Azzurris Flick of the service switch

History suggests there are three sure things at the Mobile News Awards: 20:20 Logistics for best handset distributor, Carphone Warehouse for best retailer and Azzurri for best B2B dealer. All came in again, in pole position, at this years event.

Like the others, Azzurris success is, in no small part, down to its sheer scale. Azzurris turnover for the year to date is £150 million, compared with £101 million in 2006.

Small B2B dealers grumble there is little point entering the competition at all if they are to be pitted against the Kingston-based operation, which made it five gongs in four years in March, such is its size and influence in the market place.

For his part, Azzurri divisional director Martin Flick prefers to discuss its other award of the night for customer service. Azzurris size is incidental to its service offering, he claims. According to Flick, the industry has changed dramatically and size counts less than service as far as customers are concerned.

The types of customers Azzurri is pitching to from the bread-and-butter enterprise customers that all of the indirect channel is swarming around, to the much larger corporates that the networks prefer to take direct do not make their communications decisions on price alone. In fact, service is the selling point for any serious-minded organisation. And for service, read both customer care and communications solutions for better working.

As Flick indicates, self-regarding customers will pay competitive prices to be associated with a reputable service provider that guarantees blue riband treatment.

Ours is not a commodity sale. We provide a managed service and a managed solution. The mobile marketplace has moved away from a commodity pitch, becoming less price-driven and more about intelligent vendor management, says Flick.

From a price point of view, we are fairly competitive. But because we have moved away from that commodity sale to a managed services pitch, and because what we do is unique and detailed, we are successful. And that is why we are not too worried about our competitors or the perceived squeeze on the indirect channel.

Building blocks

Azzurri CEO Martin St Quinton was the driving force behind Azzurris foundation, in June 2000, and its early growth. St Quinton, voted Ernst & Youngs Entrepreneur of the Year in 2004, wanted to buy and build the UKs leading telecommunications provider.

Three years ago, Azzurri bought B2B dealer Axxent Voice and Data, founded by Flick and Paul Butler. Under their stewardship, Axxent hived off a good chunk of the mobile B2B market. It specialised in voice, data, email and telematics, and was turning over £5 million a year when Azzuri swooped.

Its fair to say Axxent Voice and Data, as a stand-alone mobile business, was successful in its own right. We spent six years building the business up to the point where we were winning, securing and maintaining some very good customer relationships, says Flick.

But we saw a threat from our lack of capability in the converged space, being mobile people, and the synergy with Azzurri at the time was spot-on and immense.

Flick and Butler pocketed two-thirds of the £2.7 million pay-out for Axxent, and moved across to the Kingston solutions provider as sales director and divisional director, respectively.

In the end, Butlers entrepreneurial spirit told, and he decided to go it alone following Azzurris acquisition of £3.5 million mobile consultancy DVH Group in 2005. At the time he told Mobile News: My heart is in building a business. I want to be the guy at the front at Azzurri I was one of the minions.

Flick has since replaced Butler as divisional director, and Azzurri has now completed close to 20 acquisitions since 2000. He is now responsible for 60 field-based support staff Azzurri employs 900 in total, across 11 UK sites, as well as offices in Sydney, Australia, and in Los Angeles, in the US.

Prizes and partners

Azzurri has snapped up most of the plaudits going during the past 12 months. As well as the two gongs Flick collected at the Park Lane Hilton at this papers awards night in March, it was named BTs partner of the year in 2006 and, predictably, one of a select band of data resellers to join O2s Data Centre of Excellence. The latter club membership gives Azzurri access to supplementary marketing, training and recruitment tools.

Our objective with both O2 and Vodafone is to penetrate data into a voice orientated market place, says Flick. Were good at that and were recognised for it.

Azzurri also ranked 45th in the Deloitte Buyout Track 2007, a league table of the fastest growing private equity-backed mid-market companies.

Says Flick: The market is so complicated now, and the recognition from our partners helps of course. The supplier-customer relationship has got to be a strategic partnering, but you have got to have close relationships with the vendors that provide the products and services too in order to stitch the whole thing together and to make it meaningful for the customer.

O2 and Vodafone are Azzurris closest network partners monthly connections can run to 6,000 on each, it claims. O2 and Vodafone are particularly discerning in their choice of third party associates, and only the premier resellers in the market place are on their books. As a rule of thumb, closeness with Vodafone and O2 normally precludes such large connection volumes for rival networks. Azzurri is no exception.

Because of the working relationship with them, we are more biased towards them for mobile, but we have a large amount of business with T-Mobile and Orange as well, says finance and operations director Ben Orchard.

Still, Azzurri claims to be among the top two or three B2B dealers for each of the big four, and Flick emphasises the companys network independence.

He says: For our customers, the benefit is having someone vendor-agnostic that is able to work with them intelligently to get the best value out of their telephony estate. That makes us unique. It is one of our key strengths.

At the same time, Azzurri finds itself up against its main airtime providers in the market place. It is a freak nature in the complicated B2B market that your rivals are often your closest allies.

Says Flick: Our competitors vary depending on business segment, but in the mobile space, we compete directly with Vodafone Corporate and O2 Direct, as well as alternative companies like Affiniti. But the strange factor in our part of the industry is that we partner with some of these people as well.

Parts and service

The reason Azzurri performs well for its partners and against its competitors, maintains Flick, is its service levels and bespoke deals.

We have invested heavily in both our staff and systems to ensure our customers receive the high level of service they deserve, he says. We also provide robust management tools to support the increasingly complex converged voice and data solutions. Customer service is no longer just about airtime and billing, its about continually adding value.

Among Azzurris service initiatives is its Azzurri One solution a managed billing service that combines customers data and voice costs to keep them within budget. It offers customers an independent audit to illustrate the money they could save if their telecoms estate was better managed, and the bespoke solution that will enable such savings.

In all, Flick is bushy-tailed about the state of the market, whatever the troubles that others are experiencing. Azzurri is primed to succeed, he claims.

If you ask me, the market is very buoyant and exciting at the moment.

There are lots of opportunities if you work intelligently with customers to plug gaps in their service requirements.

He adds: The networks are really pushing 3G and data, and were also seeing firm links between fixed and mobile. We are opportunistic, and its a good time to be opportunistic in this market.

Award wins, special recognition from one of the worlds top mobile networks, national recognition in the British press and a current turnover of approximately £150 million these are good times at Azzurri.