Voiceflex intends to double its size within the next two years, with M&A playing a part in that goal, according to CEO James Arnold-Roberts.
Arnold-Roberts (pictured above) was appointed Chief Executive Officer of the SIP and hosted telephony provider last month, becoming the first incumbent of the role.
The company intends to transform into a £20m-revenue business within the next 24 months and Arnold-Roberts disclosed that it is already in talks with several parties to achieve this target.
“The growth plans are to look at aggressively doubling the size of the business within a 24-month window and that’s not just going to come from organic growth,” he told UC Today.
“Our organic growth is running at roughly 10 percent year-on-year, and we’re looking to take the business to £20m. This will include M&A; we are in discussions with a number of parties with regards to what [we want]: some are scale, and some are adding applications and services into the business to make sure that we are able to deliver against the channel’s requirements”
Arnold-Roberts joined Voiceflex from his role as CFO at FluidOne. He was attracted to his new position because he had worked with Voiceflex in the past and saw the potential it has for growth.
“It has a real opportunity to grow because of where they sit and what they do; they’re the fifth largest SIP provider in the UK, so the scale is there,” he elaborated.
“Their growth over the last 15 years has been well hidden, and it’s an opportunity to step into a business that I felt had a really good background, a solid basis, and a really good place in the market.
“[Owner] Jim Lynch is really invested in driving the business forward, so we’ll be looking at organic growth, stepping into M&A and whether that’s done privately or – probably a little bit further down the line – potentially through private equity.”
Arnold-Roberts is also eager to develop its channel relationships further by “keeping an eye” on the changing buying behaviour of end customers to ensure partners have the most relevant applications and services they need.
Among these changing buying behaviours is the decentralisation of technology as workforces remain distributed, as well as SMBs looking for more flexibility in who and how they buy their IT from. They know they can buy services from the likes of Microsoft, Zoom, and Talkdesk but they struggle with understanding how to consume it, Arnold-Roberts said:
“With the dispersed technology, we want to provide our resellers with a portal that they can go in and consume services from different providers that can then fulfil their end users’ requirements”
The PSTN Switch-Off in 2025 is also presenting an opportunity around SoGEA (Single Order Generic Ethernet Access) for the telecoms provider, with the new CEO admitting that the events of the past year and a half have forced its efforts around SoGEA onto the back burner.
“This is a huge opportunity for Voiceflex,” he said.
“People are now saying ‘We’ve got 10s, hundreds, and in some cases 1000s, of analogue lines out there – what do we do and how do we do it?’ Voiceflex is able to provide a SoGEA solution, as well as a SoGEA voice solution on top of that.
“In short, we have two tracks with regards to delivering services: one for our channel which is SoGEA and the full wrap. And for the ISP channel we have the SoGEA voice channel, so we’re agnostic with regards to them providing their own SoGEA, and then we are able to overlay the voice piece – which is our heritage – on top of that.”
Arnold-Roberts’ primary goal as CEO is to get “under the skin” of its channel to understand what partners require and ensure that Voiceflex’s development roadmap is aligned to those needs.
“It’s about making sure that we are driving in the right direction and that we’re providing the right level of customer service and customer experience to those partners,” he stated.
“It’s about making sure that we’ve got [customer service and experience] absolutely nailed down, and that we’re looking at driving a customer-first and customer excellence approach into the business. [It’s about] improving on what we’ve already got. We have a good reputation in the market already but you can always improve.”
