But when Aidan Coughlan the managing director founded the business in 1984 it was a tiny operation seeking a toehold in the deregulated
But when Aidan Coughlan, the managing director, founded the business in 1984 it was a tiny operation seeking a toehold in the deregulated telephone market.Initially, it sold ordinary telephones and answering machines. A year later, when Vodafone and Cellnet launched the mobile telephone network, it moved into selling handsets. Ipswich was not yet covered but Mr Coughlan saw a market in people commuting to London.Now the company supplies the Computer Telephony Integration (CTI) systems that are becoming increasingly popular with businesses of all sizes, and which will ultimately let users dial telephones direct from their computer screens and allow them to see individual customers’ databases as they call up.Mr Smith, who became chairman in 1989, two years after the business transformed itself from a sole trader into a limited company, and Mr Coughlan attribute their success to the same sort of factors as European Telecom. “We handhold our customers – that’s important in a hi-tech area,” says Mr Coughlan. “If they don’t use it properly, they don’t see the benefit of what they’ve got.
People are too busy to get out the book and read about it.”The arrival of cellular phones was also the spur for the development of MSI. Dr Mohamed Ibrahim, the chairman, is an acknowledged authority on radio planning, who was technical director with Cellnet before founding the business in 1989. John Carrington, the managing director, also worked at Cellnet and was the first managing director of Mercury One2One.It describes itself as an independent consultancy specialising in the design, planning and operation of wireless networks for mobile phones, pagers and other radio based services.q For further information, you can contact PW’s web site: www.pw /uk/independent100.htm.. LOOK at the marketing initiatives of computer companies and you soon see a pattern emerging. They are focusing on everybody’s current favourite market – small business.
Hewlett-Packard has set up a franchise operation designed to supply small firms with packages of compatible products, such as computer terminals, printers and fax machines. IBM, Microsoft and Mitel have joined together to supply the in-vogue technology that links telephones and computers under the name of Computer Telephony Integration. Now, Microsoft is sponsoring a small business taskforce to convince firms of the benefits of following their bigger counterparts into the IT jungle.
The taskforce, which has representatives from such bodies as the Forum of Private Business, the Institute of Chartered Accountants and the Institute of Directors, is – despite the Microsoft support – an independent group that has held two meetings since being established last year.However, Bill Gates’ software giant accepts that it is some way short of acting out of true altruism. As Joseph Macri, UK sales and marketing manager for the company’s small business sector, says: “If you’re doing something to develop the whole market, who gains the most is the market leader.”What is attracting Microsoft and the others is that as the corporate market matures the small-business arena is still relatively untapped. Research suggests that only about a quarter of Britain’s 12 million personal computers are in small business. And while the overall UK market for PCs is growing at about 16 per cent, much greater expansion can be obtained from a sector that Microsoft defines as organisations employing fewer than 100 employees.Though the company reckons that about 2.5 million firms fall into this category, it admits that it still does not know much about them One problem is that it is not an homogenous market. It is not just that firms operate in all kinds of areas; they also have a range of attitudes.Microsoft had assumed that every small business was like it had been at its inception in Seattle, eager to develop as quickly as possible.
But it has increasingly come to the conclusion that this is a long way from the truth.According to Mr Macri, business schools specialising in the area have identified three broad categories: the “steady states” that account for the vast majority, the small proportion that are “vulnerables” and the dynamic growers, also known as “10 per centers” because they make up about a tenth of the total.The vulnerables are generally reckoned to be beyond the help of technology and therefore of little interest. Similarly, the steady states are generally made up of businesses, often employing just one or two people, where the founders are more concerned with having an independent lifestyle than developing a company. Though they may make some use of technology in administration they are not likely to be big customers. On the other hand, dynamic growers, which are often operating in computer-related fields, are seen as having great potential. Already, they account for 40 per cent of the sector’s spending on technology.
Category: Travel
