CHANNEL I TECHNOLOGY
The Zycko MBO - with Group MD, Nick Moglia, David Galton-Fenzi and Group Financial and Operations Director, Ken Wood acquiring the majority shareholding from founder, Rory Sweet - is the catalyst that could see the distributor make its presence felt at the top table within the Channel on a global basis. Originally launched in 1999 from a single office, Zycko now has an annual turnover of around £120m, with 14 offices across four continents. However, if the company’s expansion plans, fuelled by its successful track record at identifying and bringing to market new, disruptive technologies, come to fruition, then it will have tripled turnover and increased its worldwide presence significantly over the next three to five years.
Nick Moglia, Zycko’s Group Managing Director, comments: “Helping to drive Zycko’s success over the last decade has been a great experience. We are very much looking forward to the next phase in the company’s development as we deliver even more growth. This will be achieved through a combination of vendor expansion, and further overseas offices, strengthening our position as a pan-European value-added distributor.”
David Galton-Fenzi, group sales and marketing director, adds: “Any successful channel business model must take into account the needs of the customer, and aim to provide a value-added service based on knowledge, education and sound investment; this will be a continued strategy as we take the business forward. “We set ourselves apart by uncovering disruptive technologies and introducing them to the Channel, in order to give our resellers an edge in a competitive marketplace. The team we’ve built over the years allows us to do this, and is ultimately why I believe we can justify our position as Europe’s leading-edge disruptive distributor right now, and, at some stage in the future, earn a similar worldwide reputation.”
Lest all this seem a little fanciful, barely had the ink dried on the MBO deal, than Zycko was announcing the opening of a Polish office. Clearly, Europe will continue to be the major focus for Zycko, as Galton-Fenzi explains: “We’re entering a new era in Zycko’s evolution. Recently we’ve opened offices in both Hungary and, now, Poland. We’re planning to establish a presence in Romania and the Czech Republic, and the Balkans region in general, as well as targeting Central Europe and increasing our investment in several other countries, including Russia and Italy.”
Key to the success of these expansion plans is the establishment of a new management structure at Zycko. As Galton-Fenzi says: “In any business, time is at a premium and we need to put a proper structure in place to ensure that everyone is working as effectively as possible. We’re getting more managers involved. For example, Darren Sheppard, with a background in storage networking, and having worked in both vendor land and reseller land, is heading up our vendor division. He’ll be overseeing the product teams. This will be freeing up more of my time to concentratre on international sales.”
The aim is to have a tier of trusted managers, covering all the major disciplines, such as sales, technical, professional services and marketing. Alongside the upgrading of our internal systems –our CRM for one thing – this will bring a sharper focus to Zycko as we seek to meet the targets of our five year plan
Galton-Fenzi adds: “The aim is to have a tier of trusted managers, covering all the major disciplines, such as sales, technical, professional services and marketing. Alongside the upgrading of our internal systems –our CRM for one thing – this will bring a sharper focus to Zycko as we seek to meet the targets of our five year plan.”
Organic growth is the plan, although a strategic acquisition or two, perhaps helping Zycko to gain a fast foothold in a new country or region, is not ruled
out.Galton-Fenzi continues: “Ultimately, we need to establish ourselves as a global presence, and the MBO and our management restructuring gives us the best possible chance of achieving this objective.”
The other major impetus that will help Zycko to expand is nothing new, but one that will be optimised by the company’s reorganisation. Galton-Fenzi explains: “The large global distributors might have sheer ‘weight in numbers’, but probably not the level of integration with vendors that the vendors ideally require in order to optimise their sales. Zycko’s single biggest strength to date has been the identification of disruptive technologies but, as importantly, the nurturing of the relationships between ourselves and the vendors who are bringing these new ideas to market. We have a much higher level of connection with our vendors than most distributors.”
Galton-Fenzi cites the relationship with Riverbed as a perfect example of how Zycko identified and brought to the European market a market-leading (WAN optimisation) technology ‘ahead of the curve’. Thanks to the relationship Zycko has built with Riverbed over a number of years, it is very difficult for other distributors to compete, either over Riverbed itself, or the WAN optimisation space more generally.
Minutely planned, or happy circumstance, Zycko’s vendor list is relatively free of the tensions that are dominating the Channel right now, as the major vendors continue to demand more and more from their distributors and resellers, at the same time as margins tighten and volumes of traditional products drop away.
WWW.SNSEUROPE.COM | SEPTEMBER 2011 29
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