Cirencester, Gloucestershire, UK – Over the last three years, tindirect has seen growing demand from its channel partners for mid-range and networking hardware engineers to support large rollouts or routine installation and configuration work, often during unsocial hours. Now tindirect has formalised this growing service area by launching a new division called tinservices to meet the needs of this identified market skills gap. Their expansion also involves the appointment of Andy Loydell as Services Development Manager.
According to tindirect’s Managing Director, Rod Haddrell (pictured), ‘It has become increasingly obvious there is a skills gap for experienced engineers dealing with refurbished equipment, who understand hardware intuitively. Our channel partners tell us that manufacturers’ engineers are often only trained on the latest product, and work largely with manuals to fault-find and fix things.’
Speaking for the first time to the press, Andy Loydell adds ‘By contrast, our team of experienced in-house engineers have real depth of knowledge of current and previous generations of hardware. Our engineers have a deep feel for the product and can fix and reconfigure it more quickly – which saves time and money for the client.’
Part of tinglobal ltd, tindirect has grown from a turnover of £10m in 2000 to £17 m this year by refurbishing and remarketing high-end IT equipment for the secondary market. Their customer base already extends beyond 50 countries. tindirect has built a team of engineers with a wide range of experience across a variety of platforms such as IBM, Cisco, Sun and HP.Services include the commissioning of machines, fault-finding, upgrades, L-par tape solutions, system installations, system health checks and site surveys. tindirect has deployed a partner focused or channel only model since inception in 2000.
Building on their reputation for quality and responsiveness to customer needs, tindirect appointed Andy Loydell to spearhead the development of tinservices in July this year. He brings fifteen years IT sales experience to the company and is really pleased with progress so far. He says ‘We recently had a situation where a client had signed for the maintenance of a particular piece of kit without inspecting it closely. When something went wrong, their in-house engineers were unable to service this specialist machine. It had been down for 4 days before we received a desperate call. Within twenty-four hours, our man had it up and running and our client managed to recover their position of credibility with their own client.’
tindirect and tinservices do not engage with end-users so as a channel business, their engineers represent the client’s company onsite. This may extend to wearing clothing branded with a client’s logo to ensure a true white label service. Clients benefit from the flexibility of experienced staff available on demand, without having to bear the fixed overhead themselves.
Commenting on these new developments, Managing Director Rod Haddrell says ‘tinservices is designed to deliver pain relief for clients with a more flexible workforce solution. It is safe project management from a very responsive unit.’ Rod adds ‘Our long-term goal is to be acknowledged as Europe’s leading supplier to end-user focused sales organisations. By widening our services offering, we help consolidate our position as the First Choice supplier to the major trade participants. It’s a clear demonstration of moving up the value chain.’
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Company information
tinglobal is a private holding company, majority owned by its directors and with a single Private Equity investor. Its main asset is the ownership of tindirect ltd, a profitable and cash generative business engaged principally in the global, business-to-business market for refurbished and reconfigured midrange computer equipment, including servers, storage, parts and associated services and networking infrastructure. The Group was renamed from Global Computer Holdings to tinglobal Ltd in order to be able to identify strongly with its main asset, tindirect.
With sixty employees, tindirect’s unique selling proposition is a large stock inventory held onsite which enables overnight delivery to major clients who depend on the speed of service. The group’s turnover to May 2007 was £17 million.
Based in a centralised, customised facility on a single site in Cirencester, near the M4 and M5 in South West England, tindirect buys from suppliers in over 30 countries. The multilingual sales team already sells to customers in over 40 countries and is expanding into more territories by adding to its international sales team. The company’s growth strategy involves recruiting graduates with diverse language skills. Management have committed to further investment in the product range, sales, supply and distribution capability to manufacturers and trade participants.
The goal is to be acknowledged as Europe's leading supplier to end-user focused sales organisations.
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