BUSINESS PROFILE
www.comms-dealer.com Crown’s aiming to reign COMPANY IN FOCUS
Crown Telecom Solutions has made big advances into comms territory just months after its launch in April this year. With a ready made customer base to sell into, the telco has quickly established a firm foothold and is set to take its proposition nationwide, according to Managing Director Mark Nicklin.
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icklin helped to set up Crown Telecom Solutions as part of the Crown Group
which has interests in oil and lubricant distribution, the resale of electricity, gas services and utility service connections. “Crown Telecom therefore has a good fit with the rest of the group,” said Nicklin. “Combining my previous experience in launching and developing telecoms businesses with Crown Group’s base of 26,000 customers and existing sales and service infrastructure made perfect sense.”
Nicklin set his first foot into telecoms when he walked through the door at Manchester-based Impact in 1996. He then moved to Stanhope to run the Manchester sales office before switching to Freetime where he developed the sales operation. A second stint at Stanhope was to follow before its merger with Aerofone. In 2002, Nicklin and former Stanhope colleague Tim Price set up GP Telecom offering BT’s wholesale products and NGN services. The company merged with Talking Technology enabling it to offer a complete telecommunication package.
Nicklin commented: “After growing the business to £5 million GP Telecom was sold to Elite in 2008
where I remained until March of this year. Having already grown a substantial telecoms business I welcomed the challenge of doing it again. Working within the Crown Group we have a well established brand with a good reputation and a strong service ethos, so we start off with a solid platform from which we can build.”
The company is already attacking the Crown customer base where existing customers take oil, electricity or gas from the Group. “From this we will expand into the wider north west business community, but we are not restricting ourselves to any particular sector,” added Nicklin. “We want to make life simpler for our customers with high levels of service and everything on one bill. Service is a crucial part of the proposition with 24/7 customer support, proactive service monitoring and guaranteed response.”
Crown Telecom Solutions is a fully accredited BT wholesale partner with access to developing technologies such as VoIP and super fast fibre-based broadband for video and data. The company offers a complete choice of voice and data services over fixed line, mobile and IP networks. This includes exchanges and
There will always be a cheaper alternative, but not necessarily a better one
Crown Telecom is a fully accredited service reseller operating as a WLR3 provider. The firm has also partnered with hardware providers and will offer PBX systems from manufacturers Toshiba, Siemens, Panasonic and Avaya. “Our new hosted BT IVPS service is attracting a lot of interest. The engineers and provisioning teams have all completed the training and the first installations have been completed. Early feedback from users is positive.”
Mark Nicklin
“We want to make life simpler for our customers with high levels of service and everything on one bill”
installations, even extending into the installation of network cabling. “The account manager will be the single point of contact for every customer, like having your own project manager,” added Nicklin. “This is the same business model that we use on the utility connections side of our business, where contractors have one point of contact for water, electricity and gas connections. We know just how much customers welcome the speed and simplicity that this brings.”
Comms is a competitive business so the biggest issue will always be customer retention, believes Nicklin. “There will always be a cheaper alternative but not necessarily a better one so, while we plan to be competitive our offering is based around customer service. The customer sees the value of having their own account manager and access to services that are robust, flexible and offer the latest advances in technology. The role of our account managers is to review service on a quarterly basis and to anticipate and overcome any potential problems. Our aim is to overcome billing issues, service outages and any other glitches to ensure smooth and trouble free service delivery.”
As an alternative to ISDN, SIP trunking is attracting a lot of attention, notes Nicklin. “We are also offering a disaster recovery service where we can ensure business continuity by automatically transferring calls to data lines if there is an outage in the main network. This resilience is essential for organisations where the phone is the main artery of communication, and by assuring continuity we can offset risk and add value,” he added.
Another issue for many suppliers will be managing the move from time-based business models to one based on service charges. Many traditional managers will struggle with this, Nicklin believes, but he says Crown has the experience to marry both modes of working and offer flexible packages that take account of the customer’s requirements. “We also have experienced IT staff that have fully embraced converged offerings. We can offer integrated solutions that are bespoke, economic, robust and efficient,” he said.
As veteran of the comms industry, Nicklin is in it for the long-term. “What an industry to work in,” Nicklin enthused. “The only certainty is change. Customers constantly present us with new challenges, technology presents new challenges and there is the ever present commercial challenge. This is what keeps me and the team going – and long may that continue.”
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30 COMMS DEALER NOVEMBER 2010
www.comms-dealer.com
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