Print.IT Reseller - issue 50

PRINT IT RESELLER.UK COMPANY PROFILE 31 strategic partner under one platform,” Wilson said, adding: “We give them that utopic state – whereas previously they may have had a number of different technologies and service providers all doing different links in the chain, they can now bring that together under us. Or if they haven’t yet begun that journey, they know that they can work with us to look at say the AP process and from there we can move to hybrid mail, digital mail, accounts receivable, document management or GDPR compliance – all of the areas associated with information.” He continued: “Print falls under that as well because print is an important part of disseminating information around internally or out to customers. How do you take data within an ERP to create it into a document so that people can action that document, take that information and put it back into an ERP?” Free the humans Wilson says machines work with data people work with paper. “So we look to try to close that loop by getting the machines talking to each other and getting all the different systems working together, trying to stem the flow of paper, the interaction of people having to touch lots of pieces of paper and shuffle them around – our strapline for the FlowBots is free the humans!” He continued: “It’s very much about allowing people to get back on with value-based tasks and not be stuck doing manual processes which if we automate them can allow people to get on with delivering more value for their business.” Wilson argues that ultimately Stratas helps its customers become more effective. “We’re able to increase their bottom line, to help them become more efficient and do more with the resources they have at their disposal, do more with the funds that they have available to them because they’re able to free up more people to do value-based tasks instead of back-office clerical admin tasks,” he said. Looking to the future Stratas now has a 15-strong team of people in the business doing project management/professional services and has just appointed a new marketing manager. The company has doubled the size of the business year on year since it first started. “We have a strategic relationship with The Arena Group, the reason we do what we do with 15 people is because Arena is our engine house. This has enabled us to be customer and solution focussed, we haven’t had to build a business with finance, HR, logistics and a call centre, we’ve just literally stood on Arena’s shoulders and it has been instrumental to our success,”Wilson said. “This year is all about focusing on what we’ve developed over the past five years,” he continued. “We are just working on a significant rebrand – which will take Data Forge and FlowBots to the market in a big way.” Wilson says that its strategic relationship with Mitie is pivotal this year as it will be launching a large hybrid mail solution and digital mail solution in partnership with them. “From a Palette point of view, being their premier partner in the UK we’re going to be looking to bring more alliance partners on board. In effect we are Palette in the UK and they expect us very much to grow the purchase to pay automation and to bring on board alliance partners to resell those services,” he said. “This year for us is very much about bringing Data Forge to the market as a platform, in the past we’ve done all these things, but we kind of suffered from not wanting to create a commoditised product. People said it’s great but we don’t understand it, so we took a step back. We need to give things names, wrappers and boxes, so that people go right – Stratas, Data Forge, FlowBot – digital transformation and know that’s everything from accounts payable to content management and anything in between – anything to do with information, they’re the guys to go to,” Wilson explained. He added: “We need to now take that consolidated message to the market this year. And that’s why we’re rebranding. We’ve got some great relationships with Objectif Lune, Palette and M-Files, we’ve got the strategic partnership with Mitie and we wrap all of that together under Data Forge. We’re now ready to really show what we’ve been doing for the past five years. “So really 2018 is our coming of age, we’ve found our feet and gone through the start-up phase. We have been very lucky, as we won some large contracts during that time. We’ve taken Stratas from inception through to reality, made some mistakes along the way and found some fantastic strategic partners. We have a great team and we now know who we are and where we can add value, so we can really dress it up properly and start to talk about it,”Wilson said in conclusion. www.stratas.co.uk 2018 is our coming of age, we’ve found our feet and gone through the start-up phase. We have been very lucky, as we won some large contracts during that time (l-r) Petter Hansen, VP – Head of Strategic Alliances, Palette; Johan Harrysson, CEO, Palette; David Wilson, Managing Director, Stratas; Matthew Brown, Commercial Director, Stratas and Douglas Embleton, Country Manager, Palette UK