Print.IT Reseller - issue 50

01732 759725 34 DEALER PROFILE The Glasgow-headquartered firm, which celebrates its 30th anniversary this year, has launched an innovative three-year growth strategy to rapidly expand its presence in London and the Home Counties. Initially established by Founder and Managing Director Tom Nolan – an ex professional footballer – as a copier dealership in Glasgow, the company has expanded both its offer and its footprint. Today, NCS has eight offices nationwide – its northern region comprises offices in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Newcastle and Belfast. While the southern region led by Southern Director John Hawes, has bases in Stoke on Trent, Dereham and Purfleet. NCS has a customer base that spans all sectors, from large corporates with hundreds of MFPs across multiple sites, through to smaller SMEs some of whom may only have a single device that’s supplied and maintained by the firm. The company has a firm foothold in four key sectors; on the print side it is a Toshiba- first reseller and has been with the OEM for 20 plus years. It carries Lexmark and Canon as complementary brands. It also offers tailored solutions to customers across unified communications, mobile phones and franking. “We are also increasingly moving into the security arena, namely CCTV,” Hawes explained, adding: “This has been very much a customer-driven initiative, more so than a strategic decision to further NCS, a nationwide supplier of complete office solutions, is offering budding southern-based entrepreneurs a jumpstart towards owning their own business New business opportunity expand our offer.” Hawes argues that if you deliver great customer service, then clients will often ask you to provide additional solutions. “Moving into CCTV was a direct result of customer demand as was the supply of digital displays such as those deployed within call centres or sales operations,” he said, adding: “We make it very easy for customers to work with us. We have a UK-based call centre, providing them with a single contact point, so we can simply broker all their calls and direct security-specific enquiries for example, to our CCTV specialists.” IT services is one area where the firm has enjoyed significant success in Scotland. “We acquired Euro Systems, an IT service provider company, a while back, a move that enabled us to offer clients a range of complementary value- driven IT solutions,” Hawes explained. That part of the business has grown to around £3 million to date. “And it continues to get stronger,” Hawes said, adding: “It was a good move for us in Scotland and looking to the future, we will look to roll-out a similar set of IT-centric services and solutions in other regions.” Focus on cross-selling Hawes expects the company will close this financial year with a revenue around £25 million, which represents a five to six per cent increase year on year. “This growth has all been organic, we didn’t complete on any acquisitions last year,” he said, attributing the success on the company’s two-fold strategy to increase headcount within sales, as well as a focus on cross-selling. Expanding on the cross-selling focus, Hawes said: “Along with our people, our customers are NCS’ biggest asset and we work hard on client retention.” One of the ways in which NCS wins new business is via its multi-product discount platform. “We call this Operation one- bill,” Hawes explained. He continued: “It’s a customer incentive scheme. We offer a discount when a client adopts another service, so for example if a customer we provide printers to then deploys our telephony/ unified communications solutions, they benefit from a reduced price on the second product. “By the end of 2019, we’d like every one of our customers to have at least two ‘products’ from us – that’s an integral part of our strategy for next year and beyond.” Stronger in the south Future growth is firmly on the cards for the business and it is looking to grow to £30 million within the next three years. “We are heavily focused on growing If you deliver great customer service, then clients will often ask you to provide additional solutions. Moving into CCTV was a direct result of customer demand. Continued... John Hawes