Comms Dealer

BCS Global Networks has acquired America-based Video Guidance and the enlarged company links BCS Global's capabilities in Europe, Canada and Asia with Video Guidance's in North America.

Video Guidance will become a wholly owned subsidiary of BCS Global and will retain its name and brand in the US.

"Video Guidance shares our mission of bringing visual communications to every boardroom, desktop and mobile device, and to make visual collaboration an easy-to-use business productivity tool for any enterprise across the globe," said Clive Sawkins, who will continue to serve as CEO of the merged company, BCS Global.

"Video Guidance fits our sales, operations and culture like a glove. This combination will help us extend our geographic reach into America, while bringing new, ever-changing technologies to a worldwide market place."

Michael Werch, President and CEO of Video Guidance, will continue to lead the sales and operations in North America.

"Today's technologies have brought unimaginable changes to our way of life, and the number of communication options available on virtually any kind of device is growing exponentially," said Werch.

"Video conferencing has revolutionised the way people connect and as a result, businesses and organisations are making visual communications a strategic priority.

"This merger strengthens our North America footprint and gives Video Guidance a dedicated worldwide network management and operational systems to continue to position and grow our cloud-service offering."

The combined company will have more than 115 employees in offices throughout North America, UK, Europe and Asia.

essensys has collected the BCA Trade Supplier of the Year Award for the third time since 2011.

The winners were named at the annual BCA Industry Awards Gala Dinner on 28th of November at the Sheraton Park Lane Hotel in London.

The awards recognise best practices in the flexible workspace sector and are based on nominations from customers, before being evaluated by a panel of independent judges.

Each nomination must be backed by examples of the level of ongoing support being received and whether the service provided has given the centre additional revenue opportunities.

Mark Furness, CEO and Founder of essensys, commented: "essensys scored a fantastic hat-trick at this year's BCA Awards. The whole essensys team is thrilled, proud and immensely grateful to our customers who have nominated us to win this award.

"Winning three Trade Supplier of the Year Awards in such a short amount of time feels like an outstanding achievement. There is no better testament to our ongoing dedication and commitment to delivering service excellence and real business value than receiving this accolade. It is truly marvellous to see this tremendous validation from our customers."

Most businesses seeking to upgrade their communications infrastructure prefer to deal with a local company that has a fixed line they can call.

Research commissioned by East Sussex based comms provider Cellular Solutions has revealed that the majority of people that influence telecoms buying decisions in their business prefer dealing with local companies for their workplace technology needs.

And tellingly, 69% of decision makers interviewed by pollster Populus said they feel better working with a company that has a fixed line they can call.

The research also underlined the growing attraction of cloud communications with 60% of respondents believing that the recent revolution in hosted solutions can give smaller companies the benefit of technologies and facilities previously only available to larger companies.

Furthermore, Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) demands continue to grow at a pace, with only 17% pf people questioned opting to split mobile communications between personal and professional dedicated devices.

Commenting on the survey, Cellular Solutions Managing Director Damian Mottram said:" We're in a fast moving world with technology changing all of the time.

"The services and systems that we are providing for our customers suggest that the way we use both mobile and fixed line telephones is more fluid than ever before.

"Our experience, and also the findings of this first report in our ongoing research programme also suggest that the lines between work and private expectations of telecoms are more blurred than ever before."?

Most sales jobs, and recruitment is no different, are very much about the art of making the impossible look easy. Swans, ducks and icebergs come to mind. That's why people pay our bills when hundreds of man-hours, behind the scenes, miraculously produce the right candidate at the right price, writes Clive Jefferys, JMA Network.

However, there are far too many employers out there that persist with the notion that recruitment agencies have a stockroom of candidates in some kind of cryogenic stasis, ready for their call. These are the companies that ask us to do on-the-spot recruitment, without any warning.

Inevitably, this means making the best of who is available just at that moment, but not necessarily the best person for the job. This is particularly prevalent among companies that want to hire a lot of sales people at one time, with a kind of built-in 'survival of the fittest' attitude to success rates. Another adage about buying in haste comes to mind too.

Well that kind of works, but it's not the best way to recruit key skills in a consistent, successful manner.

The other kind of client, the ones we have greatest success with, are those that realise they must always be on the look-out for talent. These companies make a point of explaining what they need and ask us to keep a watching brief.

Over the space of months, even years, we can do what we do best and keep surveying the market and our black-book. We only introduce people when the time is right for them and us.

The correct analogy for a good recruitment agency is set in a busy mainline railway station.

We develop a perfect knowledge of the timetable for arrivals, departures and delays and keep a vigil on the thousands of people crossing the concourse. We make it our business to know who is coming in today on long distance journeys and meet them at the ticket gates. We can show them a better way to get to their ultimate destination.

The worst recruiters don't have such a plan - they have to rely on quantity alone. They are easy to spot - they just wander around with a huge sign on their back saying 'stop Me and Buy One!'. Now, they really are trying to pull a rabbit out of a hat!

The coming year will be key for the UK economy as we pull out of a truly awful recession.

So the moral of the story is that when it comes to your staff needs - get looking now and keep on looking. Be ready to act promptly when the right person comes along!

Golf governing bodies The R&A and England Golf have appointed MAC Systems as their telecoms and network service provider with a remit to supply robust and flexible connectivity for the duration of a number of amateur events.

The ability to deliver uninterrupted connectivity for staff, scorers, media and broadcasters without impacting the host's own connectivity was an essential requirement in securing the contract. Also critical is the provider's ability to deliver multiple services regardless of location, length and size of the event. "It is vital for the technology services to be seamless and invisible to the actual events," said Audrey Denyer, Managing Director, MAC Systems. "Reliability is therefore a key requirement for The R&A and England Golf. If their services were to become disconnected in any way they would not be able to function."

During events The R&A and England Golf not only have central office premises but also secondary structures. For example, in the case of the Amateur Golf Championship held at Royal Portrush and Portstewart in June this year there was a requirement to deliver telecoms and connectivity between golf courses, multiple structures and the central office premise. "An area of concern was their ability to provide the right level of communication and service for the players, media, broadcasters and operational staff," added Denyer.

In the case of the Brabazon Trophy held at Seaton Carew the challenges were mostly down to the location of the course and the short duration of the event. "It was clear that at both events the organisers needed a flexible, robust communications solution while the continual challenge as with many organisations was to maintain a sensible budget," said Denyer.

Following a period of close consultation with various decision makers at The R&A and England Golf MAC Systems identified a number of cost-effective and flexible solutions to meet the particular challenges presented by each event. Working in partnership with Voiceflex, the solution for the Amateur Golf Championship 2014 deployed the Voiceflex Hosted VoIP Nebula IP product and Voiceflex data services. "The solution offered the ability to connect multiple structures across sites and provided flexibility in terms of reducing or adding extra users and applications as and when needed," stated Denyer.

The installation continues a close working relationship with Voiceflex as MAC Systems has deployed the Nebula solution at over 10 venues this year, and according to a spokesperson from R&A Amateur Events the partnership offers a win-win proposition. "MAC Systems understood our needs by proposing and providing relevant solutions," said the representative. "The combination of MAC Systems and the Nebula platform's flexible approach ensures reliable communications and connectivity regardless of the event's location and does not impact on the business of the host. It has made our communications simple and reliable, allowing us to get on with the business of running the event."

Denyer said: "Each year these two clients present us with unique challenges and it has a positive effect on the team to meet these demands."

By Anton Le Saux, Head of Connectivity and Partner Sales at O2 Telefónica UK: A recent market forecast has predicted that the global IoT and M2M market will hit $498.92 billion by 2019, and a report by Analysys Mason has positioned utilities as the fastest growing M2M sector and predicted that it will represent 67 per cent of overall M2M device connections by 2023.

The same report also forecasts that SMEs will increasingly use M2M technology as affordability improves and the technology becomes more accessible to smaller businesses.

Our experience with our Global Partner Programme (GPP) confirms all of this. Many smaller partners are joining us who previously assumed that there were too many barriers to operating on a global scale. A recent start-up company also joined us, convinced they wouldn't be able to compete on pricing before they had the volume business on the books, and just did not have the internal resource to handle complex roaming agreements with multiple MNOs around the world. Our GPP programme solved all of these issues, offering a level playing field on pricing, international presence with a global SIM, access to local support and a platform without any volume commitment. It has opened up global markets for them, competing with established organisations but remaining the nimble, entrepreneurial businesses they are.

As an understanding of M2M solutions grows, confidence is growing alongside it and more companies realise how viable M2M deployments are. All of this means that the next few years should see a host of new industries turn to M2M for the first time, including retail, security and healthcare, and we are confident that the market predictions are accurate.

anton.lesaux@telefonica.com - partnersdigital.telefonica.com

IT solutions provider Logicalis is blazing a trail in the growing market for Business Intelligence (BI) and Information Management (IM) solutions.

Demand for BI is growing in Logicalis' core market of medium-sized enterprises. The company is also approaching verticals such as retail and education. "Many organisations find themselves lumbered with disparate systems acquired across multiple and often competing ROI cases," said James Thompson, Director of Business Analytics and Information Management, Logicalis. "This often results in an increase in data complexity alongside a decrease in data quality and consistency. We are seeking to minimise the technical and governance overhead placed on customers, focusing our services on being easy for them to implement, operate and change in line with their business goals."

Logicalis' BI proposition provides customers in the UK and overseas with a service to access data from any of their systems, convert it into actionable information and insight, and deliver it to them securely and consistently, regardless of location. "Our strategic growth aims are to provide more cloud and managed service options for customers to reduce the overheads associated with administering BI and IM," said Thompson. "This will free customers to focus more on maximising business outcomes as a result of greater insight on their operations, products, consumers and competitor performance."

Thompson's key watchwords, 'rubbish in, rubbish out', define his approach. "If the data initially entered is inaccurate then all the big data analysis in the world will not give you a clearer and smarter picture of your business," he said. "Many also find that 'fashionable' visualisation tools barely fix departmental business problems and fail to move the business closer to its customers, or improve profitability. With this in mind, we are seeking to engage with companies to apply technology that will enable them to get to high quality 'right information' as opposed to low quality big data."

According to Logicalis' Retail IT Survey 2014, although half of decision makers within retail organisations are seeing positive results from their use of business analytics, just three per cent are using the insight of predictive analytics for anticipating future trends that could influence business performance. "Our aim is to ensure customers realise the true value of their IT investment, helping them sweat their BA and IM assets as a sound basis for investing wisely," added Thompson. "This also applies to the cultural and governance programmes that ensure their technology initiatives deliver real value."

Logicalis has embarked on a new BI project for retail consortium Nisa Retail. The cloud-based solution replaces Nisa's existing on-premise offering enabling its business users to gain deeper insights to better inform key business decisions. David Morris, Head of IT at Nisa Retail, explained: "Our incumbent BI solution gave us a glimpse of what was possible with BI and analytics, but we knew we could do more to leverage the technology. We wanted to adopt a new approach that would pool all data sources from right across the business to put the right information in the right users' hands, and quickly."

Logicalis is deploying the latest version of IBM Cognos, hosted on its cloud platform and wrapped with professional services inclusive of training for Nisa's team. Through the proof of concept and early implementation, the process by which data is processed and then presented to the business teams has already been transformed, according to Morris.

"Whereas before it was taking the team days to build data cubes, it's now taking them just a matter of hours with far greater consistency," Morris commented. "And as we look to mesh together data from warehousing and logistics to what customers are buying, where and when, the information garnered will be invaluable. The data will help us to shape and refine our proposition in terms of negotiating better costs with our suppliers, for example, which will directly benefit our retailers' bottom line, enabling them to operate more competitively on the high street."

Nisa's business users have also felt the early benefits. With the cloud-based solution providing greater performance, business users from across the trading, finance and customer insight teams have been able to drill down into the analytics instantly with no delay or latency on the system, providing a far great user experience. "The solution has re-invigorated the use of Business Intelligence in the organisation," added Morris. "Our previous solution was seen as something that simply existed to help Nisa's business users get from A to B in their roles. Now, as they dive deeper than ever before into our data, the solution is regarded as a key tool for delivering tangible business benefits and informing key decisions, focusing the IT department on areas that really help drive the business forward."

Chris Gabriel (pictured above), CTO for Logicalis UK, added: "Business Intelligence is all about the opportunity to engage and act upon the right information, at the right time. Critical data is being captured by organisations like Nisa everyday that, when put to work, can inform better customer engagement, marketing and growth strategies.

"IT departments in retail are coming under increasing pressure to align more closely with business strategy, and now is the time to re-shape the IT function to focus on high value strategic initiatives. With this initiative, Nisa's IT team is seizing the opportunity to do just that, enabling its users to exploit IT to make a genuine mark on business performance to the benefit of its members."

As Swindon-based Excalibur Communications puts the final polish on big preparations for growth it raises questions over the fortitude of business leaders who face similar challenges but fail to act, according to CEO James Phipps.

The time for blanket go-to-market strategies is over - it's not sensible to rack-up supplier numbers and stick to a policy of broad strokes and pointless product expansion, according to Phipps. "Resellers will have to reduce their product portfolio to enable them to be more focused," he stated. "Trying to manage umpteen partnerships in what can be a nightmare of a supply chain is not sustainable. We believe in our key partners, Vodafone and Microsoft, and we concentrate on them."

Phipps' sentiment is reflected in his strategic plan for significantly growing the Excalibur business, and his warning about partner rationalisation and streamlining product portfolios is not needless scaremongering. "Our biggest challenge is to try and keep a complex world of solutions simple for our customers," he commented. "Although we stick to the simplistic message of mobile, landline and IT, we have 10 products in total. This year was an important milestone because a customer adopted all of our services. It showed that we have become a true, trusted partner, and demonstrates that we can advise and support."

Excalibur now services over 5,500 businesses across the UK, generating £8 million turnover and £1.6 million profit. The company aims to be a £25 million business within five years, and bringing in new board members while changing the culture of the firm is an important part of the growth strategy. "We all sit together in an open plan environment," said Phipps. "The management are no longer tucked away in offices. We also have a 'How Am I Doing' note at the end of every email, giving customers the opportunity to provide feedback on everyone at the company. It's not just management that monitors the performance of staff. Time off for illness has all but vanished and punctuality is at an all time high. We have created an open and flexible environment where people feel part of the company, they want to come to work and are truly conscientious about our customers."

The input of employees is most telling in a recent company survey that showed 92 per cent of staff are very happy working at Excalibur. Based on 17,000 customer surveys from support cases, the company also achieved a 4.8/5.0 average score rating for customer service in the first nine months of 2014. "Our focus is on service and the customer journey," added Phipps. "We do everything we can to look through the eyes of our customers. When I became CEO we didn't put sales targets in place. We thought about being the best service provider we could be, and out of that our sales grew. With 5,500 customers it can be a little complicated, but we've made a six figure investment in our IT systems to bring demonstrable benefits to clients, not just 'good' customer service. This includes a new training school so that we can deliver our next set of team leaders inside the business."

With a plan for staff education in place, now is an apt time to spotlight an important lesson Phipps learnt during his early career. "I began working as a sales assistant for a mobile phone retail outlet," he recalled. "It was no more than a box with zero in the way of facilities. I worked seven days a week for a very hard to please individual. He was extremely unfair, taking full advantage of calling some very unreasonable shots. It taught me very early on how not to be a boss."

Excalibur started in 1993 as a retail store in Basingstoke under The Mobile Phone Centre (MPC) brand. Seven years later two successful franchises merged under MPC to form Excalibur Communications. By 2005 the company was operating 21 retail outlets that served over 25 per cent B2B customers. In 2006 Phipps was working as Area Manager of the Swindon office and he was the first to leave the MPC branding and move under the Excalibur banner to focus on B2B. Excalibur started offering IT services in 2007 and the customer base had by then grown to around 70 per cent B2B with approximately 1,500 business customers.

In the year that followed Excalibur acquired First Call, Vodafone's second largest partner based in Bristol. A move into fixed line provision came soon after and Phipps' appointment as Managing Director and Excalibur shareholder coincided with the firm's move to pure B2B, supporting around 3,500 customers. Excalibur's IT and UC capability was boosted by the acquisition of Emnico and Bridge solutions in 2011 and the enlarged organisation became a sole Vodafone mobile network partner, a link-up that continues to flourish with Excalibur becoming a Vodafone Platinum partner (as well as securing Microsoft Gold partner status). In 2012 the firm was named as the first Vodafone One Net Accredited partner.

Phipps became CEO last year, and as the company enters its 21st year of trading with Vodafone a trio of additional appointments are certain to bolster Excalibur's credentials. Chairman Nicky Alberry has 12 years experience at HSBC and was previously Chief Executive of GWE Business West, and is now Vice Chairman of the Swindon and Wiltshire Local Enterprise Partnership. Non-Executive Director Peter Boucher was formerly the Commercial Marketing Director at Vodafone. And incoming Chief Commercial Officer Andy Tow was Managing Director of Chess Partner Services and has almost 30-years industry experience including a stint as Head of Indirect Sales at Vodafone. "In 2010 when I became CEO I'd only just turned 30," said Phipps. "In hindsight I should perhaps have put the Board of Directors together earlier, but having said that the people I wanted weren't available at the time."

As the market veers towards consultancy and an era of one-stop-shops, resellers must look towards a more certain future based on root and branch reviews of their business and strategic roadmaps, believes Phipps. "We see some companies attempting to be a true service provider," he said. "However, they don't seem to appreciate the amount of investment required for that considerable customer journey. Solutions are becoming increasingly varied and complex, and improved connectivity alters what customers can do and how they run their business. In the ever changing landscape, tablets with SIM cards are making IT companies fidgety because it's now a communication device. Comms organisations are equally nervous because a mobile is now more of an IT device. We've removed ourselves from that uncertainty."

Only the wisely ambitious merit their position in a world of future certainty, but flux also has its place. "The excitement of working in this industry is the very fact that it's hard to predict what's around the corner," noted Phipps. "Who'd have thought three years ago that tablets would now be outselling PCs? In Excalibur's evolution we saw how landline, mobile and IT would come together under one roof. We have to keep a close eye on the developing market so that we can fulfil relevant technology. We strive to keep things simple and stick to tried and tested solutions. We use what we sell."

A passion for managed service provision has fanned the flames of Storm Internet's growth ambitions, according to founder and Managing Director Salim Benadel.

It is perhaps an irony that Benadel's main preoccupation today has its roots in what was no more than a sideline to his primary work as a website builder. But when he spotted a gap in the market it should come as no surprise that he embarked on a different course. "I bought and sold hosting while working as a freelance web designer," he recalled. "There was a lack of good Windows-based hosting and I felt that I could do better myself, so Storm Internet was born. The market was relatively unsaturated at the time giving us the opportunity to provide businesses with affordable hosting.

"Being a developer by trade, I learnt what is expected by customers and this has given me standards to work towards. More recently we've focused on getting the infrastructure and service right. Now we need to let people know about Storm Internet and what we do."

The company has shifted towards managed services and this is where Benadel's ambition ultimately lies. "We have a big focus on SMEs and when we can help them save money or make a process more efficient it feels great," said Benadel. "Our priorities are to expand our business and the main challenge is cloud being a competitive market, but there are opportunities and demand is huge for a good managed service. Cloud is now a vital business service and we are expanding out of web hosting into general business services. We want to sell a whole solution as opposed to just a commodity service. We like to understand the business problem and build a solution to fix it. Our background is in development and system design so our passion is in the managed service and problem solving. In a nutshell, looking at ways we can help businesses run better."

Storm Internet currently has a headcount of 14 with £1 million revenues and is aiming for 50 per cent growth over the coming year. Important channel partners include Dell, OnApp, VMWare, CloudFlare and Security Metrics; and target markets are software developers, retail/e-commerce and companies focusing on Big Data analysis. "We are committed to helping SMEs improve their business by adopting cloud technologies, helping them to achieve savings, resilience and increase revenue," added Benadel. "Our aim is to on-board more customers, bringing them into managed services, in particular our private cloud initiative called StormCloud."

Benadel has seen growing demand from organisations that prefer to outsource their IT. "Many companies don't want a server in-house due to the cost savings and peace of mind that can be achieved through outsourcing," he said. "We're also seeing a demand for managed cloud services, but there is confusion among SMEs about how they can adopt this technology. They've often heard of the cloud but they are not sure how to put this change into action. We want to help them understand how it can help their business so we hold seminars to educate SMEs on the benefits of cloud technology."

The most significant areas of Storm Internet's growth policy are located in service territory combined with clever recruitment. "We provide a solid service and infrastructure to our customers, that's at the core of what we do," added Benadel. "Getting this right means everything to us and that will not change. We've also built a great team around us, people who are experts in their fields to help propel the business forward. All of the teams - sales, marketing and support - will be expanded and where necessary we'll bring in specialists in key areas.

"People don't want to move around in this industry. If you look after people and treat them well they stay with you and recommend you to their business contacts. We feel we're contributing to something big and we'll all grow together. All of our employees will be rewarded as Storm Internet expands. We're like a family, we look after one another."

With IT evolving so quickly, updating the Storm Internet product portfolio is an ongoing task that Benadel enjoys. "Innovation and a drive to make things better are what we're passionate about and we're always looking for new ways that will enable us to bring more benefits to our customers," he said. "We want to be seen as a champion for helping SMEs grow while helping those who are confused about this technology."

Benadel rates his biggest career achievement to date as turning an idea into a company that has served over 5,000 customers. "Getting that first customer and knowing that someone else believes in what you're offering is also a milestone," he said. "I'm happy with the way my career has developed. I've done what I've felt to be right, been true to myself and have no regrets. Life is a learning process. It's the person you become on the journey that matters the most."•

By Elvire Gosnold, Director, Blabbermouth Marketing: What is your key corporate messaging? If it is Great Customer Service you need to put some serious time aside to revisit this. The key is to focus on your USP as a business entity, not the products you provide.

If you spend your energy and marketing budget on a product focused message the chances are your competitors offer more or less the same product, and then you are going to be judged purely on price. If you strengthen your brand messaging by proving your USP is genuine and not just marketing fluff then your brand will engage existing clients, encouraging up-sell and cross-sell opportunities. USP messaging will also reinforce a positive brand perception with your prospect base. Remember, consistency is key here. The message must be the same across all sectors of your business.

A strong simple message is a good place to start. Simplicity is key as not only do you have limited time to shout your message but your audience my vary depending on what vertical you are targeting. Choosing your message is harder than it sounds as it needs to stand the test of time if you are going to invest in promoting and reinforcing the message. What happens if you become acquisitive and broaden your product offering overnight? A product focused message would instantly be inaccurate.

Highlight why you are better and focus on those points with enthusiasm and with true examples. 'A friendly service' has been said a million times and is therefore ignored as a reason for client engagement. 'A friendly service because of X Y and Z' reinforces that your message is not just empty words. Case studies packed with genuine USPs and working examples are invaluable in this exercise.