Comms Dealer

Marketing firm Blabbermouth has rolled out a 'Transformation Initiative' designed to optimise the sales and marketing performance of businesses in the channel.

Blabbermouth's MD Elizabeth Sparrow (pictured) said the initiative responds to a general lack of integration between the sales and marketing functions of many businesses, stunting their ability to realise their full selling potential.

To put things right, Sparrow said Blabbermouth's business transformation process begins with a company health check, strategic planning, discussions about the true nature of a company, its identity, growth ambitions and long-term goals.

"We then put in place a joined up marketing campaign to deliver new opportunities," she explained.

"But this is only part of the solution. No department should operate in isolation, especially sales and marketing which go hand in hand."

Blabbermouth plans to position businesses for growth by preparing them for seamless customer acquisition, and the man at the centre of the company's new campaign is incoming consultant David Sparrow (pictured) who joins Blabbermouth from TalkTalk Business where he was Head of Corporate and Enterprise Sales and played a leading part in the creation of this high performing division.

Previous roles include notable stints at Freedom Communications, Virgin Media and T-Mobile.

His main purpose is to help sales and marketing leaders escape from the straitjacket of siloed working by creating more scope for professional chemistry between departments.

"Business assessments can often be complex and sensitive," he said. "But we provide a tactful and uncomplicated review of capabilities, processes, structures and strategies within the sales department before establishing best practices and integrating these with the marketing effort.

"Our aim is to assist a variety of businesses with their growth plans and help them unlock new market potential and large flagship opportunities.

"The best businesses are those rooted not in a fractured departmental mode of operation but in a unified framework based on joint targets, measurements and processes that maximise on the benefits of sales and marketing integration."

Blabbermouth's auditing and assessment know-how also enables it to report back on the complete customer journey.

In other company news, Blabbermouth has appointed Cath MacLeod and Leticia Fonseca as Marketing Account Managers and Rico Green as Marketing Administrator.

"These high calibre appointments demonstrate ongoing investment in our strengthening team," said Elizabeth Sparrow.

MacLeod brings significant B2B and B2C marketing experience while Fonseca joins from BT Wholesale where she was Marketing Manager.

In a response to the Queen's Speech ISPA Chair James Blessing said: "ISPA is pleased that broadband and technology had a prominent place in the 2016 Queen's Speech. The Digital Economy Bill contains a number of measures that will impact on ISPA members.

"ISPA is pleased that the Government has put the digital economy front and centre of its upcoming legislative programme.

"The Internet industry has invested significantly in making the UK 'a world leader in digital provision and will continue to do so and so we support government action to remove barriers to rollout.

"We further support the principle of universal broadband, but there remain a number questions surrounding the USO that still need to be addressed, including funding and the impact on the market, so that the benefits of broadband can be felt as widely and effectively as possible.

"We await further information on consumer measures, including automatic compensation, including how this will fit with the existing consumer redress framework.

"Finally, ISPA notes the Government's plan to legislate on its manifesto commitment on age verification for sites offering adult content. ISPA responded to the consultation and will now work with Government and members on this challenging and technically complex area."

Microsoft is partnering with European software giant SAP on the use of SAP's popular Hana in-memory database.

It's often used for performance intensive analytics and transaction processing work, and competes with the in-memory features of Microsoft's SQL Server database on Azure's cloud infrastructure.

A single Hana instance on Azure will support up to 3TB of RAM, with 32TB supported over 16 instances.

SAP already supports Hana on Amazon Web Services, as well as through its own cloud platform.

The companies have partnered to integrate several SAP product lines - its Ariba procurement/B2B software, Concur travel/expense management software, SuccessFactors HR software, and Fieldglass people-management software - with Office 365.

And Microsoft's Intune mobile device management (MDM) software will be able to manage apps from third-party developers that rely on SAP's Hana Cloud Platform (this lets developers build cloud apps running on top of Hana).

Separately, SAP has updated Hana to include graph data processing and capture & replay support. The former helps companies better understand and visualise patterns involving people, places, and things, and the latter helps IT workers evaluate and assess the impact of changes made to Hana workloads.

Distributor Avnet has announced a new UK partner enablement programme as part of its converged infrastructure practice.

The practice supports channel partners delivering pre-architected IT infrastructure solutions and includes regular Avnet-hosted channel briefings and a centre of excellence, The Resource, located in Avnet's newly upgraded UK demonstration venue.

Miriam Murphy, Senior VP, Avnet Technology Solutions, North region, EMEA, said: "The IT landscape is changing rapidly with the continuous innovation of new technologies.

"We have designed our next channel briefing to bring clarity to converged infrastructure and to address how it is evolving and the value it can bring to our business partners and their customers.

"The event underlines Avnet's investment in this priority area and its support for partners. Our aim is to simplify the delivery of converged infrastructure solutions and to enable partners to take advantage of this growing market."

The next channel briefing is being held at the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), London, on Thursday 26th May 2016 and involves the following vendors: Cisco, Commvault, F5, HDS, HPE, IBM, NetApp, Nimble, Veeam and VMware.

The CBI has responded to new legislation announced in The Queen's Speech during the State Opening of Parliament.

Josh Hardie, CBI Deputy Director-General, said: "Given the focus on the European Union referendum in this political cycle, it's particularly encouraging to see the Government's clear commitment to locking in growth, creating jobs and boosting investment to create a more prosperous society.

"Prioritising the digital revolution, which is transforming the face of modern business, is a key step to propelling the UK's productivity. Ensuring that broadband reaches all corners of the country will breed a new generation of companies in an increasingly competitive environment.

"We are already working closely with the Government on ensuring higher education gives students the best opportunities and skills, and on the devolution of business rates to drive regional growth. Further action to improve offender rehabilitation is an area where business will look forward to working with the Government.

"Whatever the outcome of the EU referendum, it's vital the Government ploughs ahead with the rest of its programme. In the near future, business is looking forward to hearing more on several key projects, from a new runway in the South East to the National Innovation Plan."

F-Secure has launched a new intrusion detection and incident response managed service that combines human and machine intelligence with a promise to notify companies within just 30 minutes of a breach detection.

According to Gartner, the greatest area of unmet need is effective targeted attack and breach detection.

"Companies are finding that on their own they struggle with intrusion detection and incident response," said Pekka Usva, VP of Advanced Threat Protection at F-Secure.

"They need to find a staff of cyber security experts, build monitoring infrastructure and source good threat intelligence data.

'setting up a proper in-house system is difficult and expensive and takes years to do. That's why a managed service makes sense. It provides an immediate, tangible return on investment."

F-Secure's Rapid Detection Service leverages the strengths of both human and machine intelligence to provide an all-in-one intrusion detection and response service that's ready to go immediately.

The service consists of three main components: Endpoint and Network Decoy sensors that collect data about events and activities; F-Secure's threat intelligence and behavioural analytics, which analyses the data to identify anomalies; and the Rapid Detection Center, which is staffed 24/7 by a team of cyber security experts who identify and handle incidents.

When a breach is detected, an expert will contact the customer within just 30 minutes with incident response and to offer optional onsite investigative services if needed.

"The human component is an important factor," stated Erka Koivunen, Cyber Security Advisor at F-Secure. "Attackers are human, so to detect them you can't rely on machines alone. Our experts know how attackers think, the very tactics they use to hide their presence from standard means of detection. The human factor also eliminates false positives, which are an extreme waste of resources."

Logicalis has appointed Mark Best as UK Services Director.

He brings much experience to Logicalis' services team and the wider UK business, having built his expertise over many years at both Enterprise and Service Provider organisations, including Vodafone, Omnetica and Affiniti.

Joining from Bio, he has been working with Logicalis on an interim basis since January this year.
 
Best said: "I hope to draw on my experience further, supporting the company's transformation as we look to put services at the heart of making every customer a reference."

Distributor Exertis, the trading name of DCC Technology, suffered a near 30% drop in operating profit compared to the previous year, according to its 2016 financial year results ended March 31st.

UK losses accounted for most of the dip, as the company depended on strong PC, tablet and phone sales. But for the rest of the DCC businesses, overflowing with cash, the time is right to invest in systems and grow organically and through acquisition.

The balance sheet for the group is strong, giving the company the wherewithal to pick up other businesses across Europe. The cash for investment and acquisition is there: The year saw overall growth of 35.5% in Group operating profit to £300.5m, driven in particular by the performance of DCC Energy.

But DCC Technology (the Exertis business) saw sales fall to £35.1m from £49.3m, making for a 'very difficult year'. The UK business, which accounted for 72% of the revenue of the division, found it tough particularly in the first half of the year, with weaker than anticipated demand for tablet computing, smartphone and gaming products.

These factors contributed to a like-for-like sales decline of 7%. Although the business achieved growth in other areas such as audio visual and components, the change in product mix, together with the effects of negative operating leverage, contributed to a reduction in operating margin in the UK.

A new UK distribution centre will come on stream in the next year, adding capacity and efficiencies. This is what vendors are asking for, said Ennis, also noting that Exertis has been behind the market in its e-commerce. Investment is also needed in its facilities and capacity where it has been working at full stretch.

In response to the challenging trading conditions in the UK the business has reduced its cost base and is continuing to build its market position in new and developing product categories such as smart technology, audio visual, network security and virtual reality.

DCC Technology's business in Ireland achieved strong growth and benefited from improved demand across a number of product segments, reflecting good business development activity and the continued recovery of the Irish economy.

The Continental European business also achieved good growth, reflecting strong organic growth in the Nordics and Benelux, offsetting weaker demand in the French market.

The business also added, in the final quarter, the specialist CUC, which has performed 'in line with expectations'. The acquisition of CUC has added expertise in cabling and connector products and also significantly broadened the customer base of the Continental European business.

According to Niall Ennis, Managing Director of DCC Technology and Group Managing Director of Exertis, the strategy is not 'one size fits all', and he is looking at emerging areas such as smart-tech, AV and more B2B products, as well as implementing a new ERP system.

He aims at using the new systems and capacity to build supply chain services, offering rapid time to market and demand generation for vendors, coupled with flexibility and speed of reaction. By offering fulfilment and a service direct to customers, 'we aim to be an excellent partner for vendors', stated Ennis.

Comms-care has been snapped up by Ingram Micro boosting the distributor's service capabilities in the UK. Comms-care's services include pre-sales support, configuration, professional services, maintenance and managed services.

The company has 225 staff and currently serves approximately 850 channel partners and customers in the UK, holding accreditations with Cisco, Citrix, Microsoft, and VMware along with technical capabilities in Dell, HP, IBM, Juniper, NetApp and Lenovo.

Brent McCarty, Ingram Micro VP and Chief Country Executive for the UK, said: "The addition of Comms-care supports our strategy to expand our global capabilities and expertise in fast growing, high value markets.

"Comms-care has developed a well-respected services model that exclusively serves the channel."

Ben Davies, Comms-Care MD, added: "Ingram Micro provides us with the platform to achieve our objectives of growing our business and helping our partners achieve more.

"Ingram Micro's broad geographic reach and reputation with vendor and customer partners throughout the world will enable us to expand our coverage into new regions and broaden our offerings to channel partners."

It's not exactly big news to announce that the impending vote is having its impact on the UK job market, writes Clive Jefferys of recruiter JMA Network. With half of the population undecided as to how they will cast their vote on 23rd June, the doom-mongers on both sides are creating a climate of profound uncertainty.
 
That's not a good place to be if you are thinking of getting a new job.
 
Which such a weighty decision on the horizon, the prospect of giving up a safe, but imperfect, job does not necessarily feel like a good idea at the moment. You can hardly blame people for waiting until all the hoo-ha settles down.
 
However, there is another school of thought that can play to the advantage of today's job seeker. With less people applying for jobs, there is also a lot less competition for the best roles too. Certainly this gives financial advantage to anyone winning a job offer today, as salaries continue to rise.
 
So what can employers do to increase their chances of hiring?
 
The number one rule has always been to make it as easy as possible for candidates to come in and see you. Don't make them wait too long as 'time kills deals', so make yourself available to interview at 8am, 6pm and Saturdays too.

You still have the right to set high standards, but make every candidate feel valued in the process. This is the age of inclusion, social networking and a sense of entitlement. It may go against the grain, it may not be how it was when you fought for a career - but it is how it is.
 
And here's my final bit of advice, an absolute maxim at JMA Network.
 
Make sure you have fun!
 
Recruitment is all about finding people you like and helping them to take the next step on their career path. Whether you are job hunting or hiring, every new starter is another step forward!