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Profile.co.uk: The next step for Pegasus reseller

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25th Dec 2005
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Since taking over as managing director of Profile.co.uk in March, Mike Judd has been thinking about the next stage of the Pegasus reseller's development.

Currently Profile.co.uk has offices in London, Milton Keynes, Hemel Hempsted and Cardiff and lays claim to being the largest Pegasus reseller south of Northampton. But the business software market is changing at both ends.

Software authors are having to contemplate one of those regular and uncomfortable technology transitions and the resellers who work with customers on the ground are experiencing their own wave of consolidation, says Judd.

Looking north, he draws parallels between Profile.co.uk and Graham Wylie's Technology Services Group, which has grown through a series of acquisitons over the past 12 months.

"They have this technology services philosophy, and have got that model working with a significant customer base and economies of scale. We're marching towards consolidating our position to achieve a similar position in the south," says Judd.

He adds that Profile.co.uk is getting encouragement from Pegasus to take this attitude: "as we gain prominence to sustain Profile, it also increases their visibilty".

Since it was founded 15 years ago, Profile.co.uk has been a Pegasus house. This included a difficult period during the dotcom boom and bust when Pegasus was acquired by freecom.net. Judd acknowledges that it was a demanding time for Profile, but it managed to keep its customers reasonably satisfied through the turmoil, and led to the most recent surge in the company's growth.

"Pegasus has got its act together with Opera II," Judd says. "They've delivered on time, the new modules are strong, as are the third party add-ons. We went into the Opera II upgrade sooner than most resellers and did pretty well as a result. We've been having an extremely successful year with both new and existing customers and have the most Opera II installations in the UK."

But where do you go next once you've conquered the south of England's Opera II market? Judd says that Profile is taking a good hard look at both its company brand and its growth strategy. The Cardiff office was opened recently and is one prong of his growth plan, which may also include a few well placed acquisitons.

Business software developers are heading for a shakeout that will be driven by the massive investments they need to make in new technologies such as Microsoft's .NET architecture. But similar pressures are beginning to affect resellers, and Judd wants to make sure Profile is equipped to cope.

"In the Pegasus and Sage environment there's a rationalisation going on into larger and larger resellers, because they need increasingly large numbers of customers to sustain profitability, marketing and product development," Judd explains.

"Part of our model is to increase our capability to take advantage of new technologies. Opera II is very easy to implement, but we've also got to look at the ancillary things that any business needs to function in the future: Web trading, bar coding, mobile computing, making the network work - things like that," he says.

"The assembly of that whole model requires significant investment to get the right level of staff and expertise and to keep them both up to date."

Judd confesses that he may not have Graham Wylie's deep pockets, but Profile.co.uk's recent success means he's got a few pennies to rub together. As a former IT man with Unilever, he's planning to apply a few lessons he learned there to building a new identity for his current company. Profile.co.uk will be ready for the great shakeout when it comes, but it won't be the same reseller we know today.

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