Ex-Insight duo go it alone with new channel consultancy
COG Consultancy launched on Friday and aims to turn over more than £20m in three years
Two ex-Insight staff have left the reseller to found a new IT partner consultancy they hope will smash the £20m sales barrier in three years.
Oliver Mason and Greg Swaffer worked at Insight for about three years before leaving to set up the COG Consultancy, which launched on Friday. Investment consultant Charles Crowder is also a founding member and director, along with two other directors - a cloud boss and a technical leader - who cannot be named at this point.
COG claims to be an independent consultancy and aims to match resellers with customers and make the partnering process easier.
"There is a calling for that," Mason told CRN. "The industry in a few years will turn into a few 'super VARs' and it will move more towards a finance business model. We have a network of key clients and we manage their IT spend. We bring... a selection of partners to the table and they [the customers] make the decision. The transaction is directly between that partner and the client. We are demystifying the 'value-add' that every company likes to say it gives."
Mason said he and Swaffer were part of a successful team at Insight which built their accounts from nothing, and at the point they left the firm, their team was "one of the most successful in the UK, if not Europe, based on the figures we were achieving".
"Insight has gone through this transition to become a solutions provider," he said. "I don't want to say anything too negative about Insight, but I will be honest with you: my response is that becoming a solutions provider is about far more than changing your logo. They haven't acquired any companies or brought in any additional resource, so what we're talking about is Insight's business model is traditional business... and then professional services and outsourcing."
Mason said he hopes COG will capitalise on the "huge demand" for professional services and offer customers better value and resources. At the moment, the COG quintet operate from an office in Mayfair and are recruiting account managers and business development managers.
He and the team have high hopes for the company.
"The revenue we are anticipating for the first year of business is £5m," he said. "That is the expectation and we feel very comfortable delivering. In three years, we are looking to be entering the CRN Top VARs - within years we want to be a £23m company to be able to get up there. It's a very different business model where everything coming into the business will be profit."