COLT's UK SME business continued to make a significant contribution to the company's overall performance following the group's announcement of solid second-quarter results in July.

Andy Horn, head of COLT's UK SME division, said the telecoms group is looking at a ‘healthy' pipeline of orders and sales bookings and has effectively bucked the twin issues of credit crunch and seasonality through the high summer months. Growth in the SME sector, particularly on the data front, has been strong, according to Horn. The company has recently recruited its first Cisco gold partner - its identity was still unannounced at the time of going to press - and, having set a recruitment target of 18 data and managed service partners at the start of the year, has already got 15 on board.

"My idiosyncrasy is to focus on four Cs," he said. "Communication, Consistency, Care and Commission. You have to communicate with and listen to your community, and be consistent about doing it. Many of our competitors do it, then don't do it, then start doing it again."

Horn credited COLT CEO Rakesh Bhasin with driving up the profile of the SME market within the company to the extent that the UK division and its VARs are now pushing the envelope for the rest of Europe. "The UK tends to be more focused on value-add and high end solutions with strong, focused VARs," he said. "In France, for example, a partner agent will only sell COLT products. But in the UK, VARs will sell a range from many vendors, so we have to make ourselves easy to do business with and strive to be better than the rest. The perception of COLT here is very positive and strong, and we're getting a lot of pull from the reseller market."

Horn said there has been a significant shift in SME buying patterns recently. "Three or four years ago, ICT was a cost and a pain," he said. "Now it's all about improving efficiency, driving up revenues and cost-effectiveness. Buyer behaviour has changed, SME budgets are a significant part of their spend. Our partner community is very healthy in that area, meeting expectations for customer care."

Horn cited the COLT Experience initiative, a three-pronged approach to providing SME customers with a flexible portfolio of managed services and products, as a prime example of the company's commitment to the market.

"Rakesh has strongly advocated that SMEs have a right to expect much more from their investment and the take-up of COLT Experience from our partners has been positive. Analysts have reacted well and the market seems to be liking it," he said. "The challenge is that if you are comms specialist with a niche in voice or data products, it's a big step in terms of skills and capabilities to offer managed services. Resellers need to demand comprehensive training, support and materials from the service provider that will supply these services as well as the underlying quality of service you can rely on.

"People always tend to hold on to the old until the new offers something better. Managed services do offer something better, especially to medium and small businesses, and demand is growing. At COLT we think this is a clear market opportunity for us and our resellers."

Horn said additional modules for COLT online will include self-service facilities that allow partners to track installation progress and raise service flags. In addition, the group will roll out its VoIP access platform to resellers later this year.

"There is a strong need now for us to get more of our products reseller-ready, and make as much of our portfolio as possible available to our partners as possible," said Horn. "In this economic climate, SMEs will turn to the security of known brands, and that means our partners may be leading their sales with the COLT brand. We need to be ready to meet that demand."