CRN Fast50: Anittel shows why its No.1

lkka Tales is a man on a mission.

His goal: to build a nationwide IT and telecommunications service provider that will be the biggest and best known brand in the SMB market, metro and regional.

A glance at his stellar track record shows he has a good chance at succeeding.

Born in Finland and schooled in Blacktown, Sydney, Tales (pictured) went backpacking in Asia after university and in 1990 fell into a role as chief financial officer for Telstra's Vietnam offices.

Five years later he helped a Philips startup in mobile phones set up back offices in Australia, New Zealand and the Philippines before being promoted to run distribution and business development in the Asia Pacific.

The outfit, Philips Consumer Communications, grew through a series of acquisitions from zero to 15,000 employees globally within three years.

By 1998 Tales was living in France and working as Philips' director of global customer services. In 2000 Tales returned to Australia and ran a listed company called Mobile Innovations, Vodafone's direct marketing partner. He then founded Engin, the broadband telephony business, and is also a founder of MoGeneration, a pioneering Australian iPad and iPhone development business.

After selling out of Engin in 2007 Tales returned to Europe to help a friend buy six companies in six months to build a 900-employee mobile software company called Myriad Group, which Tales says is now in the top 20 IT businesses in Europe.

Tales' last stint in Europe gave him a lot of experience in planning and integrating acquisitions and running investor relations. It set him up for his return to Australia last year when he was invited onto the board of Hostech, the publicly listed reseller which was acquired by Anittel.

In November Anittel made him managing director with the brief to drive growth aggressively, which he has carried out with gusto.

Anittel has made eight acquisitions in the past year and has plans to make more. The reseller grew to 230 staff and $22 million in the 2010 financial year, a 310 percent increase.

Further reading:

Tales' reputation in the telco industry is complemented by that of Anittel's chairman; Peter Kazacos. The man behind one of Australia's best-known enterprise integrators, Kaz, which was sold to Telstra and then to Fujitsu Australia, has plans to do it all again in the SMB market (see breakout on following page).

Next: Time of the telcos

Tales brings more to Anittel than a demonstrated skill at acquisitions.

Anittel, which stands for Australian National IT and Telecommunications, has made a bet on the convergence of IT services and communications. Tales' telco experience will help in overseeing that transformation to an integrated model.

"There's a huge amount of commoditisation happening in IT services," Tales says. "Improvements in technology allow us to commoditise traditional services that were solution sold to customers and take them through larger channels."

Tales sees Telstra and Optus' decision to provide software and infrastructure as a service (SaaS and IaaS) as evidence of a shift in the IT services landscape.

He is preparing Anittel to take on the telcos as they encroach on the traditional territory of the IT reseller.

"How do we take the learnings of telco marketing, which is very mass market oriented, and how do we commoditise IT services, which is traditionally solutions based, and join those two at the hip?"

Hosted or cloud computing services, combined with managed services and remote management, are clearly a large part of the future of IT service provision. The quality of these services relies heavily on a stable and strong internet connection to the customer.

Tales says that resellers who don't provide the telecommunications part of the equation suffer from an overburdened business model.

"If you're just doing managed services, half your issues are related to the carriage.

"Your customer is always going to come to you because you are the IT services provider, and your expensive engineers are spending a huge component of their time dealing with the carriers on connectivity issues."

Tales saw this problem with some of the resellers Anittel acquired.

"From a customer facing perspective, [providing managed services] wasn't a seamless process. There was a huge amount of cost being absorbed."

Resellers that run their own telco division can provide a much more rounded offering and service the customer better by providing a suite of services rather than just one component, Tales adds.

Tales is convinced that, with margins from voice and data services under pressure, the big telcos are changing as fast as they can and will one day get it right.

He sends this warning to other resellers. "The [telcos] will change. They know what they need to change and when they effect change it will be dramatic. They will get their customer service issues resolved reasonably quickly. They've got the balance sheet and the brand, they already service these customers from a voice and data perspective. Get ready."

Next: The regional approach

While integrators have sought to establish national offices, few have bothered to include regional in a comprehensive way. Long distances, reliance on Telstra for internet access, smaller customer markets - all were understandable turnoffs.

Anittel is determined to make it work. In NSW seven of the largest regional cities have banded together to attract investment, talent and industry under the Evocities banner. Anittel has offices in five of these fast-growing cities.

Anittel has accumulated an engineering force of 160 spread across the country. The reseller
has invested in a platform that ensures they can help customers from wherever they are, ensuring higher customer service and staff productivity.

Eight integrated software platforms sit behind the engineers to automate processes, measure outcomes and guarantee quality of service. Tales shows the real-time ticketing and provisioning on his laptop. Projects get tickets using the ConnectWise platform showing location, customer details and the service contract.

Billing details are completed in real time through the automated platform and the company invoices every week, which has increased cash flow and performance. It also cut the amount of time engineers spent doing paperwork from 20 percent to 5 percent, Tales says.

"Most of their time is now billable. That changes the dynamics of the business," he says.

On the telco side, sales staff can show customers who their wholesale carriage providers are in the area, the distance from the exchange and estimated cable length, and calculate available levels of service.

"I know exactly what I can offer on price because I know what my cost and what my monthly charge is so I can sign up the customer while I'm there and at the same time issue an order to the carrier so the work happens immediately," Tales says.

Chasing the owners
Anittel takes customers of all sizes; Tales says if they've got a server and a pulse then they're a potential customer.

Anittel's theory is that business owners will be prepared to pay a premium for service. That means no automated answering system - company policy is that every call is answered within three rings.

Calls are taken by every employee. The accountants, engineers, sales staff, even Tales himself will answer the phone to talk to a customer.

The employee who takes the most calls in the Sydney office is the financial controller.

"When I speak to customers I say, we're going to charge like wounded bulls because you get a huge amount of service."