Prestige looks to treble sales as it morphs into channel services provider

Birmingham firm formerly focused on end customers is now looking to support companies with which it previously competed

Prestige Data Centre Solutions is looking to treble its turnover in the next three years after shifting its focus from selling to end customers to fellow channel firms.

Since the start of the year, Prestige has been overhauling its sales structure as it looks to become a channel-only service provider. It previously billed itself as a traditional reseller.

The switch has seen its business shift from being entirely with customers, to split equally between them and other channel firms. It now plans to shrink its end-customer business further, to one third within the next year.

James Coyle, commercial and logistics director at Prestige, said: "I'd love to say that the shift [in our focus] is as a result of a fantastic marketing campaign, but it is actually because other [resellers] have dropped the ball, and we have found that we are moving into the space because of that."

Coyle claims that problems in the channel stem from the number of acquisitions the industry has seen in recent years, which have caused confusion and "dropped service levels off a cliff".

These acquisitions, he says, have meant that a number of the industry's major firms are no longer able to provide the services they used to now that they are part of a bigger company.

Because of this, Prestige is now partnering with some of the channel's biggest VARs and providing services for firms that were previously considered rivals.

"With all the 26 years of relationships and business [experience] we have, we actually found that we know the channel business better than the people who are doing it at the moment," he said.

"Within the channel environment the companies that were with the large vendors are desperately looking for other partners to provide services, and we are in the perfect position to do it."

Having reacted to this shift in the market, Prestige now plans to become 100 per cent partner focused and has set itself the target of becoming the biggest indirect maintenance provider on HP, EMC and Dell.

The firm's current turnover is around £5m, but Coyle wants to see this triple to £15m in the next three years.

With that plan in mind, Prestige - which has traditionally had a strong footprint in Birmingham - plans to expand into London, first by basing more engineers there and then potentially opening an office.