The industry needs more women like ICA founder and Director Pamela Blanchard. Not just to help redress the gender imbalance, but to take the sector to a whole new level.
Not for nothing did Stockport-based ICA scoop last year's Comms National Customer Service Award. It was no accident, but Blanchard's introduction to the comms sector was pure chance. "I didn't aspire to having a career in telecoms, like many I found myself in the industry to earn some extra money while studying part-time for a psychology degree," she explained. "I began working as a telecoms trainer, which only required me to know how to use a telephone. But programming a PBX and answering technical questions posed by the end user introduced a real challenge. I hate to be stuck for an answer so I decided to train as an engineer.
"I sat the course with 11 men who found my attendance as amusing as I did challenging. I'm not ashamed to say that I found it hard going, and while evenings on the course should have offered relief from three letter acronyms and a well deserved pint with the lads, I studied harder than ever and in 1995 became the first female Alcatel Certified Field Engineer."
But in an industry dominated by male engineers with experience Blanchard's gender proved to be a disadvantage before she'd even unloaded the car, let alone dared to be seen branding a krone tool. "I may have spent more time on site than was needed but I gained valuable experience and a flair for doctoring my sign off sheets," she added.
Blanchard, who is something of a super woman, had underestimated her considerable talents and worked for an engineer contracting to Alcatel at a time when the vendor had an impressive base of clients spanning the country and a community of resellers. "When Alcatel changed its business model in the mid-nineties and gave up its legacy base many of the customers with whom we had built up relationships found themselves without a choice of maintainer," explained Blanchard. "A clear opportunity had presented itself, so with no idea how to run a business I started ICA in 1995. The next few years brought about steady growth and a reputation for providing good solid service to both end users and resellers."
Milestones
Two big turning points for ICA were the introduction of network services in 2007 and winning a significant number of support contracts following the collapse of a large telco. Overnight ICA doubled in size and moved into larger premises. "During the last 21 years we have organically evolved from a service and maintenance provider to a systems integrator with a culture to match," added Blanchard. "Finding and keeping the right team with a passion for innovation and knowledge is the behaviour that drives our success. Our company values are delivered through strict policies and procedures that ensure the business stays focused. We understand the need to continually improve these processes to challenge our efficiencies and productivity. This is an industry that demands companies to respond to market changes fast without compromising on service."
Blanchard's career story to date reflects a deep imbalance in the industry's gender make-up but also shows what can be achieved by the 'minority' if more women decide to relieve the disparity. Under Blanchard's direction ICA has witnessed double digit growth in the past three years across all products and services. During the past year the company generated over 300 per cent growth in hosted services, doubled its maintenance and support business and launched IT support services to its existing clients. "To maintain this level of growth we will recruit additional support staff to ensure our quality of service isn't jeopardised by the high volume of client acquisition and also expand our account management team," added Blanchard. "Although growth is a priority for me and the team it is imperative that we achieve this in a manageable way that doesn't impact the service received from our client base."
Since inception the company has matured in its approach, grown up and not been afraid to learn from its mistakes along the way. "Taking time to measure the success of our corporate strategy has been an enabler for improvement," said Blanchard. "When I began to look at introducing policies and procedures the starting point was self-reflection, assessing my own strengths and weaknesses, my management style, employee engagement, and I evaluated the DNA of the business. I wasn't expecting the journey of self-development that I embarked upon and how this would give me the foundation to introduce and maintain changes. Once introduced and underpinned by our quality management frameworks the policies and procedures revolutionised the way the business operates, and these are fundamental to our ongoing success."
In self-reflecting mode, Blanchard recalled two areas of the business that she might have managed differently with the benefit of hindsight, decisions that would have impacted positively on the company. "The first was to offer network services much sooner to our clients," she said. "As a maintenance company our focus was too heavily weighted on PBX support. In hindsight it would have been an easy service to sell to our base of maintained clients and to have accelerated our revenues quicker. Secondly, acquiring an IT company was discussed at many a board meeting but never executed. This should have been a milestone in our strategy. Once introduced, our IT services increased profitability overnight."
ICA's focus for the coming 12 months will be on the contact centre space and the omni-channel customer experience, walking customers not only through the technology but also mapping the cross-channel journey. "Delivering multi-channel solutions also highlights some of the challenges we face," added Blanchard. "While many clients underestimate the advantages of embracing the technologies available, others want it overnight with restrained budgets. Understanding and meeting customer expectations and fulfilling change management are essential skills for any team in this space. The only way to address these challenges is by taking time to truly understand the customer expectations and ensuring each project is expertly managed by a qualified project manager."
Another big trend in the marketplace is hosted technology and the diminishing ISDN and PSTN revenues due to the exponential growth in SIP. "Although we are seeing huge adoption of these technologies there remains a large number of businesses that are not quite ready for such a migration, or where the technologies are not ready for the business," noted Blanchard. "It is this space where ICA can add great value by working carefully to accurately consider the benefits of such technologies, highlight the risks and build a strategic plan to ensure maximum return is delivered from existing investments before moving to other solutions."
In three-five years time ICA will have two clearly defined and very different divisions. One being hosted telephony and inbound services and the second specialising in contact centre solutions managing projects from inception through deployment. "We currently have a team of contact centre specialists working in partnership with our clients dedicating their time to ensuring that the technology is fully optimised," commented Blanchard. "This is an area of our business that we are passionate about and will hopefully result in our company growing four-fold, which means we'll outgrow our HQ."
She also expects ICA to move into a space opened up by consolidation, and has already seen opportunities created from the acquisition of comms providers by larger systems integrators. "As more telecoms providers similar in size to ICA are acquired I believe the gap is widening between the larger corporate entities and the VARs, and we see this as an opportunity to step in and play a more prominent role," she explained. "We have already seen a shift in how enterprises choose to engage with their communication partners and our agile approach to supporting those businesses will help us secure more significant contracts over the coming 24 months. Once engaged our clients are impressed and surprised by the service and ethics of the business, which leads to long-term relationships."
No one reading this article can deny that Blanchard is truly inspirational and well deserving of the Comms National Customer Service Award. It's an achievement made all the more remarkable when you consider that she also fulfils the responsibilities of a foster carer who has supported young teens for over 10 years. On her award win, Blanchard said: "Our clients and our partners have known for years that we deliver exceptional customer service, but winning such an award has allowed us to back-up those claims to prospective clients. There has also been a hugely positive impact internally. My team work exceptionally hard to maintain the level of service expected by our clients and winning the award is great recognition for them all."•