Mitel EMEA chief braced for public spending cuts

Polls apart: The industry could face a public spending squeeze after the election, claims Graham Bevington

Mitel's EMEA managing director Graham Bevington has hailed the benefits of the vendor's streamlined management structure but stressed that the comms market faces another tough year.

Research house MZA revealed Mitel had become the UK's leading PBX vendor by total extensions during Q3 2009. Bevington expressed his pleasure at this, but pointed out that the market had shrunk by 24 per cent year on year during the quarter.

"I was pleased with the MZA status, but I recognise the fact that we were down six per cent overall, and down is down," he said. "I perceive we are outperforming the market; my hope is that the market starts to recover, but my fear is that, post-election, government spending is cut and there will be a double-dip recession."

As part of a cost-cutting drive, Mitel axed seven European country leaders, including UK sales director Enda Kenneally, in September. In the preceding year, the firm had already made a number of redundancies, having been hit hard by the Lehman Brothers collapse.

Bevington has since taken a more hands-on role in this country, supported by SME chief Robert Hutton and enterprise-focused Marcus Jewell.

"There are no more redundancies planned and I have the structure in place that I want," said Bevington. "Robert and Marcus have done a good job."

Bevington claimed that, though it was impossible to please everyone, the reshuffle has largely received "excellent feedback" from partners.

"People know we are a channel-centric business," he said. "We need to work smarter to create opportunities. It is a tough market and it makes us all a bit more focused. We know if [partners] fail, we fail. Our priority is to help channel partners be as successful as possible."