Proximity eyes further growth after expansion pays off

ICT services provider Proximity Communication has announced its strongest financial years so far, with a turnover of £10 million.

The company, established during a merger between Applinet and Unified Group, saw record results in 2011.  This meant an organic growth rate of 22 percent over 2010, with 40 percent from recurring revenues over the same period.

Through better management control on overheads the firm has managed to deliver £0.8 million in operating profits. This allowed the company to expand the business and invest in new employees throughout the business.  Twelve new staff have now been employed since the start of 2012 and it has also recently opened a new office.

The positive financial results mean that Proximity remains debt free and finished with £2 million in its coffers.

With a number of key staff appointments and restructuring of the business the company’s plans have paid off, and sales and marketing director Stuart Legg believes that growth is set to continue.

“The first quarter is looking to be a record quarter again for Proximity,” he says.  “We have already hit the ground running this year, and we expect to move on from there.”

The company is now targeting “at least 25 percent growth in the revenue again this year”.

He says that there was  “a lot of transition last year”, with new staff arriving at the company. At least seven of those people in the operations team, he says, and Proximity has invested heavily in the people it has got.

Proximity is not looking to take on new vendors, but will expand its own portfolio of services, with more emphasis on around video and mobility.

“It is a great time to be in the market, there is a lot of opportunity out there,“ Legg told us.

“The technology is changing at the right speed. We go in cycles in the telecoms world, and we are at the point where a lot of customers need to do something.”

He says that despite the hype around cloud computing, it is not something that is a pressing need just yet. It is something of a “buzzword” around the channel at the moment, he says, with hosted services being talked up, though there has not been as much action so far.

“It is what everyone is talking about, but I am not seeing that many of them being deployed at the moment,” say Legg.

“Its not like we are having people banging down our doors saying we have got to have a hosted solution,” he says.

However, it is something the firm is investigating “very thoroughly”.

“It is not something that is a must have just yet.   We will start looking at that with a lot more in the second half of the year.”