Technimove’s CRO has exploded two myths about the ambitious professional services outfit as it looks to scale via M&A.
Counting the likes of Softcat, SHI and Insight among its partners, the London-based outfit provides professional and datacentre migration services via the channel.
Having more than doubled revenues to £18.6m in 2023, Technimove is now aiming to expand its existing US presence through M&A, as well as Europe.
But talking to IT Channel Oxygen, CRO Gareth Meyer was quick to dispel two common misconceptions about the 125-employee services ace.
Myth number one
Technimove’s biggest challenge is that partners often wrongly see it as a logistics business, Meyer said.
This is despite it now drawing 40% of its revenues from professional services and 60% from datacentre migration services.
“We want to smash that image,” Meyer said.
Former Ultima and Insight executive Meyer admitted he himself viewed Technimove as a pure physical migration organisation before he joined in 2022.
“It was only when I sat down with our CEO [Ochea Ikpa] that I realised it was a far bigger, more capable organisation than I had thought,” he said.
“The calibre of our engineers is extremely high. My goal is to continue recruiting CCIEs to ensure we are delivering the best people in front of the resellers’ customers first time.
“We’re not the cheapest out there, but we guarantee success.”
Myth number two
While Technimove is a “channel-first organisation in every regard”, resellers often assume its pre-sales capabilities must mean it sells direct, Meyer added.
This is a second myth Meyer was quick to banish.
“The pre-sales division is built specifically to make sure the SOWs [statements of work] protect both parties, as well as the customer,” he explained.
“Even if the customer comes directly to us and asks us to put a proposal together, we always immediately engage with the channel.”
Technimove has this year invested in new CRM, ERP, PSA and DCIM [datacentre infrastructure management] systems and tools that mean Meyer can “comfortably look peers in the eye and say ‘we’re ready to support the channel for growth’”.
The latter will help resellers kickstart conversations with customers earlier in the sales cycle, he asserted.
“That was a big investment,” Meyer said of the DCIM tool.
“Now, every single one of our standard reports that used to be in Excel is published by the DCIM, which gives you an itemised registry of every single device, the power and heat utilisation of every rack, and where we can consolidate racks.
“That’s now packaged for the channel, and ready to sell. It’s really a way to get the channel salespeople thinking about a different conversation, because if they engage earlier we can support the customer with the right data centre solution.
“We are seeing a massive repatriation back from the cloud, so it’s about speaking to customers earlier rather than later to get them back from the cloud to on-premise.”
Asked to describe his ideal partner and project, Meyer said Technimove has delivered some “really successful tenant migrations” for Softcat when it was stretched to capacity.
“They’re an amazing partner of ours – they lean on us for that delivery of service,” he said.
Public sector specialists such as Trustmarque and boxxe are high on Technimove’s partner wishlist, he added.
“A lot of the public sector tried to radically move to the cloud with very tight deadlines, which they haven’t necessarily hit. They still have legacy systems in place which aren’t cloud native – we can find the perfect home for them,” Meyer explained.
“I’ve kissed a lot of frogs”
With no debt and strong cash reserves, privately held Technimove is aiming to become a “truly global” organisation and has dry powder for M&A, Meyer said.
“We do have the resources and are looking to acquire, ideally on the West Coast and East Coast in the US,” he said.
“We’re looking for a professional services company that has field-based engineers, where we can then expand on their services.”
Technimove is also eyeing potential targets in wider Europe – including Scandinavia and Nordic areas – along with the North of England, Meyer revealed.
“I’ve kissed a lot of frogs in the UK and US over the last nine months; we just haven’t found that perfect acquisition,” he said.
“The only way we’re going to be able to scale is through acquisition,” Meyer concluded.
This article was produced in association with Technimove and is classified as partner content. What is partner content? See more here.
