'We were high-fiving strangers in the street - then corona hit': ANS CEO on COVID-19 disruption
View Paul Shannon's full keynote from last week's CRN Deskflix event
The CEO of ANS has revealed that the Manchester-based digital and cloud consultancy bounced back to win 32 new logos during lockdown, despite COVID putting the kibosh on its 2020 plans.
During his keynote for CRN's Deskflix - the Future of MSPs event last week, Paul Shannon lifted the lid on how the pandemic hit just as ANS was about to complete its transformation from a hardware business.
You can watch Shannon and ANS marketing director Olivia Jaskolka's full keynote above. All the day's content can now be viewed on demand HERE (brief registration required).
"We'd got to the end of FY 2020 - pre corona - and we thought we've swum the channel," Shannon explained.
"We've got all the way up to 80 per cent of turnover, GP and EBITDA being made up of digital and not much of old world left - only 20 per cent to go. We were high fiving strangers in the street."
After COVID hit, Shannon said ANS faced the choice of either hunkering down, or selling through it.
"We decided, for a business like ours who is dynamic and confident our services are relevant, we decided that's not the right thing for us. Let's sell through it as best as we can adapt and just go for it. And if that meant selling and creating new services, let's do it."
Jaskolka detailed how ANS used Microsoft's Power platform to build apps that solved problems for customers during the lockdown. This included building a volunteer app for Bury council that connected volunteers with vulnerable people.
The change in tack allowed ANS to win 32 new logos during lockdown - or ‘lockerz' as ANS affectionately termed it internally- Shannon said.
" A lot of them were corona related, so it proves the journey we've been on of solving problems - and not just selling to customers - has been vindicated. Solve not sell was the key message for us to come out of that lockdown and the numbers prove it," he said.