Comms Dealer

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."

Intuitive Systems and Networks (ISN) Director Simon Rance took the only sensible decision when the odds seemed stacked against him.

When Rance decided to set up ISN in 2008 the onset of recession yawned before him. But despite the unfavourable odds and an inner voice urging him to shelve the idea, he remained loyal to his tactically sound business plan and weathered the storm. This year ISN relocated to new offices in Royal Wootton Bassett to house its growing team. The company is on target to achieve £3.2 million and recurring revenues are also on the up, derived from managed help desk and NOC services. ISN has been awarded a Gateway for Growth grant by Wiltshire Council to develop its monitoring platforms and the firm is involved in Network Service Frameworks via Crown Commercial Services.

"Optimising the opportunity is our next challenge," said Rance. "ISN has many public sector clients but having a Government approved route to market is something we can develop and shows how an organisation like us can compete with the usual suspects who are awarded these opportunities. We'll struggle on some and we'll lose a few bids, but we're different and in the current climate many organisations want to work with a company like ISN."

Rance describes ISN as a 'fairly typical SME integrator' but less typical are the large and complex technical solutions it delivers to customers, despite the apparent odds against it in terms of company scale. "We're overturning industry expectations by having a small, flexible and cost-effective team able to hold our own against the bigger IT providers," said Rance. "We're relaxed and we're friendly, we're approachable and cost-effective. We're good at what we do."

ISN's approach to support and service has remained the same since its inception in 2008 when Rance and his colleagues operated out of bedrooms. They were approached by large corporate clients that had got to know them through previous engagements when they worked for a top end IT firm. "As a home run business we were servicing FTSE100 customers, NHS trusts and emergency services clients on critical infrastructure projects," said Rance. "Our background, proven track record and the excellent jobs our technical guys had done in the past had followed us. We saw a method of operating with bigger organisations in a more streamlined, simplified and agile way."

Rance's work experience began when he worked with his father who was Technical Director at a large ISP. This was a formative period and Rance went on to work for a Reading-based ISP where he developed its partner programme. This soon became the most successful part of the business which grew from a home user ISP into a business focused service provider. "After a few years the ISP was acquired and I joined one of my resellers," explained Rance. "I discovered a world beyond reselling circuits, including what goes on the end of them, what they're used for and how important they are. Truly understanding the end-to-end service and working with real-life customers put the whole picture together.

"After a further acquisition went sour I was certain that the smaller, more responsive way of servicing customers was the right way for an integrator to succeed. In 2008 my co-directors and I moved away from our roles in a large corporate IT company and simplified the offering that our clients wanted - we started ISN."

The consultancy firm became an implementation house, which then developed into a managed services company and network operations centre. "By 2012 we were in our own offices and now we've moved to our own building with nearly 25 staff," said Rance. "The growth has been controlled but all successes refer back to the faith our existing clients had in ISN by moving with us in our early days."

ISN also operates on-site for certain customers, filling the role of the network or systems team with the wider ISN team in the NOC available for escalation. It is a model that many other SMEs would struggle with, but ISN's skills and a relatively flat technical structure enables it to successfully deliver these services to customers. "Ideally, we would have an on-site presence at all of our clients," added Rance. "We should be at the heart of everything they do and the key technical decisions that are made."

Rance currently works with a variety of data centre suppliers, break/fix maintainers and various ISPs to pull together a best of breed approach. "Our long-term view is to build our own core data centre and start running our own SLAs while increasing the margin," he said.

Over the last 12 months ISN has been selected for CCS Frameworks. This, along with applying for the necessary ISO compliancy (27001 and 9001), has placed process and best practice further up the agenda. "Throughout these changes we must always be mindful of why people do business with us, and the challenge to keep the same approach as we grow is always top priority," he stated. "ISN needs to stand out. Best practice gets us a long way, but on top of that our future growth will always be based on what is new and exciting in the marketplace and how ISN can make these solutions easy to engage with in a simplified and bespoke offering."

Rance's two fellow Directors, John Broadway and Richard Titheradge, are techies at heart. They know a good product when they see one and they can tell a good service when they find it. "If these are available we'll have no issue at all in working with that vendor or partner to see how it fits into the wider ISN offering," added Rance.

ISN is happy to sit on the fence as both a systems and network provider with its core skills traversing both sides of the divide. From a network point of view the company is primarily Cisco with skills in Checkpoint, Juniper, Extreme and F5. On the systems side ISN is a Microsoft house working on upgrade, virtualisation and help desk projects. The company also runs a successful medical imaging division and has its own voice platform. "The clients we service are diverse and the decision to specialise in a vertical is a challenging one," commented Rance. "Our broad experience of technologies and sectors benefits our customers because we are able to offer a diverse set of options that show what a deployment might look like."

Rance has witnessed many customers move to the cloud, and ISN adds value by helping them to define the nature of their particular cloud. This engagement shows ISN in its best light and depends on its knowledge of a fast evolving market. "Briefing sessions with the likes of Cisco and F5 make you realise how much things are going to change as security, wireless and collaboration move forward, and the day-to-day things we used to worry about become less important as they are centralised," stated Rance. "As long as we keep our finger on the pulse of where the market is heading and have a good network of third parties to support us we're in a good place."

The ISN NOC (monitoring and help desk) and its data centre solutions have been the largest growth piece during the last 12 months and within five years Rance expects ISN to have its own data centre and a support team three times the size. "Our best fit client will be largely the same," noted Rance. "There will be more of them and the ISN name will be better known in the wider marketplace, not just within our own network. Our larger clients all signed up this year for a further three to five years so our current successes will continue to grow. We just need to shout about them more and encourage others to shout for us."

Rance was on garden leave before starting ISN, and the credit crunch hit big time. "I had to sit on my hands for six months," he said. "The temptation to give up on the plan and take a new sales role was huge, but we stuck with it. It was a crazy six months but staying true to our plan in that period was the key to everything we've done so well since."

Philip Carse, Analyst at Megabuyte.com, reports on the recent performance of leading companies in the comms space during the last quarter.

The Telecoms & Networks peer group continues to out-perform in share price terms, with a three month gain of 7% versus -2% for the FTSE All Share and a one year gain of 25% versus +3% for FTSE. However, the performance is broadly reflective of UK tech stocks, and in fact is slightly less than the broader Megabuyte Taylor Wessing index of tech stocks. The highlights of a relatively quiet period include Fidelity's proposed take private of COLT, Ofcom's major strategic review which will consider the structural separation of BT, and well-received results from Adept Telecom and Redcentric.

The biggest recent gainer in the last three months has been multi-utility reseller Telecom Plus, up 40%, though this is only a recovery of sorts from a share price battering caused by a profits shortfall from warmer weather, strong energy supply competition and gas billing bad debts. The shares are still down 15% over the last year. Likewise, Pinnacle Technology shares are up 37% on a positive trading outlook, but are still down 28% year on year due to the company suffering from previous poor acquisitions.

COLT makes a rare appearance near the top of the share price gainers, after its founder and majority shareholder Fidelity announced a 190p per share (2.34bn euros) enterprise value offer to take the company private. COLT subsequently announced a strategic exit of IT services (hosting, storage and cloud) to focus on networks, voice and data centre services. It will exit the 68m euros revenue IT business at a cash cost of 100m euros. Despite COLT's independent directors opining that the bid undervalues COLT, a current share price of 188p suggests it's a done deal.

Business comms provider Adept Telecom has risen 20% in the last three months and is the leading share price performer over 12 months, at +72%, off the back of a return to revenue growth assisted by the April 2014 Bluecherry acquisition, with revenues up 6% to £22.1m and improved margins in the year to March 2015. The outlook is also positive, assisted by the more recent acquisition of unified comms and managed service player Centrix.

The share price of BT (+6% over three months) has shrugged off a potential enforced structural separation of Openreach, one of the issues for debate in Ofcom's major Strategic Review of Digital Communications. While Ofcom notes BT's inherent conflicts and Openreach's Quality of Service issues, it states in the discussion document that structural separation may not necessarily improve the situation in the absence of competition. Perhaps surprisingly, the share price of competing fibre to the premise builder CityFibre (-16%) has not responded to Ofcom's potential increased focus on local access competition.

At the other end of the league table, Coms plc has the worst three and 12 month performance as new management grapple with a poorly executed buy and build strategy. The company recently sold its Telecoms division to Timico for an initial £2.5m in cash to buy some breathing space. Timico also recently acquired Wirebird for its IT skills. This follows a frustrating 2014 for Timico, when the company failed to IPO and new accounts show 2014 revenues and EBITDA both down marginally in contrast to more bullish IPO forecasts.

In contrast, the shares of Gamma, which did succeed in IPOing in 2014, are up 35% since October 2014 off the back of solid trading. Also noteworthy is Redcentric (shares up 44% over one year), with the accounts to March 2015 highlighting the success of the company's buy and build strategy, combining elements of Redstone, Maxima and InTechnology. Revenues and EBITDA rose 8% and 32% in organic terms to £94.3m and £21.4m, with cash flow to match.

The other M&A news of note was the completion of Daisy's £184m bid for Phoenix IT, boosting its EBITDA by an estimated 42% before synergies and, more importantly, creating an unparalleled £200m revenue business selling IT and telecoms services to the UK mid-market as part of the £500m revenues of the whole group. Meanwhile, Vodafone and Liberty Global are discussing asset swaps which could involve a merger of Vodafone UK and Virgin Media under one or other owner, as a response to the proposed BT/EE and 3/O2 deals. Vodafone has also come to the aid of cloud partner Outsourcery with a £4m loan, replacing £1.7m in existing facilities.

Finally, we were intrigued to read the plans of Angie, a Dutch start up which is attempting to raise 1.6bn euros at a 3bn euros valuation to finance a new UK next generation fibre and mobile network. The company believes it can build a 8.6bn euros revenue, 4.8bn euros EBITDA business by 2022 with just 1.5bn euros investment, defying all market logic. Eating hats springs to mind.

What should be the channel's role in the digital age? The industry's big question can't be divorced from the need for total communications supported by an impeccable customer experience, according to Rob Mukherjee, Head of Vodafone Partner Services.

The question is not whether resellers will be able to react to current and future market forces, the real question is the extent to which they can catalyse these trends as prime movers. "Our job is not to predict the future, but to enable it," said Mukherjee. "The market is going towards total communications, not just fixed or mobile. We and our partners need to facilitate the future for our customers with technology that helps them access new market opportunities, find better ways of working and differentiate. This will ultimately help them to be successful in the long-term."

A more general question follows from this and applies to all resellers whose strategic thinking moves in inverse proportion to market developments. "Partners need to transform their businesses to meet the requirements of today's customers," added Mukherjee. "Customers who buy into these principles - as opposed to those who buy on price or are just looking for a product - will ensure that our partners have sustainable businesses."

The demand for resellers to adapt and grow does not mean they have the capacity or ambition to do so. They may reassure themselves that there is no urgent imperative to change, but it does not seem that way to Mukherjee who also suggested that traditional sales incentives, as well as 'old world' outlooks, are tantamount to an economic fallacy. And defining the boundary that separates resellers who are transfixed by a dangled carrot and others who embody a non-incentivised desire to make a difference lies close to his heart.

"Resellers should transform their businesses not because they are incentivised to do so but because they want to and truly believe it is the right thing to do," stated Mukherjee. "The transformation may be difficult and a challenge. Some may not see any good reason to change. But they have to because society and the market demands it. Businesses of today and tomorrow are depending on us to enable their futures. Partners need to change because they want to. We believe the new iteration of our partner programme is absolutely the right way to do it."

Partner programmes are realistic only when they take the form of a collaborative ethos that strengthens the partner's ability to deliver total communications, which says Mukherjee are the founding principles of Vodafone Partner Services which launched in 2010 when it united its partner channel with the Yes Telecom business acquired by Vodafone in 2006.

"We've had a consistent dialogue with partners," said Mukherjee. "We work with them to evolve the partner programme and make changes where necessary. We've supported well over a hundred partners to sell our converged services; and following Vodafone's acquisition of Cable&Wireless Worldwide we've added more than 200 fixed partners into the programme during the last two years."

Vodafone began with two partner accreditations within its three tier partner programme (Platinum, Gold and Silver). In 2012 it introduced a Solutions Specialist designation (for convergence capability and performance), followed by Solutions Pioneer (recognising total comms sales capability and performance) in 2014.

Vodafone's new emphasis on customer experience excellence, both within its own business and in the partner channel, was introduced during its annual partner conference last month (St John's Hotel, Solihull, 9th July) when details on Capability tiering were outlined - planned to be launched next summer. "The new tiers will recognise and reward partners on their success and expertise in selling and delivering total communications solutions and their ability to provide customer experience excellence," explained Mukherjee.

"We want our partners to focus on the things that matter, driving converged technologies and providing a fantastic customer experience. The upcoming changes to the programme will be key to enabling the future for both our partners and our customers."

Mukherjee hopes the influence of Vodafone's partner programme will be strongly felt, strengthening partners' ability to be prime movers both now and in the future. Another influencing factor on Mukherjee's thinking and style of approach are the characteristics and achievements of one of his role models - Robert Noyce, the co-founder of Intel who is often referred to as the father of Silicon Valley. "It's not so much his phenomenal contribution to technology, but more the brand new management style he brought to the business world," explained Mukherjee.

"He encouraged teamwork and openness over hierarchy, risk over stability, jeans over suits and introduced a less structured, more relaxed working environment. He shunned private jets, fancy corporate cars and other executive perks. And I love his rallying cry, 'Don't be encumbered by history. Go off and do something wonderful'."

A young Mukherjee himself disencumbered his career history to enter the comms industry. His first sales role was working in the chemical sector. While scanning the jobs pages to unearth potential career opportunities for his brother, something caught Mukherjee's imagination. "It struck me that there was a plethora of sales opportunities in telecoms and very little in chemicals," he recalls. "I spotted an advert for account managers at Marconi, applied and got the role. Since then, I've worked at Cable&Wireless as Head of Partner Sales, then as Head of Sales at Yes Telecom, and following that as Head of Operations for Vodafone Partner Services, all of which have been invaluable in leading up to my current role as Head of Vodafone Partner Services."

Mukherjee places a high value on prioritising the advantages of a community-based channel policy, an approach that comes naturally to him. "I love a sense of community," he said. "This comes from a combination of my Bengali heritage, Merseyside upbringing and lifelong Everton obsession. That love of community, along with my ingrained belief in customer experience and customer ethics, attracted me to the partner community, to Yes Telecom and now Vodafone Partner Services. Those core values remain with me today."

The community urge is a manifestation of cultural values and shared interests, the glue that binds Vodafone to its partners who are destined to play a greater role in the provider's business strategy. "Partners are increasingly dealing with businesses of all sizes and across all sectors," Mukherjee stated. "Our research shows that 45 per cent of businesses would consider buying from a partner for their total communications needs, so the value of partners to our organisation and to business customers is meaningful."

As well as end user buying behaviours the three other primary factors influencing Vodafone's enterprise business and partner programme - convergence, customer experience and collaboration - cannot be over stated. "Technology is changing and so is our attitude towards it," added Mukherjee. "The focus has shifted from fixed and mobile to unified communications and converged products such as One Net. This focus on total communications is set to continue and increase within our own direct sales channels and in our partner channel.

"Since we launched One Net we've enhanced and expanded the product by adding new functionality and capability, acquired a valuable fixed asset (Cable&Wireless Worldwide), and increased our emphasis on complementary services such as cloud and M2M. The winners in this new phase of the industry, and even in our channel mix of direct versus indirect, are going to be those who embrace change and sell a broad mix of services. That's where our focus is and will continue to be."

But having best-in-class technology is only one part of the story. That's why Vodafone is investing time, energy and money in customer experience. "Our business customers, and their customers in turn, are becoming more demanding and expect a faster response across all communications channels," commented Mukherjee. "We, and our partners, need to ensure we are providing businesses with a quality level of customer experience and with the communications services to help them deliver a better service to their own customers. We won't just be measuring success on sales, but also on customer experience.

"Our relationship with partners is totally collaborative and they are at the heart of our strategy. We need to work with them as we change our own organisation and drive towards total communications."

A man steeped in IT expertise and business acumen - step forward Neil Cross, Managing Director of Advanced 365.

For three young visionaries - Nick Gerard, Phil Buckingham and Maurice Sutton - the rise of the PC was a moment of opportunity when ambition could be allowed its freedom. They established Advanced 365 in 1987 having identified a gap in the market to supply hardware to the City when PCs first appeared on desks. Then known as Business Systems Group (BSG), the company developed services to wrap around the products and became a purveyor of managed server and networking infrastructure.

BSG was acquired by Advanced Computer Software Group in 2009 and Advanced 365 was born, selling off the hardware resale business to focus on managed services which are the core of the business today. These include outsourcing, cloud computing, application development, support and data cleansing. "The decision to provide more services was a key turning point," said Cross. "We continue to work with organisations within the private, public and charity sectors where we help to improve their operational efficiencies, control costs, enhance productivity and enable growth."

In 2009 the company employed 100-plus staff and the core managed services business turned over circa £15 million. Today, the firm has a 350 headcount and is nudging towards £50 million. "Over the past six years we have consistently demonstrated 15-plus per cent year-on-year growth," said Cross. "By 2020 we expect Advanced 365 to more than double in size. Over 70 per cent of all services we deliver will come through the cloud and a similar volume will be consumed by mobile devices. What we have accomplished is impressive and exceeded my expectations and we have no intention of slowing down."

Consolidating a number of bespoke client platforms into a single 'build it once' cloud environment was a smart move that contributed significantly to Advanced 365's growth. "The way we worked before was simply not scaleable," commented Cross. "When we created Advanced 365 out of BSG we were still building bespoke solutions for all of our customers. But acceptance of the cloud prompted us to adapt our approach. In some cases bespoke remains the right solution, in others we host clients on our own cloud platforms, and in others we use the public cloud. We see ourselves as a service aggregator rather than a sole provider. Some of the services we aggregate include those we built for our customers while others come from our partners. We do not have a pile it high sell it cheap proposition."

One of the main drivers for growth was Advanced 365's entry into the public sector. "As we are based in the City we have a strong financial services bias," explained Cross. "But a few years ago we realised that the skill requirements to succeed in this space could be applied to the public sector which is not dissimilar. After initial success with a significant London Borough we extended our reach to a point where our business is now 50/50 between commercial and public sector engagements."

Cyber security is another growth area that Cross says is on the to-do list of all CIOs. "We are busy extending our cyber practice and shaping the company to support our growth for the next five years," he explained. "We are redefining our cloud offerings and investing significantly in new technology right across the board. Cloud and cyber security are key trends and areas where we are seeing an increase in demand from our customers. My goal is to ensure that Advanced 365 is best placed to deliver the right services at the right time for both our current and future customers."

For Advanced 365, customer loyalty is about the quality of engagement, both for clients and staff, with great service delivery breeding sticky customers. But, According to Cross, having to deal with unreliable comms firms is an industry bugbear that rankles and has become the 'curse of the project', made worse by the absolute need for the infrastructure they provide to underpin the technology that customers want to use.

In a call to hasten the day when reliable service delivery triumphs, Cross urged: "Telcos need to get into the 21st century. Everything we do is about connectivity, but getting it delivered when required and in the shape we need it is always one of the biggest project-based challenges for us. I have lost count of the number of times I have had to apologise because a telco simply did not keep their promises."

Although trouble and strife is not behind, the good news is that Cross believes there will always be a place for resellers. "However, unless they differentiate in this era of transparent purchasing they will find it difficult to turn a solid profit," he warned.

That said, ahead lie the sunny uplands for SIs able to grasp an opportunity to strengthen their proposition. "Ultimately, cloud aggregation and switching cloud providers will become a consumer activity," stated Cross. "In the meantime the industry still needs intelligent people to glue all of the components together. We all need to keep abreast of the industry. That is why I still love it. Change is constant and you never know where the next curve ball will come from."

O2 Business has announced the first winners of its 2015 Customer and Digital Excellence Awards, following the re-launch of the O2 Direct Partner Network on 1st April.
 
The new awards are indicative of O2's new approach as they reward a partner's overall capability to provide 'world-class' customer support and high level of digital knowledge and expertise, instead of grouping them by their scale and size alone.
 
The O2 Customer Excellence Award focuses on partners' overall capability to provide world-class customer support and service, and to retain customers. The O2 Digital Excellence Award focuses on digital knowledge, capability and performance and covers O2's partnership with Microsoft and other digital providers.
 

The 2015 O2 Customer Excellence Award winners:
· ADSI
· Cellular Solutions (North East)
· Fleet Mobile
· Corporate Wardair
 
 
The 2015 O2 Digital Excellence Award winners:
· Aerial
· Cellular Solutions (South)
· Chess Telecom
· Carphone Warehouse Business
· Daisy Direct
· Maintel
· Vivio

Ten partners achieved both the 2015 O2 Customer and Digital Excellence Awards:
· Active Business
· Active Digital
· Annodata
· Atlas
· Challenger
· Pure Telecom
· Signal
· The One Point
· Uplands
· 8020
 
 
Winners receive new excellence award branding, additional commercials and further marketing and digital consultancy to help develop their business.
 
Jason Phillips, Head of Partners for O2 Business, said: "These awards represent a significant shift in the way we work and we are rewarding partners who have successfully made that shift with us.

"We will continue to work closely with all our partners to deliver above our customers' expectations while build on our success and momentum in the SMB market."
 
A year in the making, O2's biggest evolution of its indirect channels in the last five years saw the launch of the O2 Direct Partner Network on 1st April. 

The move to replace three-year partnerships with five-year partnerships has been well received by the partner community.
 
Phillips added: "Partners are now recognised not by their scale and size alone but also by their ability to focus relentlessly on the customer and be capable of diversification. Partners are now rewarded on customer experience, churn, value and digital product adoption - real recognition that the market has changed."

Following another six months of profitable growth voice and data recording specialist Red Box Recorders has strengthened its senior management team with two new appointments.

John Fenech has been appointed Global Operations Director while Simon Foster joins as Head of Sales UK.

Fenech brings more than 30 years experience working in the telecommunications industry, successfully fulfilling a variety of engineering, pre-sales, project and support management roles.

He has previously worked at Avaya and Datapoint and joins Red Box from ShoreTel, where he held the position of Senior Manager, Support and Services.

As Global Operations Director, Fenech will oversee Red Box's global support team and will work closely with partner organisations to improve how they support their own clients when selling Red Box solutions around the world.

In addition, he will oversee the company's Project Office, managing installation and engineering resources, whilst helping to drive efficiencies and facilitate the timely delivery of product installations.

As Head of Sales UK, Foster has a remit to manage Red Box's sales team and drive the company's sales strategy and channel business within the UK.

Foster has worked in the telecommunications industry for over 20 years, including 11 years as an Account Manager at Mitel, and more recently at ShoreTel where he managed channel strategy.

Lee Jones, CEO of Red Box Recorders, said: "The company has enjoyed a fantastic first half of 2015 and with ambitious targets in place we are well positioned to push ahead with the next stage of growth.

"By recruiting John and Simon we have made two high calibre appointments that will help to drive our business forward, both in the UK and globally.

:John and Simon bring a wealth of knowledge to the team and their expertise will be of great benefit to our partners and customers."

As part of its support for local charities seven members of staff from Yorkshire business telecoms provider, Intouch Advance, took part in a brace of physically demanding events to raise sponsorship for Bradford-based children's charity, One in a Million (OIAM).

Together with a previous activity undertaken by the CEO on his own, this month's efforts bring the company's sponsorship for OIAM to £8,174.91.

On 4th July the company's CEO Simon Pollard set out early at 4.30am with his team to tackle the Yorkshire 3-Peaks challenge. 

Racing against a number of other leading regional companies, the challenge for the Intouch Advance 'Magnificent Seven' was to complete the three Yorkshire Peaks, Pen-y-Ghent (691m), Whernside (728m) and Ingleborough (723m) in 12 hours.

Polard said, "With a great local cause spurring us on this excellent team rose to the Yorkshire Three Peaks challenge. We're proud to have been able to raise all the sponsorship we have and extremely grateful to all those who have helped surpass the target we expected to achieve."

A skydive challenge followed the week after. Company Head of Finance, Laura Barrass and Sales Director, Scott Walker, took part in a tandem free-fall skydive, harnessed to a BPA-qualified instructor during a one-minute descent.

Barrass said: "It was an amazing experience - nerve-racking going up but the jump was exhilarating!"

Sales of the ALSO Group in the first half improved compared to last year by 11.9% to €3.67bn. Profit before taxes (EBT) rose despite high losses of ALSO Logistics Services GmbH, from €30.5m to €36.2m (+18.7%) and net income from €21.0m to €24.4m (+16.4%). ALSO Group increased its consolidated sales by 11.9% in the first half of 2015 in almost all product categories.

"We have made extensive improvements in all parts of the company. In particular, the optimal integration of ALPHA International B.V. in the Netherlands, the consolidation of ALSO France and Finland as well as the excellent performance in Denmark, Sweden and the Baltic States helped this very good result," says Gustavo Möller-Hergt (below), CEO of ALSO Holding AG.

Different products in the portfolio had differing outcome, however: Data Center Networking & Security grew +25.1% and Unified Communications, +24.2%, while Mobile Computing declined -4.0%. ALSO says this is mainly due to the fact that end of the wave of renewals generated by the end of Windows XP support. The Server Computing business rose 17.7%, it says.

The Central European market segment recorded an increase in sales over the previous year by 14.3% to €2.91 bn. Profit before taxes (EBT) rose from €25.7m to €30.5m (+18.5%). The EBT margin remained at 1.0%, similar to the previous year. Central Europe recorded again a double-digit sales growth thanks mainly to a particularly strong performance in Germany, France and the Netherlands. ALSO Switzerland has taken measures to counteract the ongoing cost pressure due to falling margins.

Sales rose in the Northern / Eastern Europe market segment year on year by 3.3% to €833.4m, with Denmark, Sweden and the Baltic countries contributing most to the growth. Earnings before taxes (EBT) improved from €5.5m to €8.5m and the EBT margin from 0.7% to 1.0%. This increase is attributable to growth in high-margin business segments in Norway and Sweden.

AS announced a few weeks ago, ALSO Group is expanding its presence in Europe through the opening of the new subsidiary, ALSO Polska sp.z o.o. in Warsaw. The acquisition of failed business Logistics Activity (now ALSO Logistics Services GmbH, Augsburg) has caused losses of around €4m in the first half. The reduction measures in personnel have not yet been implemented as planned and without extensive restructuring, it cannot be competitive, says ALSO. So it has decided to discontinue further financing of its current business and a decision will be taken to file for insolvency. Restructuring costs in the second half of the year will be around €8m.

ALSO expects that for the full year, despite the challenging conditions and anticipated costs associated with the restructuring of ALSO Logistics Services GmbH, a result in line with the level for the previous year. "Overall, we look very confidently at the current financial year. We calculate that it will continue with a stable business and a solid result at the same level," says Gustavo Möller-Hergt.

ICT resellers that fail to take advantage of the low energy prices are missing out on thousands of upfront cash deals according to comms entrepreneur Simon Payne.

Speaking at the House of Commons, the Fidelity Group CEO told assembled guests at the launch of his new Fidelity Energy business that leveraging the relationship comms providers have with customers to help them reduce energy bills was a' brutally simple' concept.

Fidelity Energy has negotiated deals with 14 of the world's leading energy companies which means customers can be almost guaranteed savings on their energy bills.

"This is a once in a blue moon opportunity," said Payne. "We have built the infrastructure and established trading relationships over the last 18 months.

"We are now in pole position to capitalise on this rare occurrence. We have invested heavily in automation and that has enabled all our partners to jump on the bandwagon using our white label offering."

Payne said 57% of customers his team have approached in the last few months have signed over to Fidelity Energy and the company will exceed £1m in net earnings in its first year of trading.

"This is a 'money today not tomorrow' proposition that resellers should get their heads around now," he added. "It is not difficult to set up and it could mean a vast difference to a reseller's cash flow, increase customer stickiness and lock in recurring revenues.

"The beauty of this is that there is no real sales process. Resellers will already have a close relationship with customers. All they have to do is ask them for an energy bill then we do the rest."

Pictured above: Left to right: Fidelity Energy MD Paul Havell; Fidelity Group CEO Simon Payne and Henley-on-Thames MP John Howell, who hosted the launch event at the House of Commons.