Services bring success to Trustmarque

VAR Trustmarque’s services arms has boosted its profits to a record high for FY2010/2011.

The firm’s services business increased in revenue by 176 percent from £7.1m to £19.6m. Gross Profit for services also saw a dramatic uplift from £1.1m to £2.9m, an increase of 164 percent. Overall Trustmarque achieved a 35 percent increase in Profit before tax and 26 percent growth in Gross Profit compared to FY2009/2010. Turnover also increased from £107m to £115m – pointing to the company’s strongest set of results in its 24 year history.

Angelo Di Ventura, Trustmarque’s group sales and marketing director says the results are “a combination of the work that’s gone into the business over the last 18 months. It’s the investment we’ve made in people, in the services business, in being very focused on our customers.”

Throughout the financial year, the company says it continued to invest in training and “vigorous” recruitment, which saw its headcount increase from 118 to nearly 200. In November 2011 Trustmarque also launched a new graduate training scheme to recruit new talent into the business.

Says Trustmarque CEO, Scott Haddow: “2011 was an excellent year for the company thanks to the investments made in people, training and developing our service offerings. Notwithstanding the uncertain economic conditions and budget constraints in UK Public Sector, Trustmarque is poised for another record breaking year in 2011/2012.”

Traditionally strong in the public sector – the VAR is Microsoft’s biggest partner in the public sector and claims nearly a quarter of the vendor’s revenue share from the public sector in the UK – Trustmarque has seen a shift in focus to the commercial space, moving the company closer to a 50/50 split between public and private sector accounts. This has been supported by a new Corporate Accounts Team of salespeople dedicated to winning new account business in private sector organisations.

Says Di Ventura: “A lot of investment in headcount has been focused on winning us new business in the commercial space. We’re seeing a lot of success particularly in heavily regulated markets such as financial services, insurance and legal, because our propositions are around asset management, data management and those are very relevant topics to those types of organisations.”

Last year Trustmarque expanded its services range through the acquisition of cloud infrastructure and hosted services provider Nimbus Technology Systems, adding a suite of cloud and managed solutions to its portfolio. Haddow doesn’t rule out further acquisitions, “if we find a target that meets a set a clear set of criteria.” However he adds: “what we’re not going to do is to just go on a fishing expedition.”

Confirms Di Ventura: “We’re confident that our organic growth strategy over the coming years will be successful... if something comes along that complements or enhances what we do – at the value end, we’re not looking for anything transactional – we would take a serious look at it. The right word is ‘opportunistic’.”

Previously a Microsoft LAR, Trustmarque announced plans to restructure itself as a VAR in 2009.