01732 759725 48 Q&A View from the channel Q: How’s business; better or worse than 12 months ago? And how confident are you about the future? A: Business is good, in fact we’re not far off the same profit levels we were achieving pre-pandemic. I firmly believe that maintaining our profitability is a direct result of some of the changes we have made internally. We made the decision to review our technology stack to enable us to streamline and improve critical business workflows and we are reaping the reward of that investment now. We are also responding to requests from customers to help them to save money and we’re heavily focused on proving new cloud-native solutions that enable them to eliminate on-premise servers and which provide them with scalability to support future growth. I am confident about the future, our push towards cloud is delivering new recurring revenue streams and we are actively recruiting for two new sales professionals to join our team and support us in achieving our growth strategy. Q: In what areas are you experiencing strongest demand? A: There are two areas: as mentioned earlier, demand for full cloud solutions is really high as customers now want to benefit from the right solutions to enable them to support a hybrid workplace. I think there was a rush to put technology in place as a result of the lockdowns and now businesses realise that some of the investments made were not the right one. Secondly, two of our largest customers have undergone a complete print fleet refresh, we’ve saved them money on the click charge and they are also benefiting from the latest technology. Q: How have you changed/are you changing business operations to exploit new opportunities? A: I firmly believe that change is a constant and if we’re not prepared to flex and change then we can’t help our customers to optimise their operations. We have updated our internal systems to improve how we deliver service, streamline our internal processes and in turn improve on customers’ SLAs, we have also added more solutions to our offering. Q: What do you see as the biggest challenges facing channel businesses today? A: Ensuring excellence in customer service and satisfaction, and successfully winning new customers. Delivering on that is part of the reason Paul Clarke, Managing Director, United-UK Technology we are expanding our sales team with two new hires. Our business is run on three key values – do the right thing, be professional and be a team player. We all live by these three ‘rules’ every day – sometimes doing the right thing might mean losing money, but we firmly believe in providing the very best solution for the customer. Q: Could vendors and distributors do more to help you overcome them? And if so, what? A: I think taking a more personal and individual approach would be helpful – rather than focusing on marketing efforts on the ‘product of the month’ and having tunnel vision, taking some time to understand the reseller’s business, customer base and challenges to provide tailored solutions/support would be better for business. Another gripe of mine is continuity of staff – it takes time to build relationships – people do business with people, so I’d like to see some longevity in terms of account management. Q: If you could change one aspect of your job what would it be and why? A: I’m sure it’s been said before… but longer hours and more days in the week! No seriously, I do love my job and I am lucky to be surrounded by a fantastic team. I enjoy coming to work and that’s largely down to the people in the business. Paul Clarke www.united-technology.co.uk
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