10 01732 759725 a piece of equipment? Am I selling a principle? Am I selling a dream? Am I selling an opportunity? What am I actually selling? Because, ultimately, these things often require a change in working practices to get the most value from them,” explains Burn. “It used to be that if I sold you a piece of hardware or technology it was probably to complement what you were already doing. Now, I’m selling you something, and I’m encouraging you to change your business practices to get the best out of it. That changes the sales process.” Sustainable relationships Arguably, AI also makes it more difficult to predict what the major technologies and major vendors will be in five years’ time – although Burn is confident that the key supplier relationships that Nimans has had for years will persist. “Take our relationship with BT, our relationship with Jabra, our relationship with Yealink. They are the kinds of business that will continue to evolve and over the years we’ve been loyal to them and they’ve been loyal to us, so I’m confident that those relationships will continue to grow. Then it’s a question of which others we bring on. It’s difficult to pin that down other than to say we will do that with as much energy and with as much integrity as we’ve always done.” In the meantime, Nimans will continue to develop its services offering and use its 40th anniversary year to make customers and its own employees more aware of its strengths and capabilities in this area. “People very much know us as that reliable place they can go to place an order for some headsets they will have the next morning. That’s all very good, but we’re also doing quite a few million pounds on software and network services and we’ve got to make sure everyone knows that, because software services is critical. If you’re buying a piece of video equipment now, people want to know how you service it, what software you’re putting on it, what applications you’re using with it. “People also want instant gratification – ‘I want to buy something and I want it now’. That’s the online world that’s been created by brilliant people like Amazon. We’ve spent a lot of time on that in the last couple of years and our online services are much better, but it’s something we’ve got to keep evolving, because it’s a fast moving and costly area. You have to have the right platforms to be able to do that. That is going to be a big part of our plans for the future.” www.nimans.net whereas at Nimans we used to look only months or perhaps one year ahead – it was very much about the here and now. As part of Midwich, we are really benefitting from looking further ahead, saying ‘Okay, what’s our longer-term plan here? How do we evolve to support what our customers will be doing five years from now?’. From being a ‘ship-that-thing-to-thatplace’ business Nimans has been shifting more towards network services, software provisioning and the like. You can’t make that switch overnight; you need to evolve your systems and architecture to support that, which is encouraging us to engage in longer-term planning.” Disruptive forces In the last 40 years Nimans has had to contend with hundreds of small crises and one very large one – Covid – when overnight the market, in Burn’s words, turned from being an oil tanker into a speed boat, the bow-waves of which we are still experiencing, for example in the reversal of hybrid working and the accelerating return to office. Now, the great disruptor is AI. This is clearly impacting Nimans, with many of its vendors, especially in the video and unified communications/customer experience (CX) space, incorporating AI into their products. Perhaps more than anything, this is changing the sales conversations that Nimans and its reseller/ MSP/SI partners have with customers. “At the moment, AI is throwing up a lot of questions for businesses. How do I use this? What do I get out of it? How much is it going to cost me? How does that impact us culturally, from a staff and a customer point of view? For our customers, these conversations raise different questions like How does this affect my sales process? Am I selling Enduring values Julian Nimans founded and ran Nimans very much in his own image and, seven years after his death, his values remain central to the distributor’s corporate culture. For Burn, staying true to his ethos continues to be a source of strength and a contributory factor to the company’s longevity – and staff retention. “We’re a nice place to work. We’ve got lots of staff who’ve been here 10, 15, 20 years and our senior management team, give or take one or two, have all been promoted through the business, so that fundamental DNA about how we treat customers, how we treat suppliers, how we treat staff still exists within the business. Do we get it right all the time? Of course not. Does that mean every relationship works? Of course not. But the fundamental principles on which Julian ran the business continue to hold us in good stead.” Burn, who has effectively been part of the business for 29 years, having started as a trainee account manager at Rocom (bought by Nimans in 2009), says the potential drawbacks of a loyal, long-serving workforce and management team have been eliminated by being part of Midwich, which has encouraged everyone to think more strategically. “Having a team that’s been in the business a long time can be a strength, but it can also make you a little insular and prone to doing things how they have always been done. Being part of the Midwich Group exposes us to fresh voices and new ideas and has allowed us to challenge ourselves and say ‘just because we’ve done it this way for 20 years, doesn’t make it right’. “One of the differences between an owner-run business and a business with a responsibility to shareholders is that Midwich tends to look further ahead, INTERVIEW ...continued
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