Comms Dealer

Turning non-technical industries into digital players is the fine art of Fifteen Digital Managing Director Robert Adams, who, for example, is helping the crisping market to make a packet.

Adams first encountered the world of IT at the age of three when his father bought him a computer. Three years later Adams was a dab hand at programming and needless to say he was already on a career path, deepening his knowledge and experience at school, achieving a high level of expertise that was recognised when he came second in the National Computing Awards. Perhaps it was the number-crunching of computer programming that diverted Adams from his destiny into a surprising career choice. "After leaving school I became an accountant," he said. "But I always had a passion for technology and at the age of 21 went self-employed to start up an IT business called Anet with my brother Mark."

Fifteen Digital was incorporated in February 2006 following a link-up with 15 Digital Marketing owned by John Borthwick. "Myself and John met through a mutual client and the digital marketing and IT skills we shared was obvious," added Adams. "We decided to merge the two businesses into one with the Stoke-based company offering marketing and technology solutions."
The following year Fifteen Digital started to offer web development and James Tierney joined the firm as Developers Director. "Three years later we opened up a second office in Darlington to replicate the success we had in the west midlands," explained Adams.

A more significant development in April 2014 saw Fifteen Digital purchase B2B Telecoms business Sitelink Communications, with Ian Walker coming on board as Communications Director. "Acquiring a telecoms business allowed us to broaden our range of services as well as our portfolio of clients," commented Adams. "Moving into full specification business transformation services enabled Fifteen Digital to provide a whole solution, permitting businesses to work towards their goals while we support their development more efficiently."

Last year's revenues reached over £1 million and the company now employs 27 staff with plans to double the headcount by 2019. Target markets include franchisor clients, leisure and entertainment brands, retailers, manufacturing firms, construction companies, training and recruitment agencies, health and beauty services, plus many more, including crisp makers.

"The creation of our Agritech solution has been a great success," explained Adams. "It now supports 20 per cent of the UK's crisping markets. This particular project allowed us to bring technology to an industry that's not normally considered hi-tech. This shows the benefits that technology can bring to any business. One of our biggest opportunities is our specialism of developing provenance and trace solutions. In 2015 we won the Business Enabler Award at the Lloyds Bank National Business Awards. This was for our collaborative partnership with a large crisping potato provider which led us to create the LiveTrace system."

The LiveTrace system provides provenance and traceability over all produce to the full supply chain, ensuring food safety regulations and standards are met. "The system has revolutionised our client's business through efficiency and effectiveness," said Adams. "A challenge we face is encouraging low tech industries to adopt technology in their business areas. We have demonstrated the importance and benefits of applying smart technology to business activities.

"It's now a case of sharing these benefits and encouraging more companies to get on board and transform their business for the better. We have found a niche for supporting companies that aren't technical by helping them to become more technologically advanced. A challenge that Team Fifteen finds inspiring and exciting."

Other challenges include developing and growing the Fifteen Digital team. "Finding new suitable candidates can be problematic, as well as creating training programmes around new technologies for the team to adopt," noted Adams. "The technology market is strong and thriving with new agencies and businesses being established every day. Ensuring that we stand out in a prosperous and growing market is vital."

Two months ago Fifteen Digital kicked off its tenth anniversary celebrations with various activities taking place over the year including a £10,000 fundraiser challenge for local Stoke charity The Donna Louise Children's Hospice. Adams commented: "The past ten years have been exciting for Fifteen Digital, with Team Fifteen doubling in size, regional and national award wins and a growing portfolio of clients and projects."•

By Elvire Gosnold, Director, Blabbermouth Marketing: The continued popularity of multichannel marketing means that strong and consistent brand identity is more important than ever.

Multichannel marketing is the communication with customers and prospects using a combination of indirect and direct communication channels such as websites, direct mail, email, mobile etc. A multichannel approach is a fantastic way to engage with your target audience. However, ensuring the key messages and corporate 'look and feel' are the same across all marketing channels is harder to execute if not planned correctly.

Consistency can be easily lost when several companies and agencies are working on the same brand. For example, there may be an in-house marketer for collateral, an e-marketing agency for e-shots and web designers for web updates. When so many different parties are working together, brand subtleties can get inadvertently missed.

Detailed brand guidelines are an obvious starting point to ensure there are clear rules for all parties to adhere to. Viewing your marketing activity as an integrated campaign rather than individual marketing projects is another way of flagging any inconsistencies at an early stage.

Sending out differing messages to your target market will lead to confusion. But ensuring there is straightforward consistency across all your marketing is simpler than you think. Easy checks such as making sure your business card has the same font and colours as your product proposal document makes a difference to how prospects and customers view your company.

Branded product sheets explaining your services in an easy to understand manner is also advisable, and don't forget to clearly state why your company is better than your competitor.

Samsung has crowned Bournemouth-based 4Com as its leading reseller of Samsung Unified Communications solutions worldwide.

4Com combines Samsung's business phone range and networking products with its own software to create a solution that dovetails with the requirements of customers.

Peter Law, Samsung's Channel and Distribution Manager, stated: "4Com's rapid growth has helped boost our own market share in the UK."

4Com Chairman and MD Daron Hutt stated: "This is a great example of two companies succeeding by making the customer experience central to what they do and how they do it.

"We have some exciting plans for the future, but we're looking forward to our continuing relationship with Samsung which is now an invaluable part of our product mix."

Pictured: Peter Law (left) and Daron Hutt

Riverbed is strengthening its partner strategy with updates to existing channel programmes and the introduction of new initiatives such as a track for managed services and a Consulting Partner scheme.

The company is also investing in its value added distributor programme.

"In this transformational time in the IT industry, Riverbed is doubling down on its investment in our partners," said Karl Meulema, Senior VP for Global Channels.

"We are making resource, programme and IP investments designed to engage with our partners at the customer level, build differentiated embedded solutions and services, create a partner services economy, and develop revenue and services opportunities for our partners in the channel-led space.

"Technology including mobile, SaaS and cloud are disrupting business models, providing new ways to engage and connect with customers as well as entirely new routes to market," Meulema added.

"These updates to our partner programme are designed to help our partners make this market shift."

The European Software & Solution Summit 2016 (April 14th London) will reveal insights into the future role of global tracking in IoT markets.

Technavio expects the global tracking-as-a-service market to exceed $1bn by 2020.

Amit Sharma, lead analyst at Technavio for cloud computing research, said: "Economic and cultural globalisation has resulted in the rapid movement of ideas, commerce, people, and assets worldwide. As a result, businesses and people require real-time tracking technology to monitor the movement of people, property, and assets in order to conduct their business safely and efficiently."

The top four emerging trends influencing the global tracking-as-a-service market according to Technavio's ICT research analysts include opportunities for M2M platform providers. M2M platforms offer technologies to connect hardware, networks, software, and services to bring end-to-end tracking and monitoring solutions. Pre-built applications help create solutions tailored to meet the unique needs of a target user group.

The core components of M2M platform include the hardware that is used to capture the location of people and other objects under remote tracking and electronic monitoring. Devices use GPS, A-GPS, and AFLT location technologies to pinpoint location. M2M communications offer added values to domains, such as automotive, health, and consumer electronics, through remote monitoring and control using automated data exchange in real-time. It enables great revenue opportunities for tracking service providers.

M2M companies, such as Maven Systems, SensorLogic, and onAsset intelligence, offer tracking services with IoT. Such services will lead to opportunities for M2M platform providers.

Service providers in the market offer proprietary analytics services for both location-based information and electronic monitoring devices. This involves extraction of information from mobile phones or any other devices that can track location.

Analytics uses location data and past records to forecast early warnings of crimes in the offender monitoring market. Large-scale data analytics is used to pre-empt offenders about to commit a crime. This allows authorities to intervene and contain a potential situation. All these factors have boosted the growth of tracking device companies.

There will be a big shift from CAPEX to OPEX business models, it says. Asset tracking and vehicle tracking solutions are competitive areas as there are many service providers offering similar services. Therefore, to differentiate themselves, tracking service providers are offering services bundled with monitoring, tracking, and analytics services (based on PaaS). This also allows end-users to quickly build customized applications that track and monitor mobile workers and commercial assets.

Customers prefer monitoring services through PaaS owing to cost factors. The high costs involved in the long term have forced customers to use low-cost models or to shift from CAPEX to OPEX for tracking and monitoring services offered through PaaS.

Under the umbrella theme of "Creating Solutions for the Digital Age," the European Software & Solution Summit 2016 will shed light on these trends and examine the impact they will have on European software and solution development and delivery. Conference and breakout sessions will explore trends in Cloud hosting and service delivery, evolving business models, the Internet of Things (IoT), M2M and the impact that the introduction of high speed fixed and mobile communications is having on them and the speed with which they can be leveraged to transform business operations.

Nimans is raising the profile of Asterisk, an open source framework for building communications applications.

It forms the basis of IP PBX systems and VoIP gateways such as Nimans' iQ PBX platform, conference servers and other custom solutions.

"This technology is perfect for resellers who want an all-in-one solution as well as those who prefer to 'get under the bonnet' and create a more bespoke comms platform," said Nimans' iQ Business Manager Judith Addison.

"Today, there are more than one million Asterisk-based communications systems in use
in more than 170 countries. Often deployed by system integrators and developers, Asterisk can become the basis for a complete business phone system, or be used to enhance or extend an existing system, or bridge a gap between systems."

ScanSource Communications Europe is set to launch a new cloud solutions programme under its existing hosted brand VaaS-t following a link-up with data centre and connectivity provider Virtual1.

The hosted solution will be based on Unify's OpenScape Business system.

The move is a response to growing demand for cloud solutions and hosted UC and introduces subscription-based, cost per-user per-month license models with cloud-based, on-premises or hybrid deployment options.

"Many of our resellers were looking at alternative solutions to our on-premises systems as a number of their end user customers have now adopted a cloud-based strategy," stated Paul Emery, Director of Technical and Services, ScanSource Communications Europe.

"We have responded to this market change by establishing our cloud solutions for voice as well as video." 

The UK is the first market to launch new cloud solutions under VaaS-t.  

Analytical data management platform Zizo has become part of Dell's Service Provider Partner programme.

Zizo has signed up to Dell's Service Provider Partner programme in an greement that sees Zizo's analytical data management solution proposed alongside data centre hardware and support provided by Dell.

The company delivers an end-to-end Analytics-as-a-Service platform based on its own patented technology, with customers including the BBC, Marks and Spencer and the Royal Mail in the UK.

Managed service provider 365itms has snapped up IT services, support and training business Deverill.

The deal broadens 365itms's range of technology and services enabling it to provide end?to?end solutions.

The combined organisation will double the size of the company to a £20m turnover business with offices in Poole and Reading.

The enlarged organisation holds a number of vendor accreditations including VMWare, HP, Cisco, Microsoft, Dell, Citrix and a range of other household name manufacturers.

365itms MD Steve Ellis said: "Deverill's infrastructure and managed service capabilities are broad and deep. Our partners and customers will have access to an enhanced range of services and a larger skilled team."

Jay Bradley, Head of Vendor Engagement at Deverill, added: "Two successful companies joining forces in non?competing sectors gives us a great opportunity to build the business."

Nimans opened the door to 18 kids from Bury and Whitefield Jewish Primary School who were given a guided tour of the company's Manchester HQ.

They also took part in an interactive presentation and learned how a phone system and two-way radios operate, and they got the inside view on video conferencing.

The 10-11-years-old also learned about aspects of Nimans operations including sales, logistics, marketing, purchasing and IT.

Nimans' Sue Goldfine commented: "The children were enthusiastic and keen to discover what makes a big company tick. They asked interesting questions and left with big smiles on their faces having gained valuable experience about working life."

Deputy Head Melanie Kobak added: "The children had a fabulous time. Nimans taught them about telecommunications and various job roles, inspiring some of our pupils to become sales people, warehouse workers and many other jobs."