Successfully recruiting channels from the IT world to sell telephony products and applications has long been the Holy Grail for many providers so when we came across Stafford based reseller risual we knew we had to strike up a conversation.
risual was established by Alun Rogers and Richard Proud in May 2005. From its premises at Staffordshire Technology Park, in Stafford, it provides IT consultancy, systems management and service support, as well as a suite of IT packages.
Clients include global fashion brand Paul Smith, Essex County Council and Greater Manchester Police.
This year the company, which features in the Sunday Times Top 100 companies to Work For list, will celebrate its 10th anniversary with a series of events for staff and clients in the pipeline.
It comes after risual made a splash as a headline sponsor of the Microsoft Future Decoded event alongside big players Dell and HP.
We spoke to Sales Director John Pittaway who confirms that the company grew up as a pure play Microsoft operation offering consultancy services.
“Typically we help clients realise value in their Microsoft investments by looking at their business objectives and IT strategies and then mapping on our services. It’s a very business led approach based around three key solution areas.
Firstly, Connected Business - to help improve customers efficiency, responsiveness and productivity and here we have developed a repeatable model that can be tailored to match an organisation’s technology needs that suits governance and manageability requirements. This leverages fully featured on-premise solutions centred on corporate owned or rented data centres, a hybrid mixture of both on and off premise technologies integrated seamlessly and robust cloud technologies without the complexity of managing a datacentre.
Next is End User Computing where risual’s approach to flexible working allows end users to reap the benefits of all Products on the Microsoft Stack and thirdly, Optimised Service Vision where we show a definitive route towards public and private cloud computing by navigating the various Microsoft technologies options available today.”
What is the profile of a typical risual customer?
“Whether in the public or private sector our typical customer would have around 2000 employees. We do have some clients with as few as 500 employees and our largest has more than 30,000. Typically we are engaged in helping our clients move their IT to the cloud or hybrid cloud.”
How did your company become engaged with Gamma?
“We are a Microsoft Lync service provider and take cost out of our clients operations by removing legacy PBX systems. Clients wanted us to provide end-to-end solutions and that included components such as headsets, handsets and connectivity.
So when it came to the connectivity part we shortlisted a number of companies to be our supplier. Gamma stood head and shoulders above all others and was the best choice for our Lync deployments.
Lync is a proven enterprise class solution that is robust, resilient and scalable. Users like its ease of use and features such as presence, integration with products they are familiar with such as Outlook and Office 365. Escalating communication from IM to group chat to voice is seamless for users.
We are a services based organisation and those services are only deliverable if the user sees the value in that service and it makes a contribution towards their success.
In the last twelve months we have added Lync Voice and users want to work with as few suppliers as possible.”
Gamma has great products and great people who are great to work with – they answer phones and help you – good customer service never seems to go out of fashion.
So how is business going and what is the outlook for the future?
“risual has grown at a rate of 50% for the last three years with profits being churned back in to the business to fund more growth. It’s a simple equation – we provide good value to our customers and in return they give us their business.”