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DEALER PROFILE
In March 2015, Group Managing
Director Clive Hamilton completed
an MBO of the business he’d worked
at for 23 years. Under his leadership,
in just 18 months, the company
completed two acquisitions and
recorded its highest ever level of year
on year growth, with turnover rising
from £4.5 million to £7 million.
The company was established 26 years
ago and up until the MBO, it was primarily
a hardware-centric organisation. “We did
offer a number of document workflow
solutions, but our core business was within
the print hardware arena. Following the
MBO, I chose to align our portfolio with
market demands and evolved to offer
more solutions and software services to
complement our range of printers and
hardware, associated workflow solutions
and managed print services,” Hamilton
explained.
As part of its strategy to adopt a
stronger solutions focus, the company was
appointed a Microsoft Silver (soon to be
Gold) Partner and a VMware accredited
technology provider, moves that placed it
in a strong position to provide clients with
a full complement of tailored, flexible and
scalable on premise, hybrid and cloud, end
to end solutions.
“We’re not masquerading as IT experts,
our approach has been all about having the
ability to wrap added-value solutions around
document management and workflow,”
Hamilton said. “In today’s climate more
documents are produced but less are printed
out, with our services, we help clients to
efficiently capture information securely and
make it easily accessible to everyone in the
business. It’s about managing the workflow
of documents, providing continuity and
wrapping that around an MPS solution,” he
added.
Print and IT
Pinnacle was one of the first mono
branded Xerox Concessionaires in the
UK and offers the OEM’s full range from
small desktop printers, to MFPs and digital
colour production presses. The company is
a Gold Partner Concessionaire, as well as a
Xerox accredited Advanced Managed Print
Services and Production Specialist.
“There is a natural synergy between
the IT and print worlds. Solutions such as
Office365 and Sharepoint can be added
as apps to client’s Xerox MFPs. By bringing
both print and solutions together, we’ve
created a managed services portfolio as
opposed to just a managed print service,”
Hamilton said.
Acquisition for growth
Pinnacle’s head office is in Cardiff and it
also has offices in Exeter and Watford, it
employs 26 people across all three sites.
The addition of the Watford office was
a result of its first acquisition, last year
Pinnacle bought Fast Technology Services,
a business that specialises in IT printer
hardware and related technologies.
Hamilton said: “We bought it because
there was a real synergy between both
companies’ customer bases. They were
a multi-brand organisation with specific
expertise in managing large fleets of A4
devices. What we did was to align the
business with our own so it offers the full
Xerox portfolio but we also retained some
A4 brands as well for continuity.”
The company has also just completed
on its second deal. It has purchased a
Bristol-based IT reseller’s entire MPS
customer base and wholly integrated that
within its operations. “Managed print
wasn’t their core business and they wanted
to ensure their customers received the best
support so they can focus on IT solutions.
We have migrated all agreements over to
us and the door for network and IT services
remains open, it’s a good fit for us,” he
said.
Pinnacle Complete Office Solutions has increased turnover from
£4.5 million to £7 million in 18 months
A three-pronged growth
strategy is paying dividends
Three-pronged growth strategy
Future growth is firmly on the cards,
Hamilton said that the next goal is to hit
the £10 million turnover mark. “We’ve got
a plan in place and growth will come from
three areas – business as usual, solutions
and acquisitions,” he said, adding: “There
are one or two more [acquisitions] we’d
like to do in the next twelve months.”
Pinnacle serves customers across
all sectors but is viewed as a specialist
within the finance and insurance world,
retail sector, as well as the medical and
pharmaceutical markets. “We’ve got a
number of good clients in those markets,”
Hamilton said.
The company also has a number of
European clients and the ability to tap into
Xerox’s infrastructure has proven to be a
major value-add when it comes to winning
new business. “We’ve got between
400-500 devices and associated solutions
installed in 14 countries,” he said. “As
a Xerox partner we have been able to
create a broader scope of services and can
provide MPS to customers across Europe
very easily.”
Looking ahead Hamilton believes that
with Brexit, the next eighteen months
will be challenging. “As we’ve operated
in Europe for a number of years, for us
trading will continue and it will be business
as usual, but there’s no doubt it has and
will impact further on our industry.”
In conclusion, he said that there are
opportunities out there. “We will have to
work harder or smarter to get the same
business, which is why I see acquisitions
and solutions as key – the more you can
wrap around the better!”
Clive Hamilton,
Group Managing
Director
By bringing
both print
and solutions
together,
we’ve
created a
managed
services
portfolio
as opposed
to just a
managed
print service
