Trustmarque: Trinity merger has put us on the map

Integration with Trinity completed on 1 August with all staff and assets officially moved under Trustmarque brand

Trustmarque has said the integration with Trinity has "put us on the map as a serious systems integrator", four weeks after the merger was made official.

News of the merger between Trustmarque and Trinity was first announced in January, with Trustmarque retaining the moniker for the enlarged group. Both firms were bought by business process outsourcing firm Liberata following respective financial difficulties.

Speaking to CRN, Trustmarque's sales and marketing director, Angelo Di Ventura, said the integration process was finally completed on 1 August.

The process of combining the two businesses began at the beginning of the year, with sales and marketing coming together across both companies and the group going to market as "the new Trustmarque" to customers for the past seven months, Di Ventura explained.

Now the group has finalised the integration, with all employees and physical assets – such as offices and intellectual property – moved under the Trustmarque brand as of 1 August. The Trinity brand name has been discontinued, Di Ventura said.

"We are a much more balanced organisation now with the portfolio of services and products which we offer. We are still a big product reseller and now have this significant professional, cloud and managed services business, which I think puts us on the map as a serious systems integrator," he said.

Di Ventura said a small services office was closed in Manchester at the start of the year, with about 10 staff moved elsewhere in the group. But aside from that, he said there have been no office closures and also indicated the firm is looking to expand, with Wales highlighted as a potential target.

"We have a significant presence in Wales, so we could open something there in the near future," he said.

The Trustmarque business now employs about 560 staff and is "recruiting heavily" for sales and technical positions. When asked if there have been any job cuts over the past few months, Di Ventura said only a handful of back-office staff were let go in January and February.

Following the integration, Di Ventura said what will distinguish the company is its ability to provide both software and services.

"The thing that no one has ever properly nailed is the true cross-selling of software and services, including cloud services, to customers," he said. "We think we have a more balanced business than anyone out there in terms of our capability on both sides and our focus will be to take advantage of that. We have a huge customer base and we now have a whole heap of fantastic capability, and that's what we will be focused on."

He also said that migrating customers to changing IT environments is central to the business' focus.

"From a Microsoft perspective, there is a lot changing in our world. The classic LSP model is being disrupted heavily, and the future is all about customers using tech and utilising it on a pay-as-you-go basis," he said.

"For that you need the capability to migrate customers from where they are, to where they need to get to, and give them the tools and advice to manage it on an ongoing basis. I think if you ask me what we are focused on, that's definitely something that's driving and developing us in terms of the key skill set."

The public sector has historically been key to Trustmarque, and Di Ventura said it now accounts for about 70 per cent of the company's revenues. But as well as the public sector remaining "a core part of our strategy", Di Ventura also said Trustmarque is now looking to expand its private sector footprint and is investing in sales around this.