Time to stop sweating

Customers looking to sweat their IT assets to try and postpone investing in fresh kit are risking missing out on the benefits of digital transformation.

A warning over taking a strategic decision to continue to try to squeeze more years out of ageing kit comes from the CTO of managed cloud services player Timico.

Kevin Linsell has been at the firm for three months but has a CV that includes time working at other managed IT and cloud services players, including working at Computacenter, Adapt and Datapipe.

Timico is particularly strong in the retail and hospitality sectors and is encouraging firms in those markets to engage with the latest technology to ensure they can deliver quality customer experiences.

"Anywhere that has a lot of network outlets, restaurants and shops, in those sectors they are undergoing some quite challenging times," he said.

"It is all about driving the efficiences of their businesses and helping them transform but always keeping an eye on what is a very competitive market," he added.

Linsell said that firms starting today took a different approach to technology compared to those that had a longer heritage and there was a need to deliver managed services that provided the flexibility to respond to changing market conditions.

"Organisations, especially in the mid market, haven't spent a huge amount on IT really since the banking crisis. Money was tight after that and there was uncertainty around spending," he said.

"A lot of people have held back but it's got to the point now where sweating has now become in some cases impactful on the business growth and the sustainability of the business," he added that the brakes were now coming off on some investments in order for the customer to remain effective.

"It isn't an open cheque book and it still has to be done with the right level of due diligence and checks on it and it has to be linked very closely to aligning it to the business value," he said.

Retail and hospitality are having to react to a growing number of different payment methods, review apps and changing customer expectations. As a result the investment is going into making sure the technology can help firms deal with those changes.

Last year saw Lyceum Capital make an investment, fresh executive hires and some refocusing of the business but the year ahead is going to be much more externally focused on delivering a digital transformation message.

“We have a strong plan for this year. In some cases we will be partnering to bring new services to market, in some we will be building the capability and in some we will be acquiring,” said Linsell.