'We're bringing furloughed staff back': European Electronique CEO on business under COVID
Yolanta Gill opens up on how the education and public sector-focused reseller has fared over the past three months
In March this year we were approaching our year-end very much on a high with a 25 per cent increase on revenue on the previous year and finishing our financial year with a turnover of £63.5m. At the same time COVID-19 slowly started to dominate the landscape. The ramifications of the crisis engulfing the world, started to trickle down and its potential effect on the business became a reality.
Like other businesses we had to react swiftly to change our business model to allow the bulk of our employees to work from home. Fortunately, we were well prepared for such an eventuality.
The closure of schools, universities and other organisations meant that planned work on most projects was stopped in its tracks. We found ourselves with a large engineering team unable to access customer sites, whilst everyone tried to make sense of the new reality and plan how to navigate through unchartered waters. The decision was then made to utilise the Government furlough scheme for some employees while we evaluated the implications of the lockdown and formulated a strategy for the business. At the same time in April we decided to top-up the salaries of furloughed workers whilst considering the way forward.
COVID-19 has brought many challenges but with it also opportunities, where one door has closed another one has opened. Although in April we were unable to progress with much of what we consider to be our core business, delivering network infrastructure, hybrid IT and cyber security projects, surprisingly, April was a high revenue month for us with high demand for devices and VPN set-ups, keeping the remaining engineers very busy.
Also, in April, we joined the Microsoft/DFE remote learning scheme. This was initiated as a direct response to the COVID-19 pandemic, helping schools across the nation to setup systems to enable remote working and learning. Additionally, we have been providing services to our health customers ensuring that key workers are prioritised. COVID-19 has tested most company's business continuity plans to the limit. Working from home has in the past been seen more as a benefit but has now become the priority and this has seen a surge in demand for services to enable this. Our own cloud platform, Freedom Cloud, has been utilised to provide several services to our customers during the lockdown period, including remote desktops, servers and cloud backup.
The current situation has also given us the opportunity to take a step back and look at the business, our structures and processes and we have implemented a number of changes which we hope will stand the business in good stead going forward. We are already seeing positive signs of recovery and May heralded some good news for us with a number of wins across the Public Sector, ranging from schools, universities and the NHS.
Over the past week we have been slowly bringing furloughed workers back, both from the technical and sales teams, and we are getting ready to continue with our summer projects across different Public Sector organisations.
Strategies put in place to navigate through the new reality will shape the future of the business and I am confident we will emerge stronger.