'This is all new to me - I'm learning every day' - Focus Group co-founder on its carbon reduction mission

Ralph Gilbert says comms reseller has already invested heavily in solar panels and EV car fleet but 'still has an awful lot to do' to cut emissions

"When I took on this exercise, I thought ‘we're doing really well, and will be marked really well'. But, quite rightly, you're not judged on where you are today or where you've been, but on how you can improve from today onwards. There's a myth that you can just go and plant a load of trees and offset, but you can't do that either."

That's the admission of Focus Group co-founder Ralph Gilbert, one of a growing number of IT solutions provider leaders grappling with the task of measuring - and then managing and reducing - their company's carbon footprint.

Gilbert co-founded the West Sussex-based comms specialist in 2003. Starting off life as a minutes reseller, the Bowmark Capital-backed outfit has since expanded into lines, telephone systems, data, mobile, IT and cybersecurity, with 25,000 customers and 2021 revenues verging on £120m.

I've got young kids, and they're nagging me the whole time about this sort of stuff. And I think it's just the right thing to do socially for the company

According to Gilbert, Focus has had a strong focus on sustainability for several years. All company cars are electric, and the majority of its eight UK offices have solar estates. Its Scottish office has around an acre of solar panels, he stressed.

Customer pressure sparked the need for a more formal carbon reduction strategy, Gilbert said, triggering Focus' decision to appoint Auditel to measure its scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions via a process that will take around six months.

The pressure was also being applied from a more unusual source, Gilbert admitted.

"I've got young kids, and they're nagging me the whole time about this sort of stuff. And I think it's just the right thing to do socially for the company," he explained.

"It's good PR, and we also get asked a lot in tenders now. I think you're going to have to have a plan if you're in the enterprise space."

Auditel will gather data on Focus' emissions over the next six months before the Cisco and Gamma partner kicks off a programme to manage what it has measured.

"I see ourselves as quite lean, but there is still an awful lot we can do over the coming years, so I'm interested to see what the auditor comes back with," Gilbert said. "We're going to make a decision on what to do after that but are committed to being as carbon neutral as we possibly can be over the next three to four years."

"As we move people into the cloud, we will automatically be reducing the amount of datacentre usage we've got internally," Gilbert added.

"We're also trying to work out how it affects customers who had a traditional telephone system and go hosted. How can we sell solutions that are arguably helping customers reduce their carbon footprint? It's hard to quantify, but we're getting stats from our suppliers to work that out, and have been talking to people like Cisco about this."

I'm probably the only person that's been to all the offices. I know what each office has got

With forecast 2021 revenues rising from £79m to £116m, Focus competes with the likes of OneCom and Arrow Business Communications, drawing around a third of its top-line from channel partners.

As the person who "knows where everything is", like many other company founders and CEOs in the sector Gilbert opted to lead the process himself.

"I'm probably the only person that's been to all the offices. I know what each office has got, what they're using, what they're spending, how they operate. This is all very new to me. So I'm learning every day," he explained.