Imerja gears up for growth

Ian Jackson: We are able to adapt to market trends quickly

Ambitious VAR Imerja is in a bullish mood as it takes on six new team members and celebrates its sixth successive year of growth.

The firm, which has offices in Lancashire, Hertfordshire and Leicestershire, has also launched its dedicated flexible services framework – m|four – in response to a growing trend to consolidate voice and data solution management and help end user customers improve efficiency.

Four of its latest recruits join as support engineers for Imerja’s Secure Operations Centre (ISOC), and it has also appointed Fayzul Wadiwala as business development manager to build on further growth in 2011.

Speaking to CRN, managing director Ian Jackson said: “We are still recruiting a number of positions and are working with an agency to do that, but since we were established in 2004 we have seen an average of 45 per cent growth.

“In year six we finished 25 per cent up on turnover and net profit was marginally up. In year seven we are predicting 20 per cent growth and even higher net profit,” he said.

“Our strategy is to resell more of our internal services and build on our managed services, hosted services and service management offering. We are really excited about the next 12 to 36 months because that’s where we are going to invest in the sales team and bolster our engineering team further.”

He said Imerja has a good mix of public and private sector clients stretching from Scotland to Southampton.

“To date our focus has been on the public sector, although we have also addressed the retail and business markets,” he said. “Because of our size we are able to adapt to market trends quite quickly, unlike some of our competition. It is important that the company adapts and evolves and does what the market requires.”

Jackson said his firm will continue to grow organically but would also consider acquisition if the right opportunity came along.

In terms of the cloud craze, Jackson said Imerja has always embraced the cloud in its various guises.

“In my opinion it is all about the delivery of services as opposed to product,” he said. “The concept has been around for years. Going forward, as we see more consolidation of areas that we focus on such as infrastructure, security and hosting, customers are going to want to buy services as opposed to equipment, and are going to want to only pay for what they need. We are fully prepared for that.”