CRN Hot Seat 2013 - Adam Jarvis
The top man at Intrinsic is adopting a lower risk approach to the year, and is concentrating on looking after customers and mopping up after struggling rivals, he tells Sara Yirrell
What are your plans for 2013?
We are looking at 15 per cent growth. That is our belief in terms of what we can achieve. We have pulled that back because we thought we could initially achieve more than that, but we decided to take a lower-risk approach. We are not taking as many risks as we perhaps want to, which depressurises expectations of the business.
This year we will also move into a new HQ, and we have centralised our 24/7 NOC and made it more aesthetically pleasing so we can show our customers.
We have also built a demo centre to highlight things such as BYOD. We want to get clients in to see us and then demo our capabilities to them. We have also simplified our portfolio into four architectures: user experience; mobility and connectivity; datacentre and cloud; and managed services.
Our key focus for this year is to take our four new simplified products and solution sets to existing clients and sell them. Also, we want to continue to find net new customers whose ICT infrastructure we think we can help to consolidate. It’s all about delivering the best experience to users so they can then deliver the best service to their customers through the best use of ICT.
It is also our priority to focus on organic growth. We think there is lots of opportunity and believe we can do so much more with existing customers’ business. We want to make sure we execute on that and achieve growth through organic means.
We are absolutely looking at acquisitions, particularly in the UC networks and on-premise datacentre space. We have seen quite a few businesses that lack the horsepower and resources to get to the next cycle of development.
We are also seeing lots of fledgling datacentre providers and SaaS providers that are throwing themselves out to market at an extortionate price.
There is a fair amount of money in the market to make acquisitions. People can pay premiums and ask premiums in some cases. But we are after like-minded businesses that we can pick up and take their offerings to our customers.
What technology trends do you see for 2013?
We are seeing feedback from our customers in three main areas:
■ The desire to use mobility-based devices continues to be thrown at us. Customers either want an informal device or they want to take a formal approach to this. Everybody is talking to us about it and that gives us two opportunities – in wireless networking and security based solutions – and these two areas are growing exponentially.
■ Virtualisation at a desktop level. People are reluctant to open their kimono and say outright that they are going for a virtualisation strategy – but we believe that in the next couple of years the virtualised desktop market will go through the roof.
■ Hybrid application delivery. We are still seeing people build on-premise datacentres – they are not stopping that – but they are saying they are not going to build a bigger datacentre. Instead some parts of the business will go into the cloud. We can drive organic and net new customers’ growth through our ability to integrate these and make it work.
How do you see the economy panning out this year?
It’s not easy out there. Anybody who tells you that it is must be on to a good thing or is exaggerating. It feels as if we have to do more to get the same result. You have to spend twice as much time on certain projects to end up with the same outcome. It feels like we are running a lot harder, but you get there in the end and you still get the satisfaction that business is there to be won.
I think in terms of the wider economy we are in for a period of stagnation. Quarter on quarter it will go down and come up and the economy will stay flat for the next couple of years.
There are clear issues holding back growth, whether you call it the fiscal cliff or debt mountain.
Banks are unwilling to invest and this will not change until mechanisms are put in place to relieve government debt. And this will not happen overnight.
What we are finding in the market is that it is business as usual. Everybody has business and demand – it is not negative sentiment or worry, but there is caution and no desire to step beyond the realms of comfort.
If we do the right things, we will adhere to our desired level of growth. We could take risks, but I would rather do a good job for our customers and keep investing in them.
I do not think this situation is going to change until we see some real decisions taken in government and until it controls expenditure issues.
The opportunity for us at the moment is that a lot of our competitors are struggling and there is a chance for market share gain and to acquire clients that are not receiving the level of support that they expect. That is going to be one area we seek to maximise. Overall, we are healthy and stable and we believe that we deliver great customer service.
COMPANY PROFILE
Merseyside-based Intrinsic was founded in 1999 and offers design, consultancy and project management services around converged communications. The firm, which counts Cisco, Microsoft, VMware, Citrix and Avaya as some of its key partners, is on a mission to become a £100m VAR and saw its revenue jump about a third in 2012. It has offices in Haydock, Merseyside, Thames Valley, Glasgow and the City of London, with further field-based engineers.