PCR Tech and IT retail, distribution and vendor news
UK IT Online’s owner Tom Watson talks about developing sub brands, working closely with vendors, and why it isn’t ‘just another VAR’.
How did the company start?
I saw an opportunity to launch a B2B e-commerce store, recognising purchasing habits were changing and clients wanting an easy and quick way of buying branded products. So, UK IT Online was developed to provide a secure way of doing this, offering a portfolio of tens of thousands of discounted products, focused on vendors such as HP, Lenovo, Dell, Fujitsu and Microsoft.
The long-term plan was always to develop into a services and solution provider, and to help me achieve this I brought in key staff to help cultivate and shape my vision.
What products and services do you offer?
The business is now split into two divisions. UK IT Online and UK IT Corp – an IT services and solution provider with helpdesk, server monitoring, managed networks and consultancy services. This enables us to act as our clients’ IT department or with their IT manager to deliver specialist services to keep their critical business systems running.
We work closely with our vendors, and heavily invest in both our partners and staff alike to achieve our accreditations in order to provide our customers with the widest choice, best service and usually the best price.
How has business been?
The business has been growing steadily since its inception, but with the additions of our new services and solutions to the portfolio, we are now seeing exciting growth. The pleasing thing is the number of referrals from our clients we now have.
What do you have planned over the next few years?
We will be looking to further develop some of our sub brands, such as UK IT Cloud and UK IT Secure as we see these are definite growth areas. We are really excited about how the business is developing, and in order to fuel our continued growth we are looking to add to the team with talented and driven individuals.
What’s the best thing about what you do?
We like to think we aren’t just another VAR, as we work extremely hard to stretch our customer budgets and support them at every stage. Nothing is too much trouble. In fact our motto is: “The answer is yes, now what is the question?”
What are the benefits of working with an organisation like Synaxon?
Their EGIS procurement platform is a fantastic tool which simplifies purchasing, and together with the reduced carriage, it saves money as well as time. We are very much looking forward to engaging further with Synaxon and using their marketing tools to develop our business.
