Luminet CEO Sasha Williamson's new tactics mark a fresh approach to channel partnerships founded on a combination of vision, capability and determination.
Williamson's prevailing narrative indicates that he is clearly moving his business towards the channel to expand Luminet's routes to market via partners and wholesale. His outlook shows that he has not only seen what is possible growth-wise via partnerships but also the potential advantages to be gained from heterogeneous networks. "We want to be the leaders in intelligent managed services, pioneering a new approach to telecoms," he said. "We see a huge opportunity in heterogeneous networks and developing a neural host strategy."
In support of his statement Williamson also showed a determination to build on a new partnership with CCS that will see Luminet develop one of the first self-organising networks in a Tier One global city. "We see this as an industry game-changer in how mobile operators can scale with the ongoing increase in mobile data demand in urban areas," stated Williamson.
At this point the discussion moves from tactical logic and intent to capabilities and propositions. "Our big opportunity is to scale with larger partners and provide systems support for automation and sustainability," explained Williamson. "Our most popular channel products include co-location and business Internet services. We have recently launched the Fibre Air product, a wireless business Internet service that can be installed in as little as five working days. Partners reselling traditional fibre leased lines typically have to wait around 90 days for installation. With Fibre Air they can offer customers up to 2GB symmetrical broadband Internet connectivity almost straight away, which means they can immediately start billing."
He emerges as a figure in tune with techno-power and its potential to transform businesses while at the same time advancing Luminet's strategic cause. "We're driving our market penetration, developing new routes to market for wholesale and increasing our geographical presence," he emphasised.
Insights into Williamson's strategic thoughts recall past experiences that are very much in play today. "My career started in bulk purchasing for major European telecoms users and since then I have worked with a number of successful telcos including Broadband4U, Primus, Worldcom and ETT (now GTT)," he said. "Luminet is my most recent venture and my cross-functional experience in telecoms has helped me in this current role."
Luminet started life as Urban WiMax in 2007, an intelligent managed services provider offering organisations connectivity, communications, computing and security services. It was founded by Williamson and a management team that had strong experience within the telecoms and IT industries, holding key executive and technical roles in companies such as Telewest, ETT, CitiGroup, Orange and BT.
"From the outset we had an impressive 61 per cent CAGR," noted Williamson. "We have since weathered an economic crash and in May 2015 announced our rebrand to Luminet in line with an investment of £2.15 million through Santander's Breakthrough programme. Our turnover has grown every year since our inception and the funding enabled us to continue to innovate and develop our connectivity solution."
The financing from Santander enabled Luminet to accelerate its growth and develop a new product portfolio, including a LLU network and enhanced Fixed Wireless Access infrastructure. "We also offer intelligent PaaS value added services," said Williamson. "And provide services such as Insight, optimisation and control of any applications on any connectivity services. We pride ourselves on our 100 per cent SLA service for cloud and mission critical services, as well as the visibility and control we offer on any application on any connectivity with our intelligent PaaS."
Williamson says he has found an exciting course, one where a customer-centric culture permeates every aspect of the business. "Luminet currently has 550-plus customers and 70 partnerships," he added. "We have 50-80 per cent capacity in our data centres and 100 per cent core network uptime. We employ 28 members of staff in our central London office and are growing at a fantastic rate of 27 per cent per year. We align and empower our staff to the customer journey relationship and our transactional interaction, which is rated across four key measures at each stage. This has resulted in an improvement in our NPS score of nine to 42 over the last three years."•