Three decades in business and stronger than ever, InTechnology's opportunistic outlook will ensure that it continues to feature as a lead player on the ICT stage for many years to come, according to Sales Director Natalie Duffield.
Last year InTechnology turned over an impressive £41.7 million with a staff headcount of 243 operating out of the firm's HQ in Harrogate and a next generation data centre facility in Reading. These days the company provides managed IT solutions to an 800-strong customer base of public and private sector clients across a range of industries including healthcare, insurance and retail. But all this is a long away from its roots as a small distribution business set up by Peter Wilkinson in 1983.
"This past year has reflected our culture of evolution, having been diligently working behind the scenes to develop our service," stated Duffield, who aims to increase the proportion of channel related business from 20 per cent to 50 per cent. "We have added more resources for our partners to enable this growth strategy. And integrating our business processes with those of our partners has proved to be effective so we will continue to do this across the coming year. To date, our most successful and thriving partner relationships have been with IT support and service organisations, systems integrators and ISVs.
"The integration of business processes with those of our partners, co-managing marketing and support, will help us build on the success of these existing relationships, with recent business enhancements attracting a wider partner base. These include a gold status partnership with Virgin which has positively enhanced the resilience of our core LANnet network, with customers benefiting from enhanced business continuity. We've also boosted our business mobile offering through partnerships."
A wider acceptance of the cloud has also had a telling influence on InTechnology's evolution. Other determining factors include a growing reliance on hosted solutions, a rise in the number of mobile workers, as well as the evolving capability of smart devices prompting the need for robust BYOD plans. The cloud's cost efficiency and budget predictability has also been a particularly strong influencing factor, swaying people towards cloud services as a cost saving operation in tough economic times.
"Our mission has always been to deliver enterprise grade cloud services and our proposition for partners is no exception," commented Duffield. "We hope to enable our partners to access truly next generation cloud services, allowing them to benefit from the cost efficiency, scalability and availability that hosted solutions afford. Our strategy is one of symbiosis, fusing our capability with that of our partners so that they can provide a full range of premises and cloud-based services, while also working with those partners who use our infrastructure to create their own propositions, such as SaaS."
Other highlights include wining places on the latest iteration of the G-Cloud and Janet's new Telephony Purchasing Service, allowing the company to reach a wider customer base. InTechnology has also been busy building strengths within industry verticals including education, legal and healthcare alongside sister company Inhealthcare and InTechnology's N3 services. "A number of recent developments have also benefitted our operations," noted Duffield. "The government's Cloud First initiative and its commitment to increase expenditure with SMEs to 50 per cent has given us a greater public sector reach, with sector specific restructuring (such as the changes within the NHS) also offering a number of growth opportunities for cloud service providers."
InTechnology is also working on enhancing its business mobile offering, with the increasing mobility of the modern workforce driving businesses to deploy robust fleets of devices. "As with all of our solutions, we like to act as a single point of contact, which our recent partnership with device recycling expert TSR reflects," said Duffield. "As security is a big concern for our customers we offer Mobile Device Management, allowing customers to remotely disable and wipe lost devices. Additionally, our fixed mobile convergence offering is being continually strengthened in order to support such developments within the mobile market."
Duffield has also witnessed an increased requirement for Infrastructure as a Service, given its suitability for larger organisations requiring resilience and small start-ups needing future scalability, with the healthcare sector also driving industry growth. Recent government budget reforms are creating an opportunity for new technology and apps to be delivered remotely to reduce both costs and wasted resources.
To make the most of such opportunities Duffield always sticks to a policy of putting the customer first. "My biggest achievement is still working with long term customers," she commented. "I feel proud and privileged to have the same customer base that we've had since I started. I always enjoy the partnership side of our business and working closely with them to make sure we deliver what we say we will. It's always about putting the customer first. We define ourselves as much by how we do things as by what we do. We don't believe in quick fixes, nor do we believe in throwing technology at a problem until it resolves itself. Our culture of strong partnerships allows us to collaborate towards the understanding of issues, being able to truly deliver what we promise. Honesty, accountability and responsiveness are everything, and we never walk away from a problem."•