SHARP
Look sharp Sharp has been widening its product range in the UK in recent years to include more IT and telephony technology, as well as its print products, which is helping to grow the business in the UK and Europe.
The UK market has not been easy over the past few years – the effects of COVID, supply chain problems, rising costs and inflation to name just a few of the problems businesses have had to weather. It has meant many businesses have had to adapt, and Sharp has been doing that in recent years by widening its product and service offering and now the business is growing strongly in the UK and Europe, despite challenging market conditions, according to Colin Blumenthal, managing director of Sharp IT services. “Sharp is on a journey of transforming into a technology business across Europe,” he says. “Sharp is widely known in the business- to-business community for managed print and print services. But while print is growing, IT services is a market that can deliver accelerated growth so there is a strategy to cross-sell IT services into Sharp’s client base across Europe and in UK. “Some of the growth within IT services across Europe is delivered from that customer base of loyal SMB print-based clients who are now acquiring IT services from Sharp too.”
Making the right choices But while Sharp has changed and expanded its product range, other things have remained constant – the culture to help clients make the right decisions when it comes to technology. “That’s what we are here to do,” says Colin. “And that has never changed. Of course, the technology has very much changed over the years, but we’ve always been able to stay ahead; we don’t use technology, we are leading it. “We’ve always been at the leading edge and adapted our knowledge and our expertise to deliver technologies and services that our clients and prospects are going to find valuable and that continues today and will do so in the future. “Part of the key technology shift has been the continued journey to cloud. And we are a long-established Microsoft partner with four competencies in the new partner programme. We’re well placed to offer the right advice to our clients and prospective clients on how they should navigate their journey to the cloud.” Colin adds that the tough economic picture in the UK means that big capital projects need a lot of justification. “But cloud presents investment opportunities for businesses where large amounts of capital expenditure aren’t needed for a lot of organisations,” he says. “A lot of our project-related work is helping clients migrate to a cloud hybrid working environment, which cuts down on the capital expenditure that’s needed.” Colin adds that there are some areas seeing more capital expenditure, such as business applications. “We deliver Microsoft Dynamics and that’s experienced good growth in the last year because businesses are valuing processes and how automating workflows can help improve their businesses,” he says. “But what’s equally important is management information, business intelligence and utilising the Microsoft Power platform to help deliver accurate, up to date, insightful information. That’s where we’re seeing businesses invest
Colin Blumenthal managing director, Sharp IT Services
sharp.co.uk
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