We’ve had growth on the agenda for some time and now we’re pleased to announce a key acquisition which has significantly increased our customers. The company we’ve brought on board is PowerNet Computer Consultants NZ Ltd. It’s the local arm of a mid-sized Australian company and it is now part of Lancom, with the deal completed as of July 1.
The transaction brings with it more than 160 new customers, most of which are typical Managed Services Provider clients. Our opportunity with these new customers is to offer our broader solution range, including Microsoft productivity applications, Azure and Amazon Web Services, and custom application development.
With this deal, the Australian principal of Powernet Computer consultants - Powernet IT Solutions- has in effect withdrawn from the New Zealand market to focus on its own domestic growth. Along with the customer book, we also take on board a new staff member. Please join me in welcoming Ricky Govender, who will play a key role in assuring continuity for all our new customers.
As you’re probably aware, we’re focused on executing an aggressive growth strategy as we seek greater scale for Lancom. Most of the growth is expected to come from merger and acquisition activity, but we’ll also continue growing organically. This comes through our consistent attention to service excellence and providing solutions attractive to our client base.
And this highlights the biggest challenge with an acquisition of this nature. It falls to us to provide service continuity while making sure we become relevant to our new customers.
While we’re an ICT company, this is still very much a people business, so we need to invest time and effort into relationship building and understanding the technology needs of our customers, existing and new. This is essential in the creation of lasting value.
It’s something we’ve done very successfully over many years with our existing customers. We’ve brought all of them into the cloud as part of a modernisation drive. In many ways, that’s been a logical and sensible process – after all, we’ve long recognised the advantages of software as a service and cloud architectures. That’s why we’ve brought our customers along and that’s why they are seeing those advantages on a daily basis.
Among the customers now onboarding, many are still traditionally architected. This is where we’re poised to help, with modernisation, improvements and the delivery of cloud cost and efficiency advantages. We have a lot to offer, particularly in infrastructure, collaboration and productivity. There are also substantial opportunities in automation and integration.
So, while it is ‘business as usual’ from 1 July, we’ll be talking that through with our customer base in the coming months.
While this particular deal has just concluded and there will be work to be done in the coming weeks and months, there’s appetite for more. We’ll remain on the lookout for further acquisitions in the coming two to three years, with a specific focus on Managed Services Providers looking to become part of a larger organisation. And as many of you will know, deep expertise in security, application development and systems integration is of interest, as is vertical specialisation.
All the work we’ve done in the past two years leaves us well positioned for the growth currently happening and what is sure to be ‘more to come’. After all, you can’t fire a cannon from a canoe, as the saying goes. We’re geared for growth, we’ve done careful capacity planning and put in place considerable automation to maintain the high level of service our existing customers have come to expect, while welcoming new customers on board.
This is thanks to the great effort, commitment and dedication of all our team members, so a big ‘thank you’ to everyone. And get ready for more exciting times ahead!
