Charterhouse Voice & Data (CVD), the London-headquartered reseller has begun a new expansion strategy following investment from August Equity who are now a major shareholder in the business.
Founded 27 years ago by CEO, Mark Brooks-Wadham, who has now enhanced his senior management team to help him realise opportunities for growth and build a £100million company within the next two to three years.
Richard Betts (pictured above), formerly CEO of Arc Solutions and Datapulse, was recently appointed as part of that new team as Chief Revenue Officer (CRO), and responsible for the strategic growth of the group, explains.
“Our strategy is to acquire, whilst also growing organically. To support this ambition we have bolstered our senior management team. The new team includes Services Director, Hugo Holland-Bosworth (who joined a year ago), formerly Executive Board member of Alternative. More recently we were joined by Chief Financial Officer Joe Roffey, Chief Marketing Officer, Nadine ter Meulen and Head of People, Denisa McKiernan, all bringing a raft of experience with them.
Already, as part of our growth strategy, we have made two acquisitions, Netconnection, a managed services provider and Extreme’s number one UK reseller, and St Helens-based, Lloyds IP – a company with a strong heritage in IP-based communications.
The principle we have in place for future acquisitions is that we are seeking to expand our presence geographically in the UK, whilst adding product and applications specialisms and experience.”
However, it is not just from acquisitions that CVD is looking for growth.
“There is a huge opportunity to cross-sell within our existing product portfolio. Our major vendor partners include Mitel, 8×8, Extreme Networks, EE, Gamma, Palo Alto and Rapid 7, each of which afford CVD the opportunity to add value to our customers by enhancing their essential technology stacks.
To support and drive this forward we have leveraged our own expertise with these vendors to build Fusion, a proposition built on three pillars Connect, Collaborate and Secure, which allows us to recommend, design and deliver the right solution for business – whether it be cloud, connectivity, networking, mobile or security.
We have also created Fusion Teams which is designed to help organisations become more collaborative and crisis ready. This combines Microsoft Teams functionality with feature-rich voice to enhance collaboration between internal teams, customers and contacts outside the organisation. If COVID-19 has taught us anything then it is the benefits of flexible working and the knowledge that our ‘always-on’ voice solutions support remote working with no reliance on on-prem infrastructure.”
“Right now, our biggest growth areas are with Cyber-Security, UC and Microsoft Teams. Security is key to all industries across the globe and firmly front of mind at ‘C’ level”
“Teams is about empowering employees and enabling the change from face to face to remote meetings and work.”
So, what can we look forward to seeing from CVD in the near future?
Betts says that the company will continue to work hard at not just maintaining effective aspects of their existing operations but improving them.
“One of our key areas for growth is the Public Sector, where we have a dedicated team who build on the fact CVD is listed on all the supply frameworks. This team recently ran a virtual roundtable for NHS Trusts, focused on Microsoft Teams and Mitel Collaboration, which saw a variety of Trusts engage in a lively exchange. This is just one of many virtual events we hold for our clients & prospects across many industry sectors.
Will remote working continue? Definitely, we are reviewing who would need to be in an office and why. We pre-empted lockdown and closed our office early and as a consequence have been able to efficiently ride the storm and come through it embracing the ‘new norm’, whilst supporting many businesses with their ‘work from anywhere’ technology requirements.”
“Our mantra is, continue to work from home, only go to the office for essential meetings and customers are saying the same thing to us”
