How we defied the pandemic by growing 20 per cent

European Electronique CEO Yolanta Gill says the Oxfordshire-based reseller experienced a “very different mix of business” during its recently closed fiscal 2021

Well, it certainly has been a year like no other. Navigating through the unchartered territory of Coronavirus and lockdown has brought many challenges. At the outset of the year we were, like many other businesses, unsure how the company would perform and certainly didn't expect to end our financial year with a close to 20 per cent growth in revenue, finishing the year on £75.4m. The full extent of the impact on the company's profitability will be known later this month once the preliminary financial reports are compiled in preparation for an early summer audit, however the figures so far look promising.

It has been a year with a very different mix of business to that which we traditionally experience. Having a large engineering force created a lot of uncertainty for the business as access to sites was not allowed and much of our project work was put on hold. This forced us to put some of our staff on furlough, especially faced with an unknown future. We used this time to restructure the company and invested in key high-level technical staff especially in networking infrastructure, cyber security and hybrid cloud. This included a new head of professional services team, Jamie Lewis, also four solution architects, a professional services manager and a number of engineers and project managers.

Further investment was also made in our private cloud, Freedom 2.0. An additional datacentre deployment with Nutanix technology to be based in Virtus, Slough datacentre is planned for later this month, adding further services to our existing portfolio.

I am confident that the new structure and our reinforced professional services team will take us to the next level, expanding our portfolio of solutions and services.

I would like to thank all our staff for contributing to our success and I have decided that those employees who have been with us throughout the lockdown period will receive a bonus this month. It has been a tough year for everyone, especially for those who were put on furlough, dictated either by personal circumstances or by the company's decision, the combining of childcare and work has been difficult for many but despite the challenges we have worked together to achieve success.

Looking to the future, we are embarking on substantial refurbishment work at our head office in Oxfordshire in preparation for a measured return to work for our employees. The plans for a phased return to work along with a hybrid working model are being considered and will be rolled out in line with government advice, it will be good to feel a buzz around the office once again. It certainly seems that there is more activity in the marketplace, all our engineers are booked to full capacity and we are seeing a flurry of new tenders being released. All of this bodes well for the future and we are hoping that our growth experienced over the last couple of years continues.

Yolanta Gill is CEO of European Electronique