Early in his career when Mark Salvin was tasked with selling one phone a month, now the CEO of Swift Managed Services has a bigger job in hand, to scale the business up threefold in as many years.
Swift Managed Services is six months away from its third birthday and was born from an idea to build a managed services business that could support the channel in capturing revenues that are typically missed by resellers. The company is focused on offering white labelled professional services and specialist knowledge in the areas of IT support, the cloud, virtualisation and Microsoft services such as Lync. "During our short trading history we have acquired three businesses and consolidated them around the Swift brand," stated Salvin, who began his career selling mobiles for a Cellnet Service Provider in Sheffield. "This was when phones were so expensive most people leased them. My target was one sale per month," he added.
A stint at Vodafone service provider Martin Dawes was to follow. "This is where I learned about professional sales and was easily the best sales team I ever worked within," recalled Salvin. "I then went on to work for NTL where I learned how to manage people and business planning. I also learned how not to integrate acquisitions. I then moved onto Thus and started to branch out on my own incorporating Telecomplete, which later became Fused Group. This is where my real education in business began. However my biggest achievement was my first acquisition, a small VoIP company called mywebcalls. I had no idea what I was doing and it turned out to be a cracking deal."
Salvin's latest venture with Swift Managed Services began when he linked up with co-founders and co-owners Carl Davis and Omar Shafiq. "Although Swift as a brand is relatively new other elements of the business are well established," explained Salvin. "Corpex, now known as Swift Systems, has been trading for nine years and specialised in hosting and secure mail services. After integrating that business into the group we now use this entity to sell all of our hardware-based sales. Easy Connect, now known as Swift Connect, has been trading for over 10 years and provides Internet products including broadband, MPLS, leased lines, Wide Area Networks and voice services. Swift Computers has been trading for over 17 years and continues to provide IT support, consultancy services and training. Finally, Swift Managed Service provides all of our cloud, voice, hosting and project based services."
Not surprisingly, Salvin's wide experience over the past 20 years has given him a deep understanding of how to be successful in providing services to SME businesses and operating in the service provider market. "Many companies come and go, they get sold, they go under, but the personalities keep coming back which I find reassuring," he added. "Leading a business is a difficult role, more difficult than I imagined, but a company's strength is its people. Your team is everything. This is one of the most important things I have learned over my career."
Swift Managed Services' revenue has grown from zero to a forecasted £2.5 million and is set to grow further following a rebranding and a recent office move to larger premises. Current priorities in terms of products, channel strategy and business development include increasing the number of channel partners on its books. "After a soft launch of our services to a few friendly resellers over the last 18 months we are now ready to deliver these to a much wider audience," explained Salvin. "We are looking to recruit around a dozen quality channel partners in the next 12 months who see the opportunity in delivering a one-stop-shop solution to their customers, and have the scale in conjunction with Swift to deliver quality profitable projects."
Swift has also recruited two well know channel personalities in Justin Blaine (formally of NeoWave) and Jonathan Sheridan (formally of Gteq) to head up the sales and marketing effort, as well as a dedicated internal marketing executive to help better promote its products and support to partners.
Salvin believes that the key to the firm's future strategy is to concentrate on the move to cloud-based services. "With technologies being now widely deployed like Microsoft Lync we at Swift understand these products, what they offer and how to sell, design and support them," he stated. "We can educate resellers not to shy away from these technologies that need integrating and securing. Customers are going to need help getting the most from their IT investments so they can concentrate on running their businesses."
There is not only big interest in Microsoft Lync, noted Salvin, but also a big shift towards this technology in the enterprise space. "We are seeing companies becoming more savvy about their data, therefore secure cloud data storage, backup and recovery is growing at a phenomenal rate," he observed. "Companies also want advice on how to virtualise their infrastructure as they see cloud as a reliable, resilient and secure first line solution which is also cost-effective."
Another key growth trend for Swift Managed Services is IT support coming back to the UK from overseas. "As companies become totally dependent on their IT and telecoms they want to deal with someone local and knowledgeable," said Salvin. "Data backup continues to grow and is a good revenue generator if deployed properly. Microsoft Lync deployment is also growing as installation requires consultancy and expertise to get the best from the solution. These all play to our strengths and offer a good opportunity for Swift to add real value to our partners.
"What we are seeing is the need for real advice and service from customers. They want someone who's going to look after them and help them achieve their business objectives. The brand of the equipment or software is becoming less and less important but the ability to manage that equipment and make it do what the customers requires is becoming more important and valuable to the client. This is where the profit opportunity is for Swift and our partners."
With the green shoots of recovery starting to show, 2014 is going to be a big year, believes Salvin. "It's now time to focus on capturing as many of the opportunities that emerge as possible," he stated. "We see growth continuing and expect the business to treble in size over the next three years."•