Darren Garland once patrolled the world's seas unnoticed but today he's plain sailing in the channel as Managing Director of highly visible distributor ProVu Communications.
Garland submersed himself in communications and command and control systems when he joined the Submarine Service after leaving school. During his 14 year stint in the Royal Navy he also achieved an honours degree in Electrical Engineering and became a Chartered Engineer. Two commercial roles followed his departure from the Services and with comms being a strong theme in his career story Garland set up his own company selling lines, minutes, PBXs and mobile contracts to businesses. "This is where I learnt the nuts and bolts of selling telecoms," he said. "I then helped to establish a SaaS company before anyone had heard of cloud. From there I moved to ProVu."
ProVu was established in 1999 by Chairman Peter Bryant and Sales Director Ian Godfrey. The business was set up to capture the nascent video phone market. But with broadband replacing ISDN-based services and demand growing for SIP-based communications ProVu shifted its focus onto SIP and phones and signed UK distribution agreements with snom and Sipura. "ProVu has grown year-on-year since its creation, but the last three years have seen us ratchet up growth significantly," said Garland. "With our secure financial position developed through organic growth ProVu is now considering expanding via acquisition within our chosen market area."
He attributes this uptick to the growing popularity of hosted telephony combined with the value added services that ProVu has developed to win additional business. Since 2012 ProVu has grown sales from £2 million to almost £5 million. Staff headcount has also increased and is forecast to number 19 by the summer. "Our location in Huddersfield is a key asset to ProVu," stated Garland. "Not only do we benefit from lower property overheads, our staff also benefit from more realistic house prices coupled with short journey times. Equally, Huddersfield has excellent education facilities and we have a sensible supply of capable dedicated people.
"Our staff turnover is extremely low which has allowed us to build a knowledgeable and committed team that understands our products and services. We have also recently taken on our first apprentices which is working out well. I am proud of all the team. Every member has contributed to the ProVu success story."
As a specialist VoIP distributor the majority of ProVu's sales are for the supply of SIP handsets to service providers and resellers. "We have selectively widened our portfolio of products to cover most of the hardware areas that a service provider or reseller would require," explained Garland. "We have also got better at communicating and connecting with our widening customer base about what we do and how we can make their life easier and better by dealing with us."
ProVu took an early decision not to sell services such as connectivity. "We complement rather than compete with our customers," added Garland. "We felt it was the correct strategy to develop close customer relationships. We have therefore invested heavily in developing systems that automate the process of ordering, deploying and managing hardware, thereby more efficiently serving our resellers. We can automatically provision handsets for our customers across all of our ranges."
Resellers buy through ProVu's ordering and provisioning portal called ProSys. The distributor also sells supporting kit such as gateways, IP PBXs, access control and paging equipment. ProVu has become a one-stop-shop where resellers can source all the hardware they need to deploy a VoIP solution. It also offers a technical service across all aspects of its portfolio.
Not one to sit on his hands, Garland has recently engaged with two vendors that are bringing UC applications to mobile phones. "Mobile will continue to converge with fixed line comms and the technology is moving at a rapid rate," he noted. "Wireless networks will also continue to gain traction and bring more flexibility to how communication devices are deployed. The more control you have over the customer's infrastructure the easier it will be to sell services to them. For example, if you do not control the LAN it's harder to put kit on the network and subsequently trouble shoot that equipment. Resellers need to invest in these areas of expertise and sell infrastructure to sell communications."