INTERVIEW: GRAHAM FRY, AVSNET Controlling the network
After rebranding from AVSolution, avsnet has continued to report strong growth. James McGrath spoke to the company’s managing director about its new identity and why the integrator decided to increase its networks and unified communications focus
rather keep ownership but they’re looking to drive down the costs of support and reduce the headache it gives them, so with those companies we offer a very strategic consultative way of working and give them that roadmap on how to achieve that. We’ve seen a lot of the
background. We’ve worked on many projects over many years – we both came from an engineering background and we’ve led technically strong companies.
I had made the decision to
Why did the company elect to move towards the UC/ business communications side of the market? We were moving into networks a long time ago. We’ve always specialised in videoconferencing alongside the audiovisual, and what became apparent quite quickly on that journey was that you can’t own the videoconferencing if you don’t look at the network and understand it. And with the video side becoming part of unified communications it was just a natural progression. Also, my long-term view
around AV is it’ll be moving more to IP-based systems so things are getting virtualised more and more – you can already see it with audio products moving to IP-based streaming, and signage. The move to networks was really
20 October 2013
to complement our portfolio and to give us more control over what we were doing. We also made the move for commercial reasons; the IP and network companies are coming towards what we do – therefore if we didn’t branch out we would have become quite a specialised little unit. That might have worked for us; we did have talks about becoming more of a channel partner to larger IP companies but it didn’t really fit. We’ve got lots of direct customers who like us, and over the last year more of them have given us more of their estates to look after, to design and to work with, so it’s been a great move.
What changes did you have to make to make this move? The biggest change was the brand. Previously we were called AVSolution, which
limited us because it was hard to get people to take us seriously as more than an AV company. So I think the rebrand was quite a large step. Then we brought in a new chairman, finance director and commercial director from a more ‘networks’ background and then we further enhanced and accelerated everything through the acquisition of Besttel.
What was the thought process behind the acquisition? Paul Cobley, who was managing director of Besttel, is now my technical director. Paul and I go back a long way and we were doing unified communication projects before it was called unified communications, myself looking at video and him coming from a voice
invest in the key management people and drive sales a bit harder. Whereas I’d more naturally moved into sales, Paul was always more technical than me so there was a good fit there. He had a technically led company with excellent resources, skills and capabilities but what he was lacking was the sales engine to drive that, and I had developed the sales engine. Add to that a new chairman, financial director and all the other financial members in play and it was a natural fit and allowed for Paul to further his ambition and increased our move into the networks world. There was a bit of due
diligence and commercial aspects to work out, then we made the move early this year – and it’s gone brilliantly. Paul now has a sales engine driving his ability and further enhancing ours with other key members coming into the team. The company has accelerated its growth and momentum immeasurably.
Is the trend continuing for companies downsizing IT departments and outsourcing to specialist companies like yours? Absolutely. Companies are looking at different ways [to improve efficiency] and we are finding with a lot of companies that by making sure they have the right strategy, they can reduce their support costs in house. Some larger companies would
slightly smaller companies wanting to outsource and sometimes, commercially, it doesn’t look on paper like it makes sense – but they cut costs off support and other things, and I guess the comfort that the client can get is allowing that to happen. Overall I’d say it depends on the size of the company. Even for smaller companies leaving it in house does look right financially, but it may not always go that way. Certainly with larger companies it’s about giving them strategies with support. Sometimes we find larger companies have so many different technologies, they have pockets of technology; the sales team might be using [Cisco’s UC collaboration system] Jabber while other parts of the business are on [Microsoft] Lync. By trying to give them a clear strategy where they need to be more unified with less technology, we are really helping these types of companies. A lot of customers are slightly confused at the minute because there’s so much movement in the technology and different options available. We’re helping them establish what they’re actually using today and then working with them on how they can move forward. It’s a bit ‘wood for the trees’, and that is the massive value we’re bringing to a lot of companies.
What market sectors do these companies operate in? We’ve got a strong eye on corporate – that probably accounts for about two-thirds of our business. Tucked in alongside that is two large retail chains where you have the retail side of the business and the corporate side
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‘You can’t own the videoconferencing if you don’t look at the network and understand it’
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