Pure Technology Group hails public sector wins after hitting record revenue

COO Cliff Fox tells CRN how having dedicated team for frameworks has helped turnover hit £33m

Pure Technology Group's focus on winning public sector business was a key driver towards its record revenue of £33m, according to COO Cliff Fox.

The Leeds-based VAR saw its total revenue jump around 18 per cent to £33m for the 12 months ending 31 May 2019.

It hailed its entry onto the Yorkshire Purchasing Organisation's cloud and hardware frameworks - which have a combined value of around £600m - as well as success on other frameworks as a key driver for growth.

"Historically, we've always had some public sector customers but we've never had any dedicated effort towards the public sector, and part of the strategy refresh in April was that we thought that it was time now for us to approach that with more emphasis," Fox explained to CRN.

"We've hired a team specifically aimed at [going after public sector opportunities] and now that we've got some experience we'll go for it in a bigger way. We are learning, we are developing and we're not the finished article but we think we've got a good story to tell.

"We're very different from the much bigger competitors who are very well established in the public sector. We're offering a more tailored and personal solution and that's where we're hoping to win."

Last year the VAR snapped up Wigan-based Microsoft Gold partner Keytech Managed Solutions, and Fox described its integration into the group as having gone "fantastically".

However, he was coy on whether FY20 will see more acquisitions from the VAR, though he did hint at where the company is looking to expand geographically.

"It would be logical for us to have a southern presence; we have lots of customers in the south and that's something we've been looking at," he stated.

"We've not set any specific time scales on that, it's more about finding the right business.

"An acquisition and the integration that follows is key to us. If we buy wrong, we could be buying a big headache and we don't want that."

The company set out a three-year strategy for growth in 2016, which completed this year and has set out another roadmap for 2021. FY19 has seen it increase its workforce by 30 per cent, bringing its headcount to 130.

Cloud and managed services, more transactional business and the introduction of "nascent" technologies, such as VR, hyper convergence and IoT - were also called out as revenue drivers.

Fox acknowledged that the adoption of IoT has so far been slow, but compared it to the reputation cloud had a decade ago.

"When some new emergent technology appears very few people dive in headfirst and that's certainly been the case with IoT," he elaborated.

"Our pureIoT is a tried and tested end-to-end solution and, for us, that is better than something that's driven by proof-of-concept. We're approaching newer technologies with a highly practical approach.

"VR will grow over the next two to three years, but IoT may take a little bit longer because we probably won't get a big wave of adoption until 5G is commonplace.

"We're seeing it like cloud was 10 years ago - where there is hesitancy and tentative steps towards it from many organisations, but then there's a massive wave of adoption."