Comms Dealer

Daisy Group's incoming CEO, Neil Muller, has revealed plans to take the company on the next step in its journey towards national supremacy, and he has shown himself as a determined figure.

The Daisy growth campaign is now in full cry. Muller's inspired appointment is likely, over time, to prove a historic moment for the Group - but can Daisy really seize the opportunity to be the premier ICT supplier for SMEs? A positive outcome is inevitable, says Muller unequivocally, and his growth plan is meticulously reasoned. Prior to joining Daisy he spent 21 years running Computacenter's UK business in the enterprise market as Managing Director. Former Daisy Group CEO Matt Riley (now Executive Chairman, who founded the firm in 2001 and grew its turnover to £350-plus million) said Muller's appointment is 'vital' for developing Daisy's growth in the ICT space, especially its managed services portfolio and the mid-market in particular.

This sense of coherent ambition between Muller and Riley typifies Daisy on the brink of its next growth challenge. "I was drawn by Matt's clear focus and ambition to be the communications and IT services partner of choice in the UK's small and mid-market arena," commented Muller. "Having helped steer Computacenter within the enterprise space to become a key services partner for customers, vendors and BPO players, I am absolutely confident that Daisy can also become a key partner within the ever-growing world of ecosystems."

Muller departed Computacenter with a 'heavy heart' eased by immense pride in his work at the firm having led significant growth and achieving success in building a sustainable services business. But after 21 years it was time for a new challenge and Daisy offered a rare opportunity that Muller describes as 'immense'. "My attentions and excitement now turn to working with the Daisy family," he commented. "Daisy has experienced tremendous growth throughout its history, but now we embark on the next phase of the journey. Two focus areas are to leverage the scale of the Daisy Group and enhance its capability, ensuring that our solutions remain competitive and relevant with a service quality delivered through customer-centricity. "

Even in its formative years Daisy was no advertisement for small is beautiful, such is the size of Riley's ambition. Fittingly, Muller's appointment is a desirable match. He also thinks big and plans to build on Group scale, develop and implement required standards and systems, drive operational effectiveness and efficiency, protect and serve existing business through tip-top customer satisfaction and focus on empowering fully engaged and enabled employees.

"Business doesn't need to be complicated," added Muller. "In fact, the simpler you can make it, more often than not the better the results. My near-term aim is to outline a simple growth plan that provides all employees with a sense of clarity, belonging and purpose. The plan will focus on our strategy, growth priorities and our execution. Employee engagement and enablement delivers high levels of customer satisfaction which in turn drives business results. So it is my mission to deliver the best experience possible for customers and our staff. We will look to simplify the complex and focus on the benefits and the business outcomes that technology enables."

Muller is also preparing the ground for closer channel partnerships characterised by a collaborative approach that will generate greater rewards. "I would like us to rethink the way in which we engage around certain types of partner opportunities," he explained. "We have an amazing opportunity to create stronger partnerships and ecosystems by working side-by-side and more proactively with our partners, enabling them to deliver more complete solutions to their customers.

"First and foremost, we will preserve and enhance the trust that existing partners have in Daisy today. I want Daisy to be the easiest and most fulfilling company to do business with. We will continue to listen closely to our partners, always focusing on building partner advocacy and continually evolving our systems and processes accordingly. I want to ensure that we fully extend our scale, reach and product range to our partners."

Daisy's inherent strengths go hand in hand with Riley's deep desire for the business to evolve and change with the times. This combination caught Muller's eye and was a factor that attracted him to the CEO role. "Five years ago, over 80 per cent of Daisy's revenues were around voice services, now a declining market as consumers and businesses shift to mobile, IP, over the top services and alternative methods of communication," commented Muller. "Under Matt's leadership Daisy has diversified away from voice which today represents less than 40 per cent of group revenues."

The story of Daisy's recent history, during its five years as a Plc, is one of impressive growth and value creation. From 2009 to 2014 revenues and EBITDA grew on average by 27 per cent and 52 per cent year-on-year. Investors in Daisy's shares in 2009 would have seen a return of 150 per cent over the period. "We are in a great market at a great time," said Muller. "CEOs are starting to see investment in technology as an enabler for differentiation and delivering growth. I am therefore confident that by sticking to the basics of running a great business, putting our customers and employees first and leading a great team we can achieve our growth aims. And let's keep our fingers crossed that macro-economic factors continue to deliver a stable backdrop for business growth."

According to Muller, SMEs need unprecedented help in managing the complexity of technology, widening the scope for Daisy to embark on an exciting new era of consultancy augmented by complementary aids to growth. "Daisy has real brand strength as a champion for this sector in traditional telecoms products," Muller added. "What is less well known is that we already have significant strengths outside of telecoms - in hosting, cloud and IT services. I see a natural convergence of these areas crystallised for our customers in simple-to-buy and easy-to-consume managed services. In three years time, I am confident that we will see Daisy as a strong, recognised player in communications and IT managed services for the UK small and mid-market, leveraging our strong heritage in fixed and mobile connectivity."

Nothing separates a business from realising its goals more than a lack of company culture, believes Muller, who espouses a common vision for organisational values and behaviours. "The culture of an organisation is paramount," he stated. "I will be looking to build on the excellent culture of today through a single sense of purpose, belonging and pride in everything that we do. A high performing culture will help us deliver high performing results, which in turn will create opportunities for employees and our partners. And against a digital backdrop, I see a tremendous opportunity to deliver more value to our customers by offering faster, more secure and reliable voice, mobile and data connectivity and a range of connected value added and managed services."

Influencing future growth requires a solid set of skills that demonstrate relevant value and differentiation, and get results. "To stay relevant to our customers we need to strengthen and evolve our customer relationships, from an internally-focused 'sell to' business support model towards a much closer, horizontal and proactive 'sell with' partnership, helping our customers to add value to their end users and stakeholders," stated Muller. "We will focus on strengthening our customer relationships, while aligning our portfolio strategy to the digital business demands of the market."

By Elvire Gosnold, Director, Blabbermouth Marketing: I want a modern, professional, clean website. This is what many of our clients want in their new website but everyone has a different opinion of what is modern and attractive.

Trends at the moment are parallaxing, white space and full site scrolling on one page. You should ask yourself if these features fit in with your existing corporate image, or the one that you wish to portray in the future.

What will you actually use the site for and who will be visiting the site? Websites are often the first point of contact your prospects have with you and are therefore one of the most important mechanisms for future growth, but you need to think deeper about what you want your website to achieve. This in turn will help you put together a good brief to the web developer to give them enough information for an honest quotation.

How much functionality do you really need? Bells and whistles look great but it all costs money. Yes it is extra work to add on an e-commerce facility and yes a customer portal will cost more so think carefully about what your company really needs to succeed. Plan from the start and remain focused on your core objectives. Think about what your visitors will actually use the site for. One page scrolling websites can look edgy but if you are using the website to run through your portfolio of products the whole thing is at risk of looking confusing.

I advise clients to collect links for websites they like as they go about their daily lives. This way they build up a repository of real examples to show a developer their vision of a new website. Remember, we all have a different opinion on what is modern and attractive.

Simwood has ‘grown-up' says Managing Director Simon Woodhead who lets us know what the company stands for as a channel champion in the making.

For Woodhead to put the channel top of the agenda is a sure-fire winner. Rarely has an evolving channel strategy been so wrapped in determination, and on the topic of future developments and Simwood's role in the channel he is emphatically to the point. "Restructure, acquisition, and all that goes with it including rebranding and integration," he stated. "We're 18 this year so it's time to grow up and jump-start our channel proposition."

As of 2014 Simwood came under a new planning regime. Its purpose is simple - to restructure as Simwood Group PLC, focus on the channel, go big on mobile, and just as big on product diversity, innovation and growth. This, believes Woodhead, will release the company's full potential. "We are developing channel focused functions and processes and will be making acquisitions to accelerate that strategy," he said. "We own our platform and supply chain and will extend that tangibility down into an authentic but innovative channel offering. Watch this space."

The first acquisition will give the company a platform to offer hosted telephony to the channel and an outlet for other products currently offered only through wholesale. Referring to the upcoming mobile component Woodhead says nothing like it has been seen before. "Mobile is a big focus for us and we will launch in a few months," he commented. "We have control of our own mobile core and have moved Business Logic to our own stack. That means we can offer wholesale customers and the channel mobile in a way that has not been done before."

How? By divorcing the handset from the number and the network to enable true convergence. "We, and in turn our customers, control the entire experience," added Woodhead. "Customers can have mobiles without numbers as PBX extensions, multiple mobile numbers routing to the same handset, or one mobile number to many handsets - to give just a few examples. They can also inject premium functionality such as call recording into the call flow because we give them total control."

Resellers will respond enthusiastically to clear leadership from their suppliers and if they are given what they want all the better. Woodhead knows what they want: "It is critical for us and key for the market that everyone adds value," he commented. "Value add propositions in mobile are virtually impossible for anyone other than the big MNOs. With us resellers become MVNOs in a couple of API calls without the nonsense and expense they'd face trying to do it through other routes. This is big and exciting."

Woodhead's future outlook on mobile contrasts with his view on fixed-mobile convergence which he considers to be in the same place as fixed-line pre-deregulation. "It's not enough to be able to bill somebody's mobile use along with their fixed line," he stated. "End users want integration and our new platform is a big step towards that. Yet the market remains protected not least by Ofcom which makes it almost impossible to innovate in the mobile space by withholding the necessary numbering resources."

Rather than tear up long-held plans around wholesale, Woodhead has marked out room for strategic manoeuvre. This, he says, is an evolution of the business that brings great potential. "Our wholesale business is growing exponentially but it will be circa 10 per cent of the whole in five years time," he explained. "That 10 per cent will be massively bigger than it is today assuming we get that far independently. We've had two approaches to sell in the last six months and I expect more when our mobile product is out there. We're absolutely not looking to exit, but if we could put our team and network behind a bigger sales function we'd be mad not to."

Simwood's stock-in-trade customers to date are by definition technical - ISPs and network operators wanting to add voice to their portfolio, and other specialist operators such over-the-top app developers. The firm's biggest account is BT, but among other customers Simwood counts two MNOs, the world's largest fax-to-email provider and circa 660 other communications providers of all sizes. "We supply a best-of-breed product to a niche of customers who themselves are operating in a niche," added Woodhead. "Our customers can build a SIP stack from scratch but in many cases won't have heard of WLR nor see the relevance of it. They, and us, are already in the future and we need to deliver some of that innovation to the channel. In our opinion the channel is starved of innovation."

Woodhead's decision to bring innovation into the mainstream of the market by reaching out to the channel may rank as the company's smartest move, but its solid foundations cannot be ignored. "We've always made a profit and our wholly owned architecture has been almost entirely self-funded to the extent we're virtually debt free and I still own most of the business," he noted.

"In revenue terms 2015 will see us top £2.5 million. That's small for this industry but it is important to appreciate we're purely wholesale at present so considering margins for our wholesale customer and their channel partners, that translates into end user billings of circa £40 million. The most interesting year for us will be 2016 when we see mobile gain traction."

The industry seems gripped by fixed-mobile convergence as a category similar to nirvana, but it is more than solely billing fixed, mobile and connectivity on one bill, reaffirmed Woodhead. "It should be about making them work together," he commented. "For example, if customers had true voice mobility with their office extension on their mobile, their home number in the car, their on-call pager to their house, and billing extended to family bundles that over time make the Internet of Things a commercial reality, then we'd really be in an exciting place. There are technical solutions out there, but arguably they're far from production ready and not in the channel in a palatable form. So we built a reliable solution that will be available to the channel."

Rewind the clock and Woodhead's interest in technology first showed itself while at primary school, but the headmaster made a miscalculation of titanic proportions when he judged that Woodhead lacked the aptitude for such a pursuit. He has remained disrespectful of authority ever since, with a no-nonsense irreverent vigour that keeps the likes of Ofcom in his sights.

Woodhead's uncle came to the rescue. He too was a teacher with access to computers and tutored the budding technology entrepreneur at weekends. Woodhead also grew up in a commercial environment, his parents being industrial launderers. This experience instilled a strong work ethic and gave him a firm grasp on book keeping while still a teenager.

"I shunned university but managed to get into the graduate selection for a wealth management company that is now part of Deutsche Bank," recalled Woodhead. "I came top in the aptitude tests so they took me on as a graduate trainee anyway. I managed £40 million by the age of 21, but IT kept finding me. The big legacy systems and network fascinated me so I was pulled away from fund management into technological roles."

In the mid-90s Simwood's Chairman Grahame Davies co-founded Demon Internet and made the Internet accessible to all, including Woodhead. By then he'd been headhunted by a company that later became known as Barclays Wealth. "I was interested in the convergence of Internet and mobile and developed eSMS, which at the time was the world's first global gateway between the two," said Woodhead. "We pioneered bulk SMS delivery but our main product was two-way email to mobile phones using SMS as the transport. We also enabled SMS between networks."

Woodhead quit his finance job to concentrate on Simwood and other start-ups. "I refocused the business on VoIP in 2005 and Simwood as you see it today was born," he commented. "We spent five years replacing our supply chain to own our own national IP network and SS7 voice interconnects. Joining the London Internet Exchange was a key milestone, not because it was any technical or commercial achievement but because it took us, me especially, out of our petri dish into a world of people like us."

With the sublime concentration of a scientist Woodhead has redrawn Simwood's strategic lines in favour of a pledge to ‘be more channel friendly', but the company's pedigree will be strongly felt for some time to come. "We're an interface between old and new telephony," he added. "We provide UK numbering and termination, all orchestrated through an innovative API. Our USP is complete vertical ownership from the IP network to the VoIP stack and the entire business process in between. We resell nothing and have complete control and agility.

"We didn't retrofit IP and VoIP to a legacy network. We had them so our integration has been backwards, adding more and more legacy capability behind contemporary architecture as we climbed the food chain and needed them. We've done things differently to maximise uptime, flexibility and economics for our customers. Our platform scales and is already handling 300,000 operations per second."

Woodhead's blogs (http://blog.simwood.com) enjoy extraordinary intellectual sway and, for example, he speaks on VoIP fraud around the world citing his research and making data available to all. "We have hundreds of checks and limits that are applied for every call, and that customers can apply to individual trunks," he said. "Crucially, they're all real-time. A customer can use our API or portal to see the calls in progress on their account right now. Should a customer fall victim - and generally those who apply the controls we offer tend not to - then all of these mitigate and contain an attack. We provide real-time alerts by SMS and masses of features network side. That is the authentic thing to do."

The industry will learn nothing by ignoring visionary tacticians such as Woodhead. His insights provide a signpost to the future and, like his viewpoints, defy all challenges, especially when striking a blow for equality. "We're open with our thinking and view of the world," he said. "We've been vocal on some of the backward steps the industry has taken, such as the Narrowband Review, a punch that us and other non-incumbents have had to take. Our ethos is about getting the best technology and innovation into the hands of end users through a fair and transparent market, neither of which we have."

Government plans to crack down on nuisance callers do not go far enough according to Simwood's MD Simon Woodhead (pictured).

"We made suggestions to the Department of Culture Media and Sport about making the process of Nuisance Call Handling fit for purpose," he said. "While we welcome the changes they fail to acknowledge the points we made and exacerbate the factors behind them."

The Government could enforce mandatory Caller ID (CLI) for marketing callers, observed Woodhead. "While welcome, it is common practice for marketing callers to already present CLI because it improves answer rates and bypasses basic Anonymous Caller Reject services," he pointed out.

"The problem is that the CLI they use isn't necessarily their own. Enforcing them to use one risks more calls bypassing Anonymous Caller Reject services, and more complaints into a broken complaints process.

"Furthermore, whether CLI is withheld from the callee or not, a call compliant with existing OFCOM requirements will have a valid CLI visible to operators at a lower level anyway.

"They simply need to look more deeply into where the problem call actually entered their network, rather than which operator's number was used.

"For example, BT call handlers just rely on the range holder to
attribute blame, irrespective of where the call actually came from or
whether the range holder had any connection with it. "

Woodhead has called on OFCOM and the DCMS to reform the Nuisance Call process within the incumbent and other major operators to avoid this scenario.

"We have a zero tolerance for Nuisance Calling," he stated. "In addition to Intelligent Caller Reject to help our customers' end users, we also expect the use of valid and well formed CLI."

Read Simon Woodhead's full blog here >>

Scania (Great Britain), the supplier of trucks, buses, coaches and engines for industrial and marine applications, has awarded Olive Communications a multi-million pound contract to help it transform its communications estate.

Olive will implement and manage a new cloud-based unified communication solution for 1,000 employees across 50 sites, roll out a new contact centre, implement a new MPLS network and LAN infrastructure, and take over the management of Scania's 600-plus user mobile phone estate.

Richard Gray, Finance and Rental Director for Scania, said: "With our current system coming to the end of its natural life we wanted to procure the best possible solution for our business.

"Our objectives were to improve our ability to provide a first class service to our customers, enhance employee to employee communications, and reduce our infrastructure and telecoms costs across the board."

Martin Flick, CEO, Olive Communications, said: "Bringing together cloud and mobile connectivity under one managed service is an increasingly popular deployment for Olive customers. It increases the ability for employees to contact each other wherever they are working, improving productivity."

"Olive will bring together previously disparately managed and billed elements of Scania's communications estate into one managed service.

"This means that Scania will not only will benefit from significant operational efficiencies, but will significantly reduce its infrastructure costs in the coming years, delivering a substantial return on investment."

Violin Memory has signed up with distributor Arrow for EMEA.

The firm had plans bubbling for a strategic change for two years and during the period saw its share price languish after an IPO in 2013.

Meanwhile all-flash storage gained market share as costs came down. Violin hopes a new range of products due next month will help boost its fortunes.

Violin will be leveraging Arrow's sales, support and technical resources to grow into the all-flash array market in EMEA as enterprise flash storage adoption increases.

Arrow recently joined Violin's Global Channel Program to help the channel deliver sales and take advantage of Violin resources, training and marketing benefits.

Jesper Trolle, vice president sales, marketing and services, Arrow ECS EMEA, said: "It's a crowded market, which means product differentiation and profit potential are key to winning the hearts of the channel.

"Violin has delivered a solution for our customers - a differentiated solution and a new channel program that promotes profitability and sustained growth."

The ICUK team have taken a bow after the successful roll out of Version 12 of the company's control panel for reseller partners.

Director Paul Barnett says the new release, which features substantial enhancements for broadband diagnosis, automation and visibility, has been given the thumbs up by partners.

"We started life as a reseller so we still appreciate the frustrations of not having visibility and control," he said. "The feedback we have received has confirmed that by listening and evolving we can deliver something special."

Up to 280 comms professionals will descend on the BBC's TV studios at Manchester's Media City for plan.live 2015 on 19th March.

Staged by plan.com the event marks the company's first anniversary and will showcase new tariffs, commissions, channels and product lines just one year after the firm launched its B2B mobile proposition, and hot on the heels of its partner portal upgrade which is set to be enhanced further with 100-plus new features.

plan.com CEO Dan Craddock said: "Over the past year we've listened to partner feedback and refined our proposition. Now we want to get our partners together to discuss where we are now and where they want us to be.

"We will be using the latest technology to interact with them live on stage and we're bringing our entire tech team along so we can act on partner feedback there and then, taking real-time information to a whole new level."

For more information visit plan.com/live2015

Falling prices and consumers' insatiable desire for multimedia content mean that the phablet phenomenon will continue into 2015 and beyond.

According to market watchers Gfk, Smartphones with a screen 5.5 inches and larger, often called Phablets have been outperforming the mobile device market since the launch of the Galaxy Note in 2012 with Asian markets leading the way.

Phablet ownership is growing in all regions with the last quarter of 2014 setting a new record of 12.8 percent of total global mobile device sales.  

Asia Pacific has led the adoption of the phablet and in Q4 2014 they represented 17.5 percent of all mobile devices sold in the region, up from 8.5 percent 12 months earlier.

In the Middle East share was 11.1 percent in Q4 2014, almost doubling from 6.2 percent the previous year. In Europe share was lower but growing rapidly, up 3.0 percent YOY to 6.4 percent in Q4 2014. In Africa share was 5.5 percent, up slightly from 4.4 percent YOY. Share was lowest in Latin America at 1.9 percent, up from 0.4 percent in Q4 2013.

The market share of phablets grows at the expense of that of standard sized smartphones. Globally their sales unit shares fell 13 percentage points from 100 percent in Q4 2011 to 87.2 percent in Q4 2014.

Arndt Polifke, Global Director of Telecoms at GfK, says: "The phablet's not-so- secret weapon is its screen size, perfect for consuming the media content people have become addicted to. Phablets are all-rounders, fulfilling the combined roles of a smartphone and tablet - but for a lower price than just one of these devices. This means emerging markets will have a crucial role to play in their rise, and we expect to see sales increase in Africa and Latin America in 2015 and beyond."

The increase in phablet sales volume was accompanied by a fall in average price - perfect conditions for sales to take off. Comparing prices in Q4 2014, Europe had the highest prices with an ASP of $761, followed by Latin America at $631, Africa at $625, the Middle East at $511 and APAC at $466.

Arndt Polifke continues: "Consumers are starting to choose phablets instead of normal smartphones. We expect to see this trend continue in 2015 for two reasons: firstly, the appeal of a hybrid phone/tablet is particularly strong in emerging markets where consumers can now make a choice between a basic smartphone and one with tablet capabilities for almost the same price. Secondly, more affordable models are coming to market, with a number of models now available for $150 or less, making them accessible to many more people. For the tech-obsessed consumer, more sophisticated models are available for $800 plus. With their multiple uses and price points from low to high, the phablet is poised for greatness in 2015."

Cheshire-based ITS Technology Group is on track to triple the size of the business this year having secured a number of IT managed service contracts and customer wins totalling more than £10m.

The firm is also building and managing superfast broadband networks in a number of rural and urban locations across the UK.

ITS Group CEO Roy Shelton said: "Last year we grew significantly. Some of this was organic growth, and we also made three acquisitions to strengthen the superfast broadband networks and IT Managed Services sides to our business.

"Our aim is to continue with this growth strategy, and being awarded these contracts sees us on-track to smash our targets.

"It has also created a number of job opportunities, and we are actively recruiting talented technology specialists. We have recently identified apprentice and graduate roles along with a number of more senior vacancies which we need to fill."