The momentum behind HighNet's cross-border expansion grows as it mounts a challenge south of the wall, according to Sales and Marketing Director Paul Gibbs.
Gibbs is seeking to extend the reach of HighNet far beyond Scottish territory. The company, which has restructured for growth, has a headcount of 44 based mostly at its Inverness office, and a customer base of 2,500 businesses ranging from start-ups to multi-national 350 site organisations. HighNet is aiming for a £3 million revenue boost this year with a target of £14 million, building on last year's £2 million rise to £11 million. Gibbs hopes the company will reach £20 million-plus within five years with new offices in the central belt of Scotland and potentially London.
"The opportunity to help HighNet drive for more growth was too good to turn down," said Gibbs who joined the company in May this year following a five year stint at Gamma as Head of Channel. "With approximately 100 partners in Scotland it's now time to take the brand and message south of the border to recruit more, strategically selected partners."
HighNet has a strong pedigree as an early adopter of new technology. The company has been providing hosted telephony for more than 10 years and blazed a trail with its creative bundled billing options. Its product and services proposition includes hosted telephony, business grade connectivity, mobility, WLR solutions, video conferencing and satellite broadband. "We have invested heavily in our data network to ensure that it is resilient and able to manage the complex demands of convergence and greater cloud adoption," said Gibbs.
The company clearly means to stir things up and has invested £1 million in its network capability and is in the process of rolling out a voice-centric next generation network with a 10Gb optical core through London, Manchester and Edinburgh, with new links to Aberdeen planned for later this year. HighNet is adhering to a dispersed data centre policy that takes the DC capability closer to customers and channel partners. "UCaaS and full cloud infrastructure are key in the evolution of our business," explained Gibbs. "HighNet is aiming to provide diversified rack space hosting all the way through to the end-point on the desk that can integrate fully with the customer's CRM."
Structural changes within the business include the move of David J Siegel to Managing Director and David Siegel to Chairman and the creation of an Operations Board to develop future leaders. Gibbs' remit is split into two areas: He wants to add more partners in Scotland while looking to recruit strategic partners 'south of the wall'. "All of our business comes through channel partners," he said. "I see little point in recruiting hundreds. I prefer the boutique approach to a few key partners. The main challenge is scalability and maintaining the customer experience."
According to Gibbs, HighNet's concept is to work closely with partners on an open book basis to help grow their sales. The company deploys trained sales people into partner businesses who essentially act as a white label sales engine. "We also bill, support and manage the partner's customers as a fully white label service," added Gibbs.
While sales specialists oversee partners' customer engagement strategies HighNet's Technology and Innovations Director David Alldritt keeps an eye on trends and weighs up the potential of future opportunities for the company and its partners. "We have a diverse mix of partners that operate in a broad spectrum of verticals so it's about which technologies will blend well into these and how we integrate the HighNet service wrap," explained Gibbs. "Service is the most important part of what we do so before anything is implemented into our portfolio it's all about skilling up our teams to make sure we can deliver our level of service."
Cloud is the most significant trend for HighNet, including hosted telephony. "The demand for high quality bandwidth continues to grow as organisations use more cloud-based applications, many of them mission-critical," added Gibbs. "Our ability to deliver resilient converged connectivity underpins the services that we and our partners provide. Growth in Ethernet and hosted voice has been high and we expect this trend to continue.
"We're also interested in fixed-mobile convergence and the increasing demand for mobility solutions. We're winning mobile business this way rather than fight over the lowest cost using a network that gives the best coverage. Our future growth will come from providing a high quality network and a product portfolio that enables our partners to present a compelling business case. To do this we need to be innovative while maintaining quality through everything we do."
Understanding the cloud and how it will impact on businesses differently is vital, emphasised Gibbs. He said: "Resellers must consider the mix of public and private cloud services, how they will be introduced, how they integrate with existing infrastructure and applications, the demands on bandwidth, managing mobility, knowing the benefits and risks of disaster recovery and business continuity planning, data sovereignty, security, LAN and WAN architecture - the list goes on. Successful resellers and SIs will understand the whole picture. If they don't have the full skill-set they will engage with specialists to plug the gaps. Success will depend on partnering well to deliver value to the end user through long-term relationships and demonstrable RoI."