zaman revealed the distributor's next moves to Adam Oxford.

Patrick Zaman is, by some measures, the epitome of the modern European businessman. As the new Managing Director of ScanSource Communications UK, he splits his time between the company's British base in Egham and its continental HQ just a quick Eurostar ride away in Brussels. It's here, from an office on the Boulevard de la Woluwe on the eastern side of the city, that the US firm has been masterminding a rapid and, so far, successful entrance into the pan-European telecoms market. In the UK, that meant buying up the distributor MTV Telecom in 2008 and rebranding it under the ScanSource colours, a process of integration which was completed by Zaman's appointment.

For all his international credentials, it's the intimate local market knowledge which Zaman believes is ScanSource's defining quality for its resellers. "The people our UK resellers deal with are all from the UK," he explains. "My Account Managers are from the local area, my Business Development Director is from the area, the technical team are from the area. That's the same strategy we have right across Europe. Adapting to the local culture is incredibly important. Italy, France, Spain, Germany, the Nordics, Poland - it's the same wherever we operate. Local knowledge is very important."

Hand in hand with that philosophy is the role of detailed technical knowledge among his staff. Zaman added: "We have a team of seven internal account managers now, and we're continuing to hire. We don't have a high turnover of staff in our customer facing division, so when a reseller asks for information or guidance, our sales people are able to respond to that. It's taken for granted that the sales people know what they're selling. Resellers like that about us, and see it as a unique quality. They come to us for technical advice even when they didn't buy the original product from us."

A large part of the restructure of the UK business was providing more focus and allowing people to concentrate on their core job roles. "Our account managers are in the office and available all the time. There's no going through to voicemail because they're off doing something else. This is the focused approach."

Zaman is key to the future development of ScanSource's operations in Europe. "Patrick's brief is managing the UK business and working with me in certain pan-European areas like vendor acquisition, and business and marketing planning," says ScanSource's European President Xavier Cartiaux. "Vendors would like us to acquire more companies and service more regions by acquisition, but it's easy to exchange cheques and keys. We need to make sure we merge them successfully."

When it comes to acquisitions, the cautious but ambitious acquisition strategy followed so far seems to be paying off. At the end of 2009 the company, which started out in POS and barcoding equipment, added German data distributor Algol Europe to its books, giving it a reach into DACH market. In other words, ScanSource hasn't been hoovering up local businesses in a way that might be associated with a large American corporation muscling into Europe... it is, make no mistake, a large American corporation.

With an annual turnover of nearly $2 billion, it's not a long way behind the Westcons of this world. Around 40 per cent of the company's activity is in telecoms, and its the world's largest Polycom and Avaya customer. Already, around a fifth of the global revenues come from the European arm, which Cartiaux explains has a large degree of autonomy from its US parent.

"We're a very independent company to the US," he says. "The market is different there. They're facilitators and provide support and resources for ScanSource Europe, and we're sharing best practices globally, but they don't put us under pressure to work with certain vendors. They will use their long standing relationships with vendors by way of introduction, but at the end of the day business is between human beings and local relationships, and knowledge is the most important thing."

Zaman concurs, and believes that despite the current economic situation - ScanSource's shares dropped 13 per cent the week before Comms Dealer visited - the size of the corporation gives it the stability to pursue long-term plans. "ScanSource in the US has a long-term vision when it comes to valuing and helping our vendors and reseller partners," Zaman says.

"That's an unusual thing. As a company we'd rather lose a little in the short-term in order to preserve a long-term relationship and potential growth. We won't distribute a vendor all over Europe just because we have the legal right to, for example."

That's not to say that the long-term aim isn't to distribute its entire vendor portfolio all over the continent. In fact, Zaman's pan-European brief seems to be precisely that. "The skills we have on either side of Belgium are extremely complementary," Zaman explains. "Algol came from a data and networking background with Juniper and Extreme Networks, and moved into communications. The UK has a strong base in communications. That's how they're complementary. Algol has always been active in services and its academy. It has a training centre and a demo suite that we'll be learning from in the UK. Likewise, we'll be taking the strengths of the UK arm and using them to build up the German operation."

Bringing network vendors into the UK portfolio is high on Zaman's current task list. Unified communications has been a strong area of performance for the company, and he's added a lot of data resellers to ScanSource's books who are looking to move into the telecoms market.

"The unified comms resellers are the ones who don't say ‘we're traditionally from this sort of business', but the ones who see where the opportunities are," he says. "It's about... ‘what does my end user need and how can I help them as a reseller'. The UC message is about business processes and productivity rather than the value of a network."

At the same time as he's working on expanding ScanSource's vendor portfolio into new areas, Zaman has also been bringing the MTV Telecom range into line with the European vision of highly specialist product teams. The most notable casualty was software PBX Swyx, which MTV Telecom had been instrumental in introducing to the UK. Cartiaux outlines the overall plan: "Focusing on a smaller number of vendors means we can have a bigger impact with our investments.

"In 2009 we spent a lot more money year-on-year in marketing, but on fewer product lines, so it isn't spread so thinly and has more impact. Instead of spending, say, £10,000 on ten vendors, we'll spend £2,000 each on five."

The strategy so far, it's claimed, is paying off. End of year figures are likely to be down, but within single digit percentages. "Some of our vendors are 25-30 per cent down," continues Cartiaux. "So we must be doing something right."

It isn't just with a tightly focused but comprehensive product line that Zaman hopes to expand the UK business, a partner matching scheme is under development, aimed at bringing together resellers from different territories who need to outsource work servicing large clients. By drawing on its global reach, smaller companies will be able to move into bigger markets with international customers by finding like-minded partners through ScanSource's database. It's an initiative that has grown directly out of dealer demand. "MTV Telecom was traditionally known as an IP office distributor," Zaman explains. "But we have been changing, and have put a lot more emphasis on the enterprise space. It's one of the fastest growing areas for us in the UK. With our three main product lines we have an answer for resellers whatever size they are."

Crucially, for companies struggling to find the funds to grow in these new markets, ScanSource Europe has an independent credit scheme which guarantees a 24 hour turnaround for financing decisions. Because the decision makers can talk directly to account managers and take into consideration a reseller's past business with the company, the way it's described is more like a traditional bank than the traditional banks themselves, and it rounds off the future vision for a company which is juggling the often contradictory roles of being both a global power and a local business.

"It's not a question of how many resellers we're attracting, but how good those resellers are," commented Zaman on the company's growth plans. "For the larger resellers our international reach is very much part of the appeal. For smaller resellers the benefits are that we carry large inventories, and that we have our own credit facilities. We're also flexible and understand that resellers need credit to grow. Our partners like that. And we can deal with them on the basis of a personal relationship."