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BUSINESS PROFILE


A thoroughly Modern man


Adrian Barnard is the epitome of a self-made man who, after a decade at the helm of Modern Communications, continues to exude a passion for the comms industry and a desire to do things well which is both refreshing and inspiring.


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arnard set up Modern in 1998 with a clear aim - to address the wealth


of business opportunities in Central London and, as he readily admits, he enjoyed some halcyon days when there was money around and a hungry appetite for what was then the typical telephone system and LCR combination sale. Today, Barnard remains as upbeat and positive about his company as ever but he agrees his approach to life and business is more reflective and ‘conservative with a small c’. He’s something of a traditionalist too and likes nothing more than enjoying the company of a corporate customer in the confines of The East India Club off London’s Pall Mall, which is steeped in British colonial history and is the unofficial clubhouse of the famous Barbarians Rugby Club.


In the American Bar at the Club, where the English RFU once held ‘off-the-record’ disciplinary hearings over a gin and tonic, Barnard reflected on the past and future of his business and the industry as a whole. “It’s fair to say I was once part of what became known as the LCR millionaires club


in the nineties. I had the Aston Martin, I walked the Atlas Mountains for charity, I ran the Sahara and paraglided off Mont Blanc. Yes I guess it’s fair to say I had a great time and I was a lot slimmer too! But these days I am very much money motivated for my family. I will always earn a good living but I have got more responsibilities now. Frankly, my goals now are to give my children the best start in life I possibly can and spend as much time with them as I can. These days I would rather cook a nice dinner for my wife and friends than go out on the town.”


Barnard is equally committed to the people he works with that have helped him build a multi-faceted, full service converged solution business that looks after a plethora of high end London based customers in the City and West End. He is also somewhat humbled by the success he has achieved. He added: “Really it’s all about accountability. As a leader you define the culture of the business. I am a hands-on executive and manage the key customers and suppliers. And I invest the profit we make into growing the business. I regard running


Modern as a huge honour. Lots of owner managers out there will understand what I mean. People think we have all the power as employers. We don’t. We actually have a huge amount of responsibility, but it’s a responsibility I would fight to keep because it’s a great privilege to have people you respect working with you and keeping customers happy.”


Three years ago Barnard added staff with IT and engineering skills to the Modern team and now has 20 plus people providing customers with a full gamut of integrated voice, data and mobile solutions. “I am not really interested in the granularity of how an exchange backup solution works,” he said. “What I am interested in is that I have good people I can trust to get the solution stable and reliable. You need to trust your instincts more when you don’t have the specific technical knowledge and make sure you have people around you that are competent and confident enough to work on their own.”


The Modern way, as Barnard stresses, is giving the valued customers they have the best


possible care and attention and to be the single source for all ICT requirements. He believes it’s the key to growth and fundamental to that mission is good supplier relationships. “I think it’s important to do more than what your promise to deliver,” he said. “And if that means giving customers, whether that have got a 24-7 support contract or not, access to our out of hours engineers to raise simple faults then we’ll do it. The most important thing to me is to provide reliable business strength service and not to look to shave off a couple of grand here and there every month on my costs by dancing between core suppliers. I stick rigidly with serious suppliers in the industry that are dedicated to the channel. Buying is half the art of selling. If you don’t buy right you can’t sell right, it’s as simple as that.”


Most of Modern’s clients are entrepreneurs, private professional practices, and high net worth individuals where trust and referral is very important. “We want to provide them with the best services, which we can bundle together and brand with our own pricing and our own account management,”


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60 COMMS DEALER OCTOBER 2011 Adrian Barnard


added Barnard. “I personally don’t want service issues. If I can have a premium supplier and my service costs are reduced and my customer satisfaction is much higher, I will always chose that premium supplier. We have been very lucky. We teamed up years ago with Vodafone, now we’re with O2 as well and we are a long standing partner of Gamma and BT. Customer retention is the most important thing, talking to customers regularly and doing more for them. We don’t talk about our service on a Power Point, we do it every day. We retain clients by doing more for them. Old fashioned business principles win out.


“I know I have got a team of people that are taking care of customers and our livelihoods. The great privilege that bestows upon me and the freedom it gives me is all about the choices I have made and I don’t take it for granted. I am still very ambitious to have a very reputable company and to keep growing it to a certain size with a premium attached to the value of our contracts. The desire is still there but the ambition has changed in the 10-plus years since I started the business.”


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