Comms Dealer

Azzurri has launched a Mobile Business Unit headed by newly appointed Richard White, a former Telefonica and BT executive.

The Unit brings a dedicated app development capability at Azzurri, providing Azzurri's customers with an integrated mobile offering from the devices through to the network, the platform and the applications.

"Mobile productivity is no longer about letting employees check their work email or send text messages while on the move, it is now fundamentally about enabling the always-on workforce."

"Most businesses understand that there are opportunities to enhance their customer interactions and workforce productivity through tablets and mobile applications, but they need help to adapt to this opportunity."

In the past White held senior roles at both BT and O2/Telefonica. For the last five years he was the head of Financial Markets and Enterprise Fixed Services at Telefonica, managing cross functional team relationships with some of Telefonica's largest enterprise clients spanning retail and investment banking, legal, insurance and business services verticals.

Most recently he held the role of head of sales for Telefonica's Government Smart Metering team where he led the successful bid for the Government Smart Metering project, resulting in a 15 year contract with a value of £1.5bn.

Alternative Networks has acquired Intercept IT in a £12.95m deal. Intercept recorded £9.8m of revenue for the year ended 31st May 2013 and adjusted EBITDA of £0.8m. A strong pipeline of business has been acquired while the level of contracted but unrecognised revenues exceeded £5m.

Intercept is a provider of hosted desktop solutions to the SME market, as well as desktop and server virtualisation services to enterprise business customers running on-premise IT infrastructure.
 
The acquisition enables Alternative to offer a complete cloud based-solutions to its SME customer base and the full outsourcing of customers' IT functions.

The move broadens Alternative's Managed Service offering to Enterprise customers to include its virtualised IT infrastructure.

The two founders of Intercept have resigned board positions. Gary Collins, who has technical responsibilities at Intercept, has confirmed that he will support the company as a consultant where required.

The customer bases of each of Intercept and Alternative are complementary with both businesses providing business-only services into similar verticals.

Intercept also has a low capital investment requirement, spending £0.2m in 2013. Alternative intends to migrate Intercept's IT infrastructure in due course to its own datacentres, and increase the capacity of the platform.  The acquisition is expected to result in some cost synergies.
 
In the financial year ended 31 May 2013 Intercept recorded revenue of £9.8m, a pre-tax loss of £0.3m and an EBITDA loss of £0.1m.

Edward Spurrier, Chief Executive of Alternative Networks, commented: "Our acquisition strategy remains to deliver earnings enhancing acquisitions that augment the products and services we deliver to our customers. With Intercept's twin offerings we will significantly broaden our range of IT services as well as acquire a well-established platform to deliver additional cloud services.
 
"Intercept has an exceptional pedigree in virtualising IT infrastructures, having virtualised over 5,000 servers and more than 2,000 different applications in 30 languages, realising millions of pounds worth of savings to their customers.
 
"In anticipation of a business sale, the founders developed a young and energetic management team who are well placed to take Intercept to the next level, supported by Alternative.
 
"The acquisition of Intercept will provide a further stimulus to organic growth across the Group as it presents good cross sell opportunities into our respective customer bases and is a good use of our cash resources."

Although machine-to-machine (M2M) technology is a bright spot in the rapidly maturing mobile industry, operators will not realise its full potential without strategic partnering, according to Ovum.

Forecasts from the global analyst firm show that over the next five years, M2M revenues will grow to reach $44.8bn, with more than a third coming from Asia-Pacific.

New forecasts from Ovum reveal that revenues will grow slightly more slowly than connections, reflecting the increasing competitiveness of the market and the extension of M2M into lower-value applications.

Total global M2M connections will more than treble from 106.4 million in 2012 to 360.9 million in 2018, at a CAGR of 22.6%.

There will be growth across all regions, but it will be fastest in Asia-Pacific and the Middle East and Africa. Revenues in Asia-Pacific will grow to almost $15bn, at a CAGR of 26.5%, between 2012 and 2018.

The most important industry verticals in 2018 will be healthcare, manufacturing, and energy & utilities, which are forecast to generate revenues of $7.9bn, $7.1bn, and $7.0bn respectively by 2018.

Ovum's M2M forecasts present a more modest and sober picture than some of those produced by other industry pundits. "This is not a forecast of the 'Internet of Things' but rather of managed and paid-for connections over public mobile networks, "says Jeremy Green, Principal Analyst, Industry Communications and Broadband at Ovum.

"For telcos there are really two opportunities: to stand back and provide the connectivity for M2M services, or to roll up their sleeves and get involved with the end-to-end provision of solutions."

The first is a smaller opportunity but is much more straightforward for telcos to address, according to Ovum. The second is much bigger, but involves new skills and competencies, and defining new kinds of relationship with systems integrators (SIs) and software development.

"If a carrier wants to play an essential part as a connectivity provider and focus just on that role, it must have healthy and robust relationships with device manufacturers and SIs," explains Green.

"If a carrier sees itself as an end-to-end provider, its partnering relations are even more critical, because it is unlikely to be heard at the CxO level within an enterprise client unless it is working with a global SI."

The Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) has elected Pennine Telecom's MD Andrew Roberts as a Fellow of the organisation.

The fellowship is awarded only to IET members who have 'sustained high levels of achievement' and is the highest grade of membership bestowed by the professional body.

The IET has members in 127 countries and advises Parliament, Government, the EU and other agencies.

"It is a great honour to be elected as a Fellow of such a prestigious organisation, one so resolutely committed to promoting scientific and engineering endeavour and excellence," said Roberts.

"The Institution leads on professional development and standards across technical and engineering sectors, sets regulations, publishes an enormous amount of research and its expertise is frequently sought at the highest levels of government."

ANT Telecom has opened its second UK office based in Glasgow and has appointed two further members of staff.

Sheila Gilbertson has been appointed as area sales manager and Craig Murney as field project engineer for Scotland.

ANT Telecom has worked with customers in the utilities, manufacturing and distillery industries in Scotland for over 15 years, including a major UK Energy provider and a premium drinks business.

According to Klaus Allion, Managing Director, it is successes such as these, plus ANT Telecom's specific proposition for lone workers in remote geographies, that has driven the expansion.

"Lone working has a particular resonance in manufacturing arenas in Scotland such as energy, oil and gas, chemical plants and distilleries," he said.

"In these disparate environments, employees are often required to work on-site at the isolated extremes of production plants, or off-site in the seclusion of the field.

"Yet whilst physically they may appear cut off from the rest of the world, companies cannot afford for lone workers to be disconnected from the rest of the workforce, they must be available any time, any place anywhere and of course be protected at all times.

"Our lone worker solution has proven valuable to our existing clients in Scotland; we recognised its particular appeal to similar organisations and wanted to invest in the region accordingly."

Sheila Gilbertson joins ANT Telecom with over 25 years' experience working within telecommunications companies and has expert knowledge of PABX, Network Services, VOIP, Mobile and Data Products.

She will be account managing ANT Telecom's existing clients based in Scotland to maximise ANT's unique portfolio throughout the region.

She said, "I am delighted to join the ANT Telecom team to build upon the excellent work that they have already done in the region and to maintain the strong relationships they have built with their existing clients."

Craig Murney comes to ANT Telecom with 13 years experience specialising in bespoke radio telecommunications and IT systems for the British Army where he provided a high level of day to day operational support.

He will be responsible for the installation, maintenance and repair of ANT's telecommunications systems across over 40 sites covering the Scottish mainland and the Inner Hebrides islands, as well as the Republic of Ireland.

Allion added: "I am sure that their extensive experience will reinforce our existing relationships in Scotland and help us to build further long lasting ones.

"The corporate expansion plans for ANT Telecom include increasing the business by 30% over the next three years, with 10% growth year on year till the end of 2015. Our expansion in Scotland will be key to achieving this objective."

NetPay Group has extended its zone of influence into Ireland where it will provide businesses with merchant payment services through its partner channel.

In April 2013 the Irish Government introduced The National Payments Plan (NPP), a three year initiative that aims to make annual savings of up to one billion euro by doubling the number of electronic payments by 2015.

According to NetPay Group MD Carl Churchill the company is well placed to drive the shift away from cash and cheque payments.

"To help Ireland achieve its NPP goal of doubling electronic payments by 2015 we are offering a competitive service through our partners in a market where merchants are commonly seriously overcharged by the incumbent providers," he stated.

Retailers in Ireland are increasingly refusing to take credit or debit card payments under 10 euro due to the rising costs of card payment fees, however embracing initiatives such as 'low value payments' isn't an issue with NetPay which provides discounts to merchants on card processing fees, explained Churchill.

"The card payment industry in Ireland has traditionally been dominated by High Street banks and larger independent payment service providers," he added.

"NetPay is now offering merchants a competitive alternative, with reporting and transaction analytics that can enable them to improve on their consumer experience as well as reducing their costs."

NetPay is gearing up for a partner recruitment campaign that he hopes will 'kick-start' Irish merchant opportunities.

Nimans has reported double digit sales growth in 2013 across Unify, Samsung, Panasonic, NEC, Aastra and its own exclusive iQ PBX solution.

"Increase was across all the brands as a feel good factor returned to the market," explained Head of Category Sales, Paul Burn. "In recent years it's been pretty flat but 2013 was a year to remember as upward momentum made a welcome return.

"Some brands performed better than others but overall there was a general rise in sales across our whole portfolio which is encouraging. A general upturn in confidence in the market coupled with an improving economic outlook all helped."

Nimans is anticipating further strong growth this year, buoyed by its status as sole UK distributor for Unify (formerly Siemens Enterprise Communications).

"The death of the PBX has been grossly exaggerated," Burn added. "All the market indications point towards further growth this year and Nimans is ideally placed to help our customers capture a bigger share of sales. We've got dedicated business units and all the services resellers need to grow and prosper - from technical support to leasing and network connectivity.

"We will continue to expand our Unify team and are making further investments throughout the business that will further enhance the levels of support we provide to customers."

Here, Andrew McMillan, Principal at Engaging Service, addresses the issue of customer complaints and how through an organisation's culture and attitude towards customer experience they can be seen as a blessing or a curse.

We've all heard that a happy customer will tell x number of people whereas an unhappy customer will tell many more about their experience. After all, everyone loves a good story. Complaints are dangerous and can severely damage your reputation. However, it is also true that a serious complaint, resolved quickly and generously, is far more likely to create a strong advocate for your business than a customer who was completely satisfied with their experience.

That may seem counter intuitive, but if you stop to think about this, it makes perfect sense. The satisfied customer never expected anything else except to be satisfied, while the complaining customer gives you the opportunity to demonstrate how agile, caring and responsive you can be in a crisis. This has enormous capacity to build confidence and trust in the relationship. I used to see this time after time when I was responsible for the escalated complaints at John Lewis, with many of the most complimentary customer letters and emails resulting from a complaint being well handled. I'm not suggesting that you should 'engineer' a percentage of failure in your business to improve its reputation, just that complaints can be embraced rather than feared.

So, how do you create that mind-set? Those of you who have been reading the previous pieces may recall that my approach to shaping business culture starts with a definition of the behaviour that culture is to be based on. One of my favourite examples is from Ritz Carlton hotels in the US who define their customer experience as Welcome, Wanted, Remembered, Cared for. You should treat complaints in exactly the same way and, by doing that, the approach I have described over the past months can also be used to shape your complaint management.

The first step is to ensure you are very clear about your product or service and what it will and will not do. It sounds obvious, but prevention is better than cure. So many complaints I see within the various sectors I work with are as a consequence of poor customer communication at the time of the sale, sometimes due to over selling. Secondly, apologise, whether you think you are at fault or not. Businesses often seem to see an apology as an admission of failure. It isn't, you are simply apologising because the customer has become dissatisfied. An apology as a first response, irrespective of how justified you think the complaint is, can do so much to diffuse the situation at the outset.

Now you should go on to empathise with the customer. How would you feel if this happened to you? This can be an understandable challenge for frontline employees who are dealing with repeated complaint customers. However, remember this might be the first time the customer has encountered this problem and they will perceive the businesses' response on their own terms. Consequently, what really matters in this situation is what the customer, not you, considers to be fair.

That may sound harsh, but if you really want to build reputation through positive complaint handling the customer's perception of your response is more important than the reality of whether you presented a fair solution or not. And, of course, they hold all the cards as they have the option to never trade with you again and tell all their friends to avoid your business too.

Consequently, seeing this as a battle is dangerous as you will never ever win, especially with the prevalence of social media. Try googling 'complaint' and your brand and you may get a nasty surprise. If you are managing digital media well the first result you will see is the 'contact us' link to your website. If you want a couple of early and very powerful examples of the influence of social media in complaint management search for 'United Airlines broken guitar' on youtube or 'Wendi Aarons letter' on Google, both of which went viral and caused the brands much heartache.

Finally, always thank the customer for complaining. It really is free consultancy, so do something with it. I speak to so many organisations about complaints and hear people saying 'that always happens with x product or service'. There is nothing more powerful or constructive than resolving a complaint well and then telling the customer what you have immediately done to prevent recurrence. That's great for the customer relationship, great for the businesses' reputation and also great for your future profits.•

About Andrew
Organisations that spurn their most precious responsibility to create a remarkable customer experience will lose out to rivals who react proportionately to the high value they place on winning and keeping their customers. That's according to Andrew McMillan, Principal at Engaging Service, who specialises in customer experience and employee engagement. He is best known as the architect of John Lewis' customer-driven culture and now operates as a leading business consultant. In 2012 he inspired Comms Vision delegates to create massive competitive advantage by better managing staff, customer experiences and corporate branding.

Martin Flick, CEO of Olive Communications, took up the post early this year and is already on target to double revenues to £25 million by 2014. Here's his story...

Olive represented an exciting opportunity for Flick to put to use all of the skills, experience and learnings gained in his career. In 1998 he co-formed a business that was acquired by Azzurri in 2004, and although he has no regrets about the sale Flick always wondered where he could have taken the business. "Olive has given me a chance to answer that question," stated Flick.

Post-acquisition Flick spent eight years working at Azzurri with what he describes as some of the most successful, ambitious and creative people in the industry, and he gained invaluable experience as the company went through a number of acquisitions, integrations and proposition developments. "I thoroughly enjoyed most of my time there, through the glory years and even during some of the tough times, however the opportunity to take all that I had learnt and apply that to developing the Olive business strategy at what is a very exciting time in its evolution was too good to resist," added Flick.

"What Mark Geraghty and the Olive team achieved in the preceding years was phenomenal and having worked with Mark early in his career and having remained firm friends throughout meant that I had seen Olive develop, grow and flourish with interest. The opportunity Mark gave me to join as an equity partner and be instrumental in driving the next stage of its development is exciting and a perfect fit in terms of partnership."

According to Flick, Olive has an opportunity to really stand out in the market. "Our relationship with Vodafone is stronger than ever and our ability to develop the portfolio as it integrates the recent acquisition of C&W is compelling," he added. "We have the financial stability, multi-product expertise and blank canvas from an infrastructure perspective to ride the wave of the comms revolution that is taking place."

On taking the role of CEO in February, Flick's first job was to create a plan to maximise the potential of all of the acquisitions Olive had made in the previous year. 2012 was a busy year for the Olive team which saw seven businesses acquired, due to opportunistic timing in the run up to true revenue share. "As a fresh pair of eyes I was able to help the team take a step back and consider all of the synergies available both from a revenue and capability perspective and to maximise the benefit through integration," noted Flick. "We committed that we wouldn't make any more acquisitions until we had fully integrated those we had acquired.

"Two things surprised me: Firstly, the acceptance and support I received from the Olive team was phenomenal. Within weeks they had all given me their full commitment and our long term-plan was created. This led on to the second surprise - the speed of execution of phase one. In only three months we had met all of our primary objectives had ticked all of the boxes on integrating seven customer bases and were then able to successfully make two more acquisitions, Direct Communications and Wish Holdings."

Discussions between Geraghty and Flick before he joined the company saw the pair agree to invest heavily in the business in order to take advantage of the market opportunity. "It's a very exciting time for the industry and for customers alike and we agreed we would invest to shape and develop Olive to take full advantage of market demand," added Flick.

"As a result, we have invested in people and have recruited some of the best in the industry to come and join us. We have invested in systems, processes and infrastructure to support converged product offerings, and have the ability to deliver multi product managed services to customers of varying sizes consistently across a single CRM platform. Our third investment area is in products and services that provide differentiation for us and our strategic partners. To supplement organic investment we have just made a significant acquisition in Wish which has given us scale, additional expertise and strengthened management capabilities."

Olive Communications has witnessed revenue and staff numbers grow steadily to almost £11 million turnover in its last financial year. "I set a budget this year of £13 million which we will exceed organically by about £2 million," commented Flick. "As the acquisitions took place mid-year the full effect on revenue won't be clear until the integration is fully completed and we have a full 12 months combined trading at the end of 2014, but I expect revenue to exceed £25 million."

His three year business plan is to maximise the value of the ten acquisitions made in the last two years and grow organically and aggressively. "Within our three year plan we will achieve significant growth and expect to challenge the market with disruptive and intelligent solutions delivered with the support of our strategic partnerships," added Flick.

"Our culture is to build an obsession about customer service into the DNA of the business and with this personal touch enable people to work effectively and efficiently anywhere in the world. Customer service is at the core of our offering. The team likes to compare itself to a concierge style service for its connected customers. Our culture is dynamic and the team also socialise outside of the office. We are lucky to have a family-style culture at Olive, with everyone having a sense of belonging to something special."

As is the case for all growing families, space becomes an issue and Flick rates accommodation as a current pain point. "Having moved into a new HQ in February we have outgrown it already and will be expanding to a larger building early next year," he explained. "Moving twice in 12 months for any business would be painful but its testament to the hard work from our team that we will do so without fuss or disruption. We couldn't predict the growth we've seen in the past year, but have planned for the future to accommodate all of our possible requirements."

His biggest industry bugbear is that nearly every player in the market talks in their marketing collateral about delivering managed services, value propositions, differentiation and world class support in an attempt to de-commoditise their offerings, but they do not live by those principles by training and developing their sales teams to sell the added value and be bold enough to charge a premium for adding true differentiation.

"As a result, nearly all bids that we see end up being commoditised and driven to the lowest price point by customers," added Flick. "While it is important to be competitive and deliver value for money, if organisations can't be brave enough to justify their managed service costs customers will ultimately suffer in the long run as value, service and creativity will be degraded. You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, and I should know as we keep rare breed pigs on our Surrey smallholding!"•

Vapour Media is pumping high octane gas into the tanks of resellers on the drive towards cloud territory, according to Tim Mercer, co-founder and Director.

Mercer has no role models to speak of, his heroes operate anonymously in the Forces. And during a six year stint as a soldier himself Mercer served in the first Gulf War and toured Northern Ireland. He witnessed first-hand how the resolve of highly trained people working together can really make a difference to the world. "I take my hat off to those guys every day," he said. "They keep us safe in our beds."

It is with a similar spirit of camaraderie and mutual trust that Mercer advances his channel-centric strategy, and his ethos is paying off handsomely. "We work with resellers to build relationships that last, keeping them up to date with new and emerging technologies such as the cloud and ensuring they are fully trained on each of our products" commented Mercer.

New partners of all shapes and sizes, from the traditional telecom sector and the IT channel, are joining Vapour by the week. "We are signing up partners from a number of sectors and helping them sell data networks and cloud voice services with SaaS," added Mercer. "Our focus is to make Vapour a major player in the channel for data cloud voice and SaaS services. Our priorities revolve around customer service. We aim to deliver a quality customer experience with great pricing, focusing on customer retention and satisfaction. If we do our job right partners will want to work with us and our base will grow."

Vapour Media was founded in 2013 by Mercer, Dominic Waterson and Jason Sharp, who each saw a big opportunity in improving the way networks and voice services are provided and delivered. Backed by private equity, Vapour Media has an experienced team with the ambition and ability to grow into a significant supplier to the channel. The company is expanding quickly and expects to reach 20 staff during the next financial year.

Having left the Forces and not afraid to take calculated risks Mercer reached a cross roads in his career and naturally sought an 'exciting' opportunity. From a financial and technology prospective telecoms fitted the bill. He joined Telewest in 1999 as a Regional Sales Executive, surviving the change to NTL Telewest and again holding his own when Virgin Media came knocking. "After four years as a sales executive I was promoted to Regional Sales Manager running the Yorkshire sales team for Virgin," stated Mercer. "I did this for over eight years selling every aspect of data connectivity to SMEs and corporates, winning lucrative accounts and driving up revenues in excess of £20 million per year."

In 2010 Mercer reached another turning point in his career and decided to change direction, partly encouraged by fellow director and best friend Dom Waterson, a serial entrepreneur who has been in telecoms since 1992 and owns another successful telecoms business. "Through my own desire to start a company and Dom's constant drive to move into the data arena we decided to write a plan," explained Mercer. "We required funding to build our own MPLS network and luckily the funders where interested from day one but said we would need an experienced Financial Director. We met with Jason Sharp who was also looking for the same type of opportunity. Jason was group FD at Daisy during its fantastic buying spree and he brings a wealth of experience that keeps our feet on the ground."

The Vapour team have a wide variety and depth of experience that ranges from starting up businesses from scratch to working in some of the largest Plcs in the UK. "This gives us a great perspective on building a new business and what it takes to run and grow a larger organisation," commented Mercer. "We know what great looks like and what poor feels like. We focus on what we are good at, ensure we support our partners and recognise each of them and their customers as individuals."

Mercer describes Vapour's company culture as a 'hologram' of what is happening in the wider business environment and in peoples' personal lives. "This outlook applies to the products we sell, our work ethics and the flexibility in how we interact with our staff and partners," he commented. "The Vapour team have sold these type of products before, delivered them and felt the ups and downs of a client's pain, hence the reason for our focus on improving the way networks and voice services are provided and delivered to customers."

Vapour Media has grown quickly over the last year having established competitive commercials with the Tier 1 suppliers for a set of robust access, data, voice and SaaS products. "Our short-term aims are to sign up a number of key partners from the channel and support them in delivering these products to their customers," added Mercer. "We are in the process of developing a portal which will allow our partners to log in and receive instant pricing, sales and marketing support and training to enable them to confidentially sell out products. Due to steady growth in our reseller base we are now able to expand our team bringing in some great assets that will help make 2014 a successful year for Vapour."

Mercer believes that the evolving comms sector will see greater adoption of cloud and hosted telephony, and there will be more partnerships with suppliers that can manage the network access to connect customer sites while also being able to manage the voice element across the network from one network operations centre. "Too many resellers still view cloud as a potential opportunity," added Mercer. "We see it as a big risk for many of them if they don't get on board and adopt what is becoming the dominant technology. They will be left behind. Their competitors are adopting cloud and their customers are being led by consumer advances in cloud products and services such as Dropbox and Skype. They expect similar technologies at work."

To capitalise on these trends Vapour Media built its own partner agnostic data network to deliver services from the four main Tier 1 carriers, interconnecting into two data centres. "This gives us resilience and flexibility as well as more choice for the reseller and customer base," said Mercer. "Our strategy to deliver next generation voice services saw us become an early adopter of Content Guru's cloud platform. Our sales focus is purely channel driven providing the reseller with the confidence to work with us to identify opportunities within their customer base. We also white label our marketing materials and support both them and the end client through every step of the process, from ordering to delivery and ongoing support." •