In September 2009, Datapoint appointed Jim Kent, the former chief executive of Vistorm and vice-president, Services for Hewlett Packard (HP) in the UK and Ireland as CEO. Kent joined the company with a track record in turning around companies and growing profitable services businesses. He has built on Datapoint’s core strengths as a pan-European systems integrator of enterprise communication systems and call centre technologies by strengthening the management team, refreshing skills, and attracting new vendors.
Undertaking the business transformation during the market downturn enabled Datapoint to move swiftly to a more services-led communication systems integration portfolio. The professional and managed services business has grown and now accounts for about 40% of the group’s total revenues.
“2009 was a challenging year for the industry. It was a case of changing a wheel on the car as it was in motion as we had to run the company in tough conditions while overhauling our strategy,” said Kent, “but we came out of the year stronger for it and are poised for growth in all our geographies. We have new hires, new skills and new partner relationships. Expect to see some exciting new solutions and services from us as the year unfolds.”
The bulk of the 40 new hires are in professional services (20 people) and managed services (6 people), split evenly between the UK and Europe. The balance is in sales and pre-sales.
Continuing the shift to services, industry veteran John Fenech, has been appointed to lead the Unified Communication Practice for UK and Ireland. Well known in the industry, John joined from Avaya where he was responsible for building Avaya’s pre-sales team and growing its skills base to serve Vodafone and other leading customers.
In July, Meurig Jones joined as chief operating officer. Meurig has responsibility for Datapoint’s new ‘go-to-market’ strategy. In addition, he is responsible for the day-to-day operations of UK and Ireland, overseeing the development and management of Managed Services, Professional Services, Technology and Sales. Meurig has an impressive track record in business transformation. Prior to Datapoint, he was at HP where he undertook various roles, from divisional finance director in Manufacturing through to sales director for Central & Local Government and director for Services.
In January, Paul Brewer joined from BT as director of technology solutions. Paul is tasked with driving relationships between vendor partners and Datapoint as well as executing the company’s ‘industry solutions’ strategy from a vendor and campaign perspective. At BT he led its global CRM practice and was director of CRM for BT’s contact centre business for its top 3,000 customers.
Five business practices
The company is now reorganised around five go-to-market business practices: Customer Interaction Management; Unified Communication (which includes IP Telephony); Voice Self-Service; Workforce Optimisation; Compliance.
In addition to new hires, the company has taken on new vendors such as Polycom, the global leader in telepresence, video, and voice solutions. At the same time, the company has deepened its relationship with companies such as Nuance, NICE and Verint while strengthening further its core relationships with Avaya (for which it is a platinum partner) and Genesys.