Solving problems comes naturally to TFM Networks Managing Director David Heyes, so much so that we should perhaps dub him the industry's Solution Finder.
Heyes had no master plan to enter the telecoms market but he's not one to miss an opportunity that enables him to leverage his experience and skills to maximum advantage. "Telecoms wasn't planned, my introduction was opportunistic," he explained. "I love challenges, building new things and problem solving. This eventually took me into the IT department at Somerfield Stores where TFM were involved in a telecoms tender I was running. My previous retail experience and focus on customer service, cost-effective, efficient and sustainable change alongside a pragmatic approach to problem solving and overall people management have all helped shape how I work and deliver today."
Perhaps Heyes' pragmatic approach and dedication to the cause can be traced back to childhood when the early signs of a determined achiever were clearly evident. "At the age of 14 I was told that I would never pass an exam because my handwriting was illegible," he said. "It was, but I spent the entire summer holiday using technical drawing letters to re-learn how to write from scratch. It worked and I did well in my exams. However, I'm glad we have computers now."
Putting pen to paper in an evolved way rates as one of Heyes' main achievements in the early days, more latterly his biggest career achievement is building the Promotional Forecasting Unit sitting in logistics at Somerfield stores that transformed the accuracy and speed of reaction based on actual sales for the business. "This was seen by everyone other than the Chairman and Logistics Director as a poisoned chalice for the business," added Heyes. "But my idea and challenge was to deliver a balance across numerous disciplines and many areas of the business. Job done, it put me on the map at Somerfield and I haven't looked back since."
Not surprisingly an ordered approach to doing business and solving problems in many ways defines TFM's culture, nurtured by a man who bases customer focus on a clear order of priorities starting with protecting service, delivering customer projects and finally delivering internal change. "Ownership is also key," added Heyes. "I encourage the freedom to make decisions, focusing on resolution not blame with appropriate accountability and teamwork. Fundamental to this is that we work with, and alongside our customers, partners and suppliers and hand-hold rather than hand-off problems."
Another major task in hand has been the work undertaken since 2008 in positioning TFM to help managed service providers capitalise on hosting and cloud services, because reliability, quality and security of telecommunications connectivity is business critical. "In 2008 we knew we had to build out our own core network, enabling us to have more control over our services and be less reliant on suppliers," commented Heyes. "Our business-only MPLS network has no consumer traffic, is uncontended and highly secure. We deliver all voice and data connectivity, lines and associated services, 3G, 4G and cloud Wi-Fi fully supporting BYOD, all with business grade security, availability and reliability."
At that time TFM also made the decision to focus on channels, particularly the emerging hosted services companies that were reliant on their telecommunications capability. "We're still targeting channels, the emphasis being where we can help them offer truly complete service offerings from a safe, trusted and integrated pair of hands," added Heyes. "Next year will see us looking at how we deliver fully functional workflow customer portals. We've already combined the majority of our monitoring tools into a single web-based view and are trialing this with some customers. The aim is to build this into a full portal."
Alongside the more usual telecommunications services, TFM also uses and sells innovative software from Actual Experience with consultancy to look across increasingly complex digital supply chains, highlighting quickly and effectively the issues that degrade the end user experience. The company is also in the late stages of launching PCI support services to help guide and protect merchants from fraud and also to maintain PCI standards cost-effectively.
In 2009, TFM kicked off a number of initiatives aimed at being acquisition-ready via debt funding. The most significant of which was the move to deploy automated workflow across all internal processes and teams. "Our products and pricing, the ability to quote, authorise, convert to sales order, provision, support, invoice and provide management accounts and other management information all reside in a single system," said Heyes. "The system is being developed to enable multi-company operation and accounting by the end of 2013 for our acquisitions and any others in the future."
The acquisition of Globalwave (Waveworks) in May this year proved beneficial to both organisations. "The two distinct and separate businesses and business models are complementary and both have a lot to offer each other in terms of additional services," commented Heyes. "The increased scale enables us to look at more for everyone. The challenge we have with everyone doing everything is to focus on what needs to be core to our business and what we then subsequently source from our partners. This challenge will only get harder as the lines continue to blur between technology service providers."
The comms industry bugbear that grates Heyes most is the race to the bottom on cost, based on the ever present and aggressive battle for volume and market share. "This only works well for consumers as they can be standardised for volume," he said. "Businesses still want tailored options. If we can successfully automate or workflow the key deliverables we can handle far more volume with the same teams, ultimately at less cost without compromising our flexibility. This is a key area of focus. We've worked hard on internal automated workflow, the next step is to extend this out into a fully functional reseller partner portal. Many companies have nice looking portals, but I'm yet to see one that enables them to deliver automated workflow. We're looking at how best to achieve this in 2014."
Over the coming three years Heyes expects TFM to triple in size with another one or two acquisitions. Other focus areas include the cloud and wireless with unification also at the forefront of his mind. "There will be one place for all communications, aligned to either relevant business verticals and/or integrated into the customer be they the end customer, reseller or managed service provider," he commented.
"TFM Networks has a history of being opportunistic and relatively quick to react, and true to form we will be keeping our eye on early movers and looking to capitalise on opportunities where we can. The channel will see more of us in 2014 when we'll be in a better position to fully advance a number of concepts that have already gained traction. The icing on the cake is not about saying what you plan to do, it's about demonstrating what you've done. Watch this space."•