BT Engage IT to draw on power of parent
VAR target five per cent share of available market as it foster ties with BT Business and Global Services account managers
BT Engage IT aims to command a five per cent share of UK upper mid-market IT spend within three years by flexing the muscles of parent company BT.
The BT Engage IT brand was created two years ago on the back of BT's acquisitions of mid-market resellers Basilica and Lynx.
BT Engage IT managing director Martin Balaam said the top priority now, following the period of integration, is to grow aggressively by working more closely with account teams within BT Business and BT Global Services.
BT Engage IT's target market is UK firms with between 500 and 5,000 IT users, or smaller but higher-spending professional services firms.
"We believe that segment is worth about £20bn and we have about one per cent of that," Balaam said. "BT currently transacts with about 40 per cent of those customers so we are looking to leverage off our parent to increase our market share.
"Our aspiration is to have at least a five per cent market share, which is not unachievable in the mid-term, depending on organic and inorganic investment."
Balaam said BT Engage IT would reciprocate by forging new relationships for BT.
"As well as providing BT with a source of profitable revenue growth, we are already starting to see signs we can influence choice of network provider," he said.
Balaam argued there has been a "parting of the waves" between product and IT services-focused VARs and that BT Engage IT would veer towards the latter camp.
"For 2e2, Computacenter and SCC, hardware and software sales are a product of being able to fulfil services and that is the route we will go down," he said.
Martin Hellawell, managing director of Softcat, said: "BT Engage IT is an honorable competitor and doesn't use I used to see BT Engage IT a lot more in the Basilica days as it's trying to go into the larger accounts and out of the midmarket.
"The best resellers are the ones that are nimble and agile. It's the right strategy to embrace the power of BT but getting those qualities to work as part of a very large, complex organisation is tough."