Angus McCaffery has guided Maintel from its roots in PBX maintenance and installation to the AIM listed, multi-faceted ICT solutions provider it is today with the financial muscle to acquire companies like Datapoint.
McCaffery co-founded the business in 1991 at the start of the telecoms deregulation boom and in its early years Maintel was the de-facto provider of engineering and support services for the fast growing independent telecoms channel. Maintel has grown steadily in its 23 year history, adding B2B managed services, network services and mobile estate management to its portfolio and is now aiming to deliver even better returns for its shareholders via its ongoing acquisition programme. The £3.5 million cash deal for Datapoint is Maintel's third acquisition in four years, having bought Redstone's maintenance assets for £1.75 million in October 2010 and B2B dealer Totility for £7 million last November.
The acquisition of Datapoint's UK and Irish operations, which McCaffery describes as a 'game changer', takes Maintel's turnover to £40 million plus and an employee head count of 260 - a far cry from the handful of engineers McCaffery employed in Maintel's early days operating out of unglamorous offices in London's Battersea. Comms Dealer caught up with McCaffery last month in his favourite Turkish restaurant in upwardly mobile Southwark, a stone's throw away from Maintel's South London headquarters. Our first question to the entrepreneur was a simple one: As a Maintel founder does he consider the growth of his business to be on-plan?
"It all depends what time of year you ask that question," he said. "As we are listed on the Stock Exchange the year end numbers become the big barometer as to whether we are on plan, so speak to me in the New Year about that! In terms of the bigger picture, yes we are very much on track. We have a very good management team expertly led by our CEO Eddie Buxton, we have a very solid customer base, world class products and things are going well."
McCaffery's nose for a deal was a key factor in the Datapoint acquisition, as he explained: "Like a lot of these things I heard about it on the grapevine. I made a few calls, and before I knew it we were meeting them. We went ahead with the acquisition because it was a near perfect fit for us. The business is predominantly Avaya-based with high end contact centre skills plus ongoing relationships with the likes of Genesys and Nectar, which obviously appealed.
"Datapoint also has a solid business in Ireland with strong ties to the US and throughout Europe, and like us it is engineering and technology led and has a good reputation. It means as a group we are now one of the largest Avaya Platinum partners and one of only two in Europe accredited across the entire Avaya portfolio."
The acquisition brings into the Maintel portfolio enhanced consulting and professional expertise in Unified Communications, with particular strength in the provision of contact centre solutions. "The purchase is a key component of our strategy to diversify our revenue base and significantly increase its skills and presence in new products and services. It's also upgraded our Avaya skills, which to be fair were pretty good already," said McCaffery.
So, after a long history driving Maintel's sales and marketing strategies is he tempted to lead a rebrand, especially as Maintel is as much a data business as a comms business these days? "That's a good question," he said. "The jury has been out and the truth is we like both names. The likelihood is that most of the group will remain as Maintel, but we will keep a subsidiary as Datapoint and channel the contact centre and Workforce Management business through that. It would be a shame not to use the Datapoint name at all because there is a lot of heritage there. It was founded in 1968 and in the seventies it was a Fortune 500 company employing over 3,000 people."
McCaffery admits Maintel's close bonds with the channel's smaller players have loosened over the years but he says there are no plans for Maintel to become a direct only business. "Working with channel partners is in our DNA and we are probably one of the most trusted channel brands out there, but today we mainly work alongside bigger businesses like O2 and Vodafone plus large system integrators and some of the bigger resellers. Most of the smaller resellers are more independent now so we see less of those relationships but we will of course still happily work with those guys. The exciting thing for me now is working with our US, European and Asian partners. It feels like we are progressing."
Maintel has survived and thrived in a tough economic climate by sticking to its core business while not being change averse. So does McCaffery see a long-term future for premise-based equipment provision and service? "The pace of change is always slower than you think," he commented. "But some customers' needs are simple and as long as there are manufacturers making CPE kit and running a channel, and resellers can make good margins selling it, then it will not go away. It's a bit like supermarkets and plastic bags, if they really wanted to stop us using them they would stop making them.
"But you ignore change at your peril. With MS Lync and 365 driving into our space you have got to keep evolving. Cloud communications is here to stay and you need to have a strategy for it and decide what role your business plays in it as it's a broad scope. We have been in hosted solutions for a while but are still finding our niche in true cloud. We have one very interesting project in this space but its top secret!
"I am also a non-exec for Nasstar, another AIM listed business that delivers hosted desktop and Exchange. It's been a good learning curve but as with all things there is no magic bullet. You still have to sell and deliver it to an SLA and at a profit. It's not the holy grail."
McCaffery sold some of his Maintel shares in 2012 but still retains almost 20% of the holding company's stock and aims to work on the group's development over the next decade in his own, 'highly organised' way. "I have an innate desire to get up and do things. I am a morning person and I'm no good at sitting around. I am a doer, a list person bordering on OCD and over organised. It drives my wife nuts. In 10 years' time the likelihood is that Maintel will have been consolidated into a bigger group but to be honest we enjoy what we do and the business is going well, so I would like to say we will still be here, just a lot bigger and hopefully more international!" •