'You either ride the wave or get crushed by it': Axians UK GM talks services growth

CRN caught up with the group to hear how it plans to achieve its goal of double-digit services growth and why the UK is such a massive opportunity

Axians UK eyes double-digit growth in its services business as the Basingstoke-based group gears up to make a bigger name for itself in the UK.

This is what Anthony Pireddu, general manager at Axians UK tells CRN about his plans for the year ahead.

Pireddu (pictured) echoes what Axians UK managing director Russell Crampin told CRN in August regarding their approach to growth.

"The goal for the year and longer-term is to profitably grow," Pireddu says.

"But we don't want growth for the sake of growth. We really want to grow our services business, because this is what we do."

However Pireddu adds how high Axians UK is aiming for its services growth and by when.

"The goal is to keep double-digit growth in the services space because that will ensure a great future for us, regardless of the ups and downs of the market or if a technology vendor of ours is acquired, etc.

"We have this target to grow 15 per cent by the end of 2024 and beyond."

'Growth doesn't happen by chance'

Pireddu outlines his three priorities for 2024 as Axians zeroes in on its growth ambitions.

"My first priority is the team. We made a lot of changes in 2022 after our owner VINCI Energies acquired Imtech ICT.

"I want to keep cementing the team, and empowering more and more of the teams.

"We are growing as an organisation, so that means not just myself. It's me and my management team, and the overall organisation.

"My second priority is about ensuring we reach our 15 per cent growth target.

"Growth doesn't happen by chance, so how can we ensure we do reach this. It's about a combination of things, sales, marketing, having the right people able to create our new services in this evolution."

His third priority centres on Axians' philosophy around specialisation.

"We want to specialise in our verticals more. Services is our traditional market, and then we have our higher education market as well as retail and insurance.

"So, people, evolution of services, and more specialisation in our target verticals."

With its growth plans firmly set in place, Pireddu tells CRN how the services provider plans to seize its goal.

He explains the economic outlook is difficult to interpret at the moment. There are still a lot of warning signals, but we "don't know what we don't know."

"So how do we ensure growth?" he asks, "the technology market is exciting and often transitions. So we need to understand where the marketing is heading and be at the edge of it and ride the wave rather than be crushed by it.

"We see a lot of clients, especially in the mid market space looking for partnerships. They struggle to do things themselves because technology becomes more and more complicated.

"So while I talked about specialising in our verticals, we also aim to do that in the size of our customers.

"So finding clients who are in a sense not too big, so they don't have the attention of these big multinational players. On the other hand, they are an organisation with 1,000s of employees and complex requirements. So they need a partner to support their technology transformation.

"That's where we see growth."

UK opportunities

The overall Axians Group, part of VINCI Energies, posted full-year 2022 revenues of €3.3bn and operates in 35 countries.

Pireddu admits Axians UK is not as large as its European counterparts or other services companies in the region, but only sees this as an opportunity.

"The exciting part of being in Axians UK is that if you look at the bigger Axians markets - the Netherlands, Germany, Spain, Italy, and others, Axians is already well established.

"We are still so small compared to the market that the opportunity to grow in the UK is immense.

"But how do we do that? That's the million-dollar question. It starts with brand awareness. We need to get the name out and get people to know us."