Technology Reseller v40

01732 759725 VIEW FROM THE CHANNEL 46 ICC who worked together to get the deal over the line and, more importantly, to give the customer confidence in the handover. We have also had some good wins in the channel, helping partners who, due to the pandemic, were let down by an incumbent. These wins are a real testament to our stability. TR: Where is business proving most difficult? LW: Sifting through the various offerings that vendors keep bringing to market and ensuring that we choose the ones we feel are most relevant. As a mature MSP/VAR with more than 23 years’ experience, we have seen some big tech failures in our time and have wasted a lot of time and energy pushing a vendor unicorn. Now, our focus is firmly on the client. Another problem, given recent events, has been getting customers to commit to spend. We see this purely as a short-term problem and, as soon as businesses start to get into the new normal, we expect this to change. Whatever happens, we won’t be pushed into a price war that ends up in a race to the bottom. Cheap comes at a cost. TR: How have you changed/are you changing business operations to exploit new opportunities? LW: We are constantly evaluating the position of our company to ensure that we remain relevant and continue to deliver what we say we can deliver. We see far too many organisations that promise the world, but actually partner out a large percentage of their offering, which can create problems around service delivery. Here at ICC, we invest heavily in our skills and infrastructure, so we can deliver what we sell. Some organisations seem to disagree with this approach, but I would say it’s the reason we are still in business after 23 years. TR: What do you see as the biggest challenges facing channel businesses today? LW: Partners that lack transparency and, again, partners that are involved in a race to the bottom. Every organisation should have a USP, and I do think there are a few channel players that don’t really have one. From our point of view, that is also a good View from the Channel With Leon Wheeler, MD of The ICC Group Technology Reseller (TR): How’s business; better or worse than 12 months ago? And how confident are you about the future? Leon Wheeler (LW): Business over the past 12 months has been somewhat like a rollercoaster. At ICC, we are fortunate to have a broad spectrum of offerings within our portfolio and we have never been solely reliant on one customer type or revenue stream. While we have seen certain divisions within the group, such as hardware, drop off due to ‘physical hardware’ projects being put on hold, others have thrived. On our services side, for example, we have seen growth of some 40% year-on-year due to demand for extended services, such as uplifting SLAs to ensure business continuity and to minimise what has been a disruptive period for all businesses. Moving forward, our pipeline has never looked so strong. We have employed a further 15 people during the pandemic and have continued to assess and expand our offering so that we are ready to seize opportunities as they come into the business. I truly believe businesses that haven’t been badly damaged by the pandemic will come out fighting fit. Our vision for the future is to provide a personable approach, offering flexible services to enable businesses to achieve their objectives and become leaders in their sectors. TR: In what areas are you experiencing strongest demand? LW: Managed services, with high levels of interest in cloud services such as M365 and DR/BC solutions. The ongoing evolution of our offering to provide a true end-to-end service covering all aspects of the IT lifecycle – for the SME market and our partners – is generating considerable demand, be it for cloud, hybrid or the outsourcing of a company’s entire IT resource. TR: What recent wins are you most proud of? LW: Being awarded a full outsourced managed service contract for a 500-user base, 100-year-old, multi-site organisation was great, especially considering they had been with the incumbent for some 25 years. It’s a real credit to the team at The ICC Group is an IT solutions provider headquartered in Wetherby, West Yorkshire, with branch offices in Basingstoke, Castle Donington and Glasgow. Established in 1998, it meets the IT needs of SMEs, enterprises and public sector customers across the UK by providing IT hardware (including servers, storage and infrastructure), maintenance & 24x7x365 support of business-critical systems, and managed services. The latter is a fast growing part of the business, in which The ICC Group continues to invest with additional headcount and new partner relationships, most recently with managed EDR specialist Custodian 360. This will enable The ICC Group to provide new and existing customers with effective and managed endpoint detection and response, on top of its existing network monitoring services. Here, Managing Director Leon Wheeler gives his view from the channel.