RM CFO: We look forward to working with Misco
Misco's role as hardware referral partner for RM will suit both sides, and intention is that firm will carry on RM One brand
RM will continue to fulfil existing hardware orders for the next six months, but all new hardware orders will now go through fulfilment partner Misco, the firm’s chief financial officer has confirmed.
As revealed by CRN last week, RM was speaking to several interested parties in relation to becoming a hardware referral partner while it focused on services, and it was common knowledge that Misco was the front-runner. Now the deal has been struck.
Speaking to CRN, Iain McIntosh, said: “Effectively we announced that we were exiting the sale of hardware earlier this year and were shutting down manufacturing next year. We are moving away from that. We are still doing the provision of hardware related to our network infrastructure business,” he said.
“Because some customers will still want a supply of PC and related devices, we struck up a deal with Misco that we will refer [these customers] to them.”
CRN also revealed in the same article that RM was looking to sell a number of bare-boned chassis, to keep the popular RM One model in production.
"The intention is that Misco will continue to offer the RM One product," he said.
He added that RM will still be fulfilling existing hardware orders, but any new hardware orders made from now on will go through Misco.
“We still have our warehouse and factory open to continue for the next six months while we run down the business, and will pass new orders on to Misco.”
He also said that while, initially, customers will still have RM as the point of contact, over time, if they are looking for just hardware, this could change.
“It all depends on the procurement. If they purely want hardware we are not going to be doing that, but if the customer wants an end solution we are more likely to be involved from a support and managed services angle.”
He added it was the right time for RM to move out of hardware provision/system building and focus on managed services.
“Along with most participants in the hardware area it is getting harder to make that profitable,” he said.
“We had managed to make a very low-margin business very profitable because of Building Schools for the Future (BSF), but we are now coming the end of that and we haven’t got the volume anymore, so could see it was going to turn into a loss-making business for us.”
And he added that despite some rumours that Misco might be in talks to buy the services business of RM, this was "definitely" not the case.
CRN was awaiting a comment from Misco as this article went to press.