Print.IT Reseller - issue 86

01732 759725 40 DEALER PROFILE and has partnered with other Canon resellers across the globe to offer clients what is essentially 24/7 service coverage. “We have leveraged some great contacts we have made across the globe though our partnership with Canon. Through collaboration with like-minded businesses, we’ve effectively taken the pain away from clients in terms of dealing with problems in different time zones etc.” Sills explained. “So for example, we have a very strong relationship with a partner in California and we work with them to provide clients with what we call follow the sun support – so we support the EMEA region and they look after the US and Asia regions. We’ve also worked on similar deals in the UAE and other regions.” He continued: “Offering clients 24 hour support can be really critical, especially when it comes down to software solutions. Say a uniFLOW client is London-based but they have offices all over the US and Asia – if their servers are in Europe but they have a problem in one of the US offices, they’d have to wait until the next day when the UK wakes up to get it resolved. Instead our US-based partner will take action and resolve it for them, which is a real value-add. That service is a really key part of our business and a profitable one, clients really appreciate the fact that we can deliver this service and we have a full-time project manager who looks after our global accounts,” he added. Sills points out that the partnership works both ways: “Talking to other partners in the Canon network it’s clear that we’re all facing similar problems, and by teaming up we can help each other. We’re working on some enormous projects at the moment which could be really exciting and could see us massively over achieve on our growth plans,” he added. Future growth Sills acknowledges that the business has not been immune to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. “Without a doubt the pandemic has hit the industry and our business very hard, and so our initial focus is for us to recover the business to its pre-COVID profitability, and we anticipate being back to that by 2022.” He continued: “At the lowest point, we were 80 per cent down on our service revenue, that quickly recovered to about 50 per cent, but nevertheless that’s still an incredibly large amount of money. We've actually planned that it won’t come back to 100 per cent, we're looking at probably about 80 per cent of what it was. However, we believe that we can make up the difference by growth in other areas.” Interestingly, the business plan didn’t factor in any big wins for 2021 but to date the company has completed two deals. “We’re 50 per cent ahead of the game already,” Sills said, adding: “We’ve seen a shift in mentality, people are going back to work and businesses are back buying again, spending in other areas such as solutions.” Speaking about the impact of lockdowns on the business, Sills said they had to keep going in order to support customers in key sectors and notably, completed their biggest ever MFiles deal in April 2020 at the height of the first lockdown. “People make this business unique and we are a really close knit group here, that culture has been driven very much by our founder. So when COVID hit us, everybody did pull together, and we didn't see any drop off in our ability to operate as a business, we were all able to work remotely and we’re very proud of how we all continued to support clients when they needed us. “Now, with the MBO completed, we are all looking to the future, and to deliver on our plan to grow the business to over £10 million turnover,” he concluded. www.sossystems.co.uk for future growth. Headquartered in Crawley, SOS Systems currently has a staff of 40 and plans to expand its footprint in the UK opening new offices to the north and south of HQ. “We’re really bucking the trend with what's happened in our sector. The key message we want to communicate to our staff is that we really have such a fantastic opportunity to go out there and win new business, to grow, and create more jobs,” Sills said. Partnering on a global scale The company taps into Canon’s nationwide network to service customers across the UK. “The partnership with Canon works really well in that respect and we’ve also been really successful attracting customers with a global footprint,” Sills explained. In a somewhat unusual move for a dealership, SOS Systems has over 15 years’ experience in project management ...continued James Overton Gary Tomlinson