There aren't too many comms entrepreneurs who began their careers by setting up a game lodge in South Africa, but as you will see, Mark Colquhoun, Chief Executive at Solar Communications, is one of a kind.
With the job of setting up a game lodge in South Africa done and dusted, Colquhoun returned to the UK in 1997 unsure of his next move. His father was a solicitor who at the time was doing some work for Tony Lewis at Club Communications. Colquhoun senior suggested an introduction as Club seemed to be on the up. "I secured an interview with Tony and worked at Club for a year making appointments for the sales people who were selling LCR," recalled Colquhoun. "I then decided to set up my own telecoms company, Call Options UK, with Tony's backing and support. That was in 1998 and I have been in the comms industry ever since."
Solar Communications was established in Bristol in 1988 providing telephone systems in the south west. After selling Call Options in 2005 to Adept Telecom, Colquhoun set up a company called Drumbeat Communications the same year, primarily focused on selling network services. Colquhoun bought Solar in December 2007 and merged it with Drumbeat. The Solar brand was retained, and over the last six years the company has expanded to offer a full telephony portfolio across the UK from its offices in Chippenham, London and Manchester. The Manchester office was established after Solar acquired Armstrong Communications in January 2013. Central to Solar's growth plan is delivering the best customer experience possible. "We believe this is the main differentiator in our industry," said Colquhoun.
His strategy continues to pay off with revenues rising from 8.5 million in 2011 to a projected 16.5 million this financial year. The company has circa 1,000 customers and has grown its headcount from 42 to a planned 80 this year. Colquhoun expects future growth to come from three areas - providing more solutions to the existing client base (notably in data services and mobile); offering services to new clients delivering contact centre and UC solutions; and facilitating more mergers or acquisitions with companies that have a similar service culture to Solar. The firm's three year strategy is to amass sales of at least £25 million in 2016 based on its business plan.
Aside from Solar's impressive growth phase another big change noted by Colquhoun has been the growing number of customers that buy all of their comms services from the firm. "This has been especially helped by the emergence of SIP whereby clients trust their telephone system provider to install it for them and support the data circuit it sits on," commented Colquhoun. "Another change we have experienced is that we are not just selling to the IT Manager/Director any more. The Financial Director, Sales Director and CEO are now far more interested in the differentiation that a good comms strategy gives them."
In terms of product development, Solar's cloud offering is proving to be the talk of the town. According to Colquhoun, end users are interested in a cloud solution but only if it offers the same reliability and functionality as an on-premise solution. "The cloud also brings with it a number of questions," he added. "Does the client move to a full cloud solution where they pay £x per month, or do they host their telephony in a data centre? Do they retain an on-premise solution or opt for a hybrid model? There is a technology and a financial decision to be made, and Solar can support all of these options.
"The challenge is ensuring that we continue to keep the proposition easy to understand and offer clients the best solution to meet their business needs today and in the future. Coming from a network services background I see the benefit of moving our PBX revenue to a recurring model and I believe that there are a large number of businesses with legacy PBXs who will be interested in moving to an £x per month for everything bundled in - calls, lines, Internet and PBX functionality."
One of the most interesting trends Colquhoun is tracking is the rising number of comms rooms shifting to the data centre and the growth of outsourced managed services. "Yet, in most businesses of 100-1000 employees, which is Solar's typical client size, the IT Manager/Director is still keeping most applications and servers in their own comms room mostly due to concerns around security and control," added Colquhoun.
"The speed with which companies will move to the cloud will vary depending on industry, business size and personnel's own views. Solar can support either on-premise or cloud or even hybrid versions, and will continue to give the best advice depending on each client's individual circumstances."
A closely related trend is the move away from installing physical PBXs to installing virtualised instances of telephony applications on the clients' servers, whether at their offices or hosted in a data centre. "Solar saw these trends emerge and has already invested considerably in up-skilling our engineers in virtualisation and data centre which are essential to support our clients," added Colquhoun.
He noted that Solar will continue to grow by providing total communication solutions. "We see clients as wanting Solar to be its trusted partner for all their voice and data needs," added Colquhoun. "The biggest challenge is making customers aware of all the available benefits for their business of the different options open to them when deploying a telephony solution, especially around SIP and the move to cloud. We are addressing this by constantly updating our website, holding client seminars, sending out regular newsletters and through constant training making sure that the Solar sales people and technicians are giving a consistent message."
Solar's acquisition of Armstrong Communications is emblematic of the company's knack for achieving a cultural fit at all levels. "I am proud of the acquisition of Armstrong Communications," added Colquhoun. "I was especially keen that we did nothing to upset the service culture that Armstrong had instilled in its staff. We committed to leaving the business alone for a year. Not a single member of staff or significant client was lost and the Manchester team smashed their sales target.
"In January this year we integrated the Manchester staff into Solar and the instant co-operation and team work from the enlarged team has been amazing. Seeing everyone from all offices operating as one team is very satisfying. The whole experience has shown me how well acquisitions can go if the cultures of the businesses are similar. The common message I hear from all is that there is a great team spirit and enjoyable working atmosphere at Solar. I believe this underpins the great customer service that we give our clients - we have staff who all care - and I know that everyone at Solar would say that it is the clients who pay their wages."•