5 minute read
BROAD SPECTRUM APPROACH
Spectrum has recently rebranded to reflect how the business has changed. The company is now focusing on an ambitious plan to grow the business organically and by acquisition
What’s in a name? In business, it is crucial. Rob Cavill, managing director of Spectrum, knows this only too well, which is why he and his fellow directors decided to rebrand the company recently.
Spectrum has been a well-known name in the office printer market for many years. The company started life as Spectrum Copiers in 1983, reflecting its focus on selling photocopiers. In 1999 the company had its first rebrand, to IT@Spectrum. “At the time, the business had moved away from just selling photocopiers and started doing more around information and document management,” Rob explains. “The ‘@’ symbol was relatively new, and techy and cool at the time.”
However, more recently, IT has come to mean something different. “IT, to me, now is your physical IT infrastructure – servers, laptops, monitors, hardware, the firewalls and all the things that happen on a network – which is not what Spectrum does and never has been. Also, the ‘@’ symbol has now become commonplace.”
With this in mind, the decision was taken to rebrand, and Spectrum was chosen as it is the one word that has remained in the name of the company since it was formed. “We also wanted to future-proof the name to avoid this situation again. If we called ourselves something like ‘Spectrum Document Management’, for example, there is a risk that, 15 years from now, whatever phrase we chose would be equally redundant,” explains Rob.
“So, we decided to simplify things, and reflect the fact that – excusing the pun – the spectrum of what we do has grown. It repositions us as not just a copier dealer but as the experts in automation who can assist with digital transformation and deal with anything to do with paper, information and data in the workplace.”
LOGO CHANGE
With the rebrand has come a change in logo – although some might not notice at first. “There is a familiarity to our new logo, compared to our old one, and that is a thought-out approach,” says Rob. “We didn’t want to lose the recognition and goodwill that the IT@Spectrum brand had built up, so we literally ditched the IT@. People see IT@ has now gone - that triggers a conversation as to why, giving us the opportunity to explain the wider capabilities of our business.”
DIGITAL GROWTH
With the new branding comes a new marketing push. Rob wants both sides of the business – print and digital – to have equal billing on its website, through their marketing and from their sales teams when they discuss the scope of Spectrum’s offering. This is partly because the digital side of the business is growing quickly; Rob is confident that this will continue for the foreseeable future as more companies understand the benefits of digitising their businesses and automating processes.
Demand for Spectrum’s digitisation services have surged since the pandemic, Rob adds, as businesses have needed to work remotely, access information wherever they are, and become more efficient. “This has meant digitising the way they do things.”
Rob emphasises that Spectrum don’t just go into a business and digitise their current processes. “The first part in any solution is consultancy. We review the way a business does things currently and then advise, and improve their processes, and then digitise them. Consultancy is a huge part of it as that’s where our many years of experience as experts in automation comes into its own. We don’t just sell a software; we sell an end-to-end consultancy solution that we then embed and support to give the customer added peace of mind.”
Print will bounce back in terms of volumes
Digitisation can significantly improve efficiency. For example, in businesses in sectors such as construction - where thousands of invoices need to be processed - this was, historically, a labour-intensive process, involving the manual processing of those invoices, matching them to purchase orders and getting them signed off by management. The invoice would then be put into the filing system and onto the bank for payment.
“There is a huge amount of work in this,” says Rob. “We digitise all this through scanning and data capture. Our systems and software can read what is on an invoice, extract the information, put it through a workflow, and it can then appear on someone’s ‘phone for approval. This automation speeds up the entire process, meaning the business can redeploy the personnel who were doing these mundane tasks and get them onto more value-added work.”
GROWTH STRATEGY
As COVID has sped up the digitalisation process among many businesses, Spectrum has invested in its team. “While most businesses have been scaling back, and doing what they can to protect the business, we have taken a front-foot approach, recruiting a head of digital solutions - and another six people into that team - which gears us up for growth,” says Rob.
The digital side of Spectrum is thriving, and the print side is still growing too. “Print will bounce back in terms of volumes as people migrate back to the office.” To this end, Spectrum has recruited several local young people and put them through the company’s training programme, Spectrum Campus. “We are investing in youth to grow our own sales professionals,” says Rob.
Organic growth is only one part of Spectrum’s ambitious plan to double its £10 million turnover in the next three years. Rob is also looking to acquire businesses, to add to the two purchased in the past three years. “There are three to four businesses we are talking to that are the right fit geographically, as well as in what they sell and their expertise. We are looking at print and digital acquisitions – it could be a software developer or vendor or a start-up - there are all manner of opportunities we are looking at.
“We are taking a proactive approach in contacting businesses that we think will be a good fit into the spectrum of what we do.”
