Comms Dealer

Sabio has become a master at marrying digital, social, mobile and traditional customer contact channels to create a seamless client experience, and incoming CEO Andy Roberts aims to double the size of the business based on its proven formula supported by new investment.

Sabio's multi-million pound Lyceum Capital investment and £30 million funding along with last month's appointment of Roberts as CEO has given a green light to the company's drive for UK and international expansion. The customer contact technology specialist currently generates £40 million turnover based on organic growth but last month's developments mark a new beginning. "We'll be looking to accelerate our growth plans, action an acquisition strategy and identify more opportunities for international expansion," stated Roberts.

"Our goal is to double Sabio's size over the next three to five years. The acquisition strategy will help to broaden our customer base and provide a greater target market for our WFO, automation, digital and multimedia solutions. Then we'll begin to build out our global presence in European and APAC markets, expanding our 24/7 support capability for those organisations seeking a single support partner for their customer contact technologies. The third part of our strategy is to investigate technologies that are adjacent to and complement our current portfolio, particularly those that help support our customers in bridging the divide between their digital and customer contact strategies."

Prior to his CEO appointment Roberts was a board director at the company since 2003 responsible for pre-sales, solutions delivery, managed services and support for the firm's UK and international operations. He also served as executive sponsor for Sabio's strategic partnerships with technology partners such as Avaya, Verint and Nuance. Roberts has been a member of the Avaya EMEA Partner Advisory Council and also served on the Customer Contact Association's CCA Supplier Council. He joined Sabio's Sales and Business Development team in 2001, and before that spent the previous ten years working in the financial services sector for LloydsTSB.

"Having begun my career in banking, joining Sabio and the communications technology sector in 2001 was a great opportunity for me to contribute directly in terms of growing a business," he commented. "As CEO of Sabio, my business development experience and background in managing all parts of the business will be critical as we drive the company through its next critical growth phase."

In recent years Sabio has grown ahead of the market, secured an increasing market share and delivered a consistently profitable performance. However, there is also a real opportunity for the company to accelerate its business plans and build out in terms of addressing broader opportunities. "Securing additional funding and putting the next generation of Sabio leadership in place will be instrumental in delivering on those plans," added Roberts. "In the short-term we're looking to accelerate how we execute against our current business plan, taking advantage of our new funding to make sure we have all the right resources in place.

"Longer-term we will focus on complementing our organic growth with a number of targeted acquisitions, both in the UK to gain a broader customer base, and internationally in Europe and APAC to support the growing number of customers with a global contact centre vision."

Sabio was founded in 1998 by Paul Began, Adam Faulkner, Sebastian Henkes and Ken Hitchen, all still engaged in the business. The firm has bases in the UK and Singapore and helps businesses to simplify customer engagement by enabling 'digital front door' strategies that create the right balance between self-service, assisted service and contact centre operations.

"From day one Sabio has always been dedicated to helping organisations deliver above-expected customer service by addressing their contact technology challenges," explained Roberts. "That's our exclusive focus area. And with over 17 years experience and a proven team of more than 200 solutions, services and support experts, we aim to be easy to do business with. It's an approach that works well for our customers as Sabio consistently achieves high CSAT support scores across our key technologies."

Sabio has been an Avaya Platinum Partner for over 10 years, a Verint Premier Partner since 2007, and a Nuance specialist since 2004. "We're also committed to high quality standards, holding both ISO 9001:2008 quality management certification for the provision of our customer contact technology strategies and solutions, as well as ISO27001 Certification for Information Security Management," added Roberts. "From our service hubs in the UK and Singapore we're able to provide contact centre technology support across multiple regions. We typically support at least three different technologies for each of our global customers, and now operate in 57 countries."

In 2015 Sabio was also named as one of the UK's Best Workplaces for the first time, and was also listed in The Sunday Times HSBC International Track 200, reflecting the company's performance as one of the UK's top mid-market private companies with fast growing international sales, delivering 15.4 per cent overall growth over the last two years and 25.4 per cent for the international business. "We've also grown successfully in terms of employees and now have 208 people across the business," added Roberts.

Sabio has also invested heavily in its partner technologies to deliver more flexible solutions. "For example, we've recently focused on the mid-market contact centre sector leading to the introduction of our Sabio OnDemand hosted solution that directly addresses the strong mid-market requirement for cloud-enabled contact centre technology," explained Roberts. "Investment in the Sabio business will help to accelerate the Sabio OnDemand roll out on a broader scale."

Sabio also works closely with technology providers such as Semafone, Conversocial, LivePerson, RMG Networks and Gamma to address specific customer contact requirements. "Looking forward, we will continue to investigate adjacent technology across disruptive market areas, potentially in the digital arena to support the growing number of our customers requiring a more integrated approach to omnichannel engagement," noted Roberts.

How organisations engage with their customers has never been more critical, and there's a clear international demand for a technology specialist such as Sabio that can help businesses to close the gap between digital and traditional customer contact channels. "Given that 90 per cent of customers are now looking for a seamless engagement experience, organisations can't just expect their digital or marketing teams to deliver on the omnichannel promise," added Roberts. "That's why Sabio is increasingly focused on helping organisations to optimise their 'digital front door' strategies, helping them to design customer journeys that create exactly the right balance between self-service, assisted service and the contact centre."

After effectively running parallel digital and contact centre strategies, more and more organisations are now recognising that all their different service channels - traditional and digital - have an important and complementary role to play. "For example, if your digital journey isn't performing optimally you might offer additional web chat support or use a virtual assistant to drive customers to the right self-service sites," added Roberts. "That's why we're focused on helping organisations to enable this transition, whether that involves the latest digital assistants or supporting broader infrastructure developments around technologies such as WebRTC."

In a world where the customer service and the actual experience offered is often the only differentiator, it's imperative that organisations do as much as they can to get this right. Roberts commented: "That's where Sabio can help, regardless of whether you're wanting to adjust to the demands of today's increasingly mobile and socially connected customers, want to streamline complex customer journeys to reduce customer effort, or simply need to close the gap between your digital and traditional customer contact channels.

"Whether organisations are simply looking to upgrade their existing contact centre infrastructure, evolve towards a next generation cloud architecture, or deploy a more comprehensive approach that addresses all of their omnichannel contact requirements, our challenge is to help them make sure that their customer engagement strategies are fit for purpose."•

To say that 2016 has been a milestone year for Entatech UK would be to greatly understate the nature of the key events and developments catalysed by business turnaround champion Dave Stevinson.

In February 2016 IT distributor Entatech UK settled its lengthy legal battle with the liquidators of Enta Group company Changtel and is now solely owned by Stevinson Capital, a business controlled by Entatech Managing Director Stevinson. The settlement was a long running, challenging and complex deal involving multiple firms of lawyers, and Stevinson ranks the outcome has his best career achievement to date, even bigger than growing GNR from a start-up in his bedroom to a multi-million pound European company within two years.

"The settlement eradicates all uncertainty and has the vital components of affordability and flexibility, enabling Entatech to go forward with purpose and confidence," he said. "We spent a long time working on our turnaround and transformation plan and have adopted a '4S' strategy to be delivered over four years based on the action words - Stabilise, Structure, Strength and Solutions. We have completed the Stabilisation phase in the first year and are now embarking on the Structure element. Here we have five cornerstones - the people structure, capital structure, data structure, product structure and ultimately the customer structure."

In further structural planning Entatech UK condensed its divisions from nine to four - PC Components & Gaming, Systems & Peripherals, Networking & Connected Home, and Retail & Software. "My vision with Entatech is to sharpen the focus and only compete in areas where we have a significant and demonstrable competence in the eyes of the customer," added Stevinson. "Our vision is where want to be and our mission is how we are going to get there. There are two areas where we see huge potential - the connected smart home and virtual reality for the PC gamer."

Dabs.com founder David Atherton shares Stevinson's vision and he joined Entatech as Chairman two months ago. Dabs.com was one of the earliest online retailers of IT equipment, growing from scratch to over £200 million revenue per annum. Atherton sold the business to BT in 2006. This key appointment followed the naming of Grant Thornton as auditors for the distributor in April. According to Stevinson the reputation of Grant Thornton signifies the improved governance and controls he's imposed on the business.

He says the company has come a long way since it was established in 1990 as an Anglo Taiwanese venture. Today, Entatech represents 70 brands in the UK, is 100 per cent trade only and has a base of 3,500 active resellers. Stevinson expects revenues to exceed £80 million this financial year and return to profitability following a period of decisive action that saw the entire board of directors changed. Alongside these developments Entatech has invested in new ERP and data analytics systems.

Stevinson is well qualified to drive organisational transformations and exhibited strong business and managerial skills early in his career. After graduating he joined the European branch of a Taiwanese IT company as sales executive while waiting to find a career in the City. "My initial plan was to be a stockbroker, but over time the company grew quickly and I became Managing Director, learning all of the skills needed to run a large company in the technology space," he commented.

Fast forward to today and Stevinson's current priority is focused on getting the people structure right. "We need to ensure that we have the right number and quality of people and that we have our aces in their places," he added. "Our challenge and opportunity is to be different from the big four competitors. So we are becoming more relevant to our clients and working smartly in niche sectors, using digital technology and advanced analytics as differentiators and accelerators.

"Another challenge is the lack of trade credit in our sector. We are addressing this by honing our product portfolio, reducing the cost base and improving efficiencies. These measures are augmented by our use of advanced data analytics across the company."•

Twenty five years ago I could phone my boss from a telephone box on a Friday afternoon and tell him that I was foot-canvassing an industrial estate in Hemel Hempstead. The fact that I was actually outside my home and sloping off for the weekend was easy to hide, writes Clive Jefferys, JMA Network.

I wouldn't get away with that today, but I'm older, wiser and far, far more motivated than I was then.

There would be a tracker in my company car, my mobile phone buzzing in my pocket and emails pinging on my tablet, while I complete quotes online from the driver's seat.

The mobile digital age has devolved selling from the office to the field and on the whole this is a very good thing. You can maximise your selling time face-to-face and traffic jams excepted, a sales day can be three times more productive than it was in 1991.

This brings many benefits to employers too. They can spread their sales patch far wider than before without the need for extra offices and the costs they attract.

All this personal empowerment of sales people comes at a price. Working mostly on your own demands that a salesperson must constantly self-motivate, maintain the hunger to succeed and inspire trust.

These are often the rarest commodities to find in candidates and once found companies would do well to grab them.

In this last aspect, many bosses inadvertently break the equation. Being called into the office several times a week, just for a chat, leads to more traffic time and less selling.

In response to today's publication of Ofcom's Universal Service Obligation call for inputs, ISPA urges Ofcom to listen to warnings that the USO could lead to rising consumer prices and potential market distortions and so should pursue a 'safety net' approach that provides access to core digital services.

In its response, ISPA also argued that the clear social and economic benefits of broadband mean that highly targeted public funding for the most rural areas is the best way to deliver the USO and we call on Ofcom to recognise that a new broadband levy on all providers is anti-competitive, could hinder network rollout and lead to higher prices.

Responding to the latest developments, ISPA Chair James Blessing said: "ISPA supports the principle of broadband universality and feels a 'safety net' for the hardest to reach areas is the right approach, but given the clear socio-economic benefits of broadband, public funding should help fund a USO."

Government asked Ofcom to help with the technical specifications and design of the 10 Mbps Universal Service Obligation for broadband and will present options for a preferred approach by the end of year. The policy was announced last year and forms part of the Digital Economy Bill currently before Parliament. The ISPA response to Ofcom can be found in full here.

Luminet has aligned a new channel programme to its Fibre Air proposition, a wireless business Internet service that can be installed in just five working days and offers customers up to 1GB symmetrical broadband Internet connectivity almost from the outset.

The programme is underpinned by a 100% SLA guarantee.

The wireless ISP says Fibre Air can be sold on an isolated fixed three month contract or kept as a back-up broadband service to ensure business continuity in case of broadband downtime or outages.

Luminet CEO Sasha Williamson said: "Our proposition helps VARs to monetise their suite of OTT services quickly, bringing revenue forward while addressing the demanding connectivity requirements of SMEs.

"Because our Fibre Air service works over the rooftops utilising wireless microwave technology, it avoids the need for unnecessary construction works such as digging up the ground, which means it can be installed quickly and sold in tandem with fibre leased lines.

"Luminet's ability to deliver a wireless solution with bandwidth as much as 1Gbps in as little as seven days has ensured that we stand out from the crowd on more than one occasion."

Luminet owns its own core and wireless network and has over 50 active channel partners ranging from large multinational distributors to bespoke London-based IT companies.

M2M channel builder Anton Le Saux is to head up Zest4's M2M Partner Programme following a three year stint leading Telefonica's IoT strategy.

The move is significant and reaffirms Zest4's commitment to driving M2M solutions through channel partners.

Le Saux joins Zest4 in early September bringing 20-plus years mobile network experience mostly working with channel partners.

His appointment is the latest in a string of M2M developments at Zest4.

In October 2015 the company formed a partnership with Arkessa in response to the growing demand by communications resellers looking to realise the growth opportunity in M2M.

The Zest4 M2M Partner Programme was officially launched in May 2016 and will be overseen by Le Saux who aims to recruit new partners, build bespoke M2M strategies and educate end users to make M2M 'a reality'.

He said: "The Internet of Things and M2M are phrases that are on everyone's lips, but in reality, a large proportion of resellers don't really understand how they can profit from M2M or access the growing opportunity.

"My prime focus will be on educating the channel to enable them to clearly see the bigger picture and understand the longer-term revenues that M2M offers and what it can do for their customers.

"M2M technology offers huge benefits to businesses in terms of automation and smarter ways of working, which can ultimately save them valuable time and money."

Mandy Fazelynia, Zest4's Operations & Business Development Director, added: "We have made great progress over the last year in adding M2M to our product portfolio.

"The appointment of Anton reinforces our commitment to M2M and the channel and will enable us to further develop our in-house knowledge and expertise."

European cyber security and managed security service provider SecureLink has gained a UK foothold with the acquisition of Nebulas.

Nebulas MD Nick Garlick joins the group management and reports to Marco Barkmeijer, CEO of the SecureLink Group.

"We share the same philosophy, have the same can-do mentality for our customers and believe this expansion is in line with our strategy to expand across Europe," stated Barkmeijer.

Garlick added:"Our customers will benefit from greater security intelligence, managed services and expertise as we accelerate our growth and take the business to the next level."

Fluidata and Metronet (UK) have agreed terms on a partnership that will enable Fluidata to wholesale Metronet (UK)'s Wireless proposition on a layer-2 basis to other UK ISPs and its direct customers.

The joint venture puts Fluidata into the upper tier of Metronet (UK)'s partners and positions them as a significant conduit for distributing its services across the UK for the foreseeable future.

Metronet (UK)'s wholesale wireless platform provides partners with an alternative to fibre in the ground.

Fluidata Sales & Marketing Director Phillip Oliver said: "The ability to use a wireless delivery mechanism means that service providers using our platform can add fully resilient services to their portfolio, while being able to install ultra-fast services into locations within a month that may have had long and difficult civil work requirements with traditional fibre technologies."

Andy Tatlock, Head of Channel Sales at Metronet (UK), added: "Our wholesale wireless offering liberates our partners from the typical constraints, limitations and lethargic nature of traditional Ethernet carriers."

New Fibre to the Premises (FTTP) broadband technology was demonstrated by Openreach to Councillor Jonathan Glanz, Member for West End Ward and lead member for broadband and connectivity on Westminster City Council.

Councillor Glanz helped an Openreach engineer, John Hilliard, 'splice' fibre optic cable in Clifford Street, and discussed how the technology works and the opportunities it offers for Mayfair's economic future.

Councillor Glanz said: "I am delighted that this new way of bringing fibre to the premises is being piloted in the West End and hope that it can be extended throughout the central area of Westminster to allow residents and businesses cost-effective access to ultra-fast broadband which they have long craved."

Andrew Whale, Chief Engineer for Openreach, said: "It's great to see the latest Fibre to the Premises (FTTP) technology being deployed using the new methods we have developed.

"Using micro cables, which are small diameter cables designed to get through busy underground ducts, we are able to avoid costly and disruptive civil engineering work. This in turn makes deployment much quicker and enables FTTP to be available to more customers. It's the first time that we've used micro cables in the West End."

Dr Prabhjot Basra, BT's regional partnership director for London, said: "This is great news for Mayfair. It is the latest development in our continuing drive to make faster internet access as widely available as possible. The faster broadband speeds will make the local businesses even more competitive, helping to secure and grow local employment opportunities."

Councillor Philippa Roe, leader of Westminster City Council and chair of the West End Partnership, said: "Providing modern broadband for businesses and residents in the heart of London makes a major contribution to our city's economic success.

"The West End Partnership and Openreach have been working closely to rollout superfast fibre broadband in Westminster and it is clear that this relationship is already bearing fruit.

"This does not mean we are resting on our laurels. The council's ambition is to see every Westminster business and resident connected to superfast and reliable fibre broadband, and we remain committed to come up with and support new ideas and innovations that will help us achieve this goal."

Openreach recently announced it will make fibre available for a further 360,000 homes and businesses in London in the next two years.

Avaya's ambitions to digitally transform the SME and mid-market sectors have been advanced by the appointment of Ioan MacRae as Mid-market Director for Avaya International, focusing on Europe and the Africa, Middle East and Asia (AMEA) region.

MacRae joined Avaya in 2014 as Mid-market Director for Europe. He was previously General Manager at Westcon Group.

"Avaya is delivering tailored solutions that help mid-market organisations achieve their digital transformation goals at their own pace and path, in a model of their choosing," stated MacRae.

Fadi Moubarak, Channel Leader for Europe and AMEA, added: "The mid-market remains at the core of our strategy. Ioan will continue to help drive our go-to-market strategy and achieve equal and greater success in this new role covering a wider and more diverse region."