The Glasgow-based company is rolling out the new “fibre to the cabinet” (FTTC) product in partnership with BT and has already entered into a trial phase that will involve about 20 firms using the system.

FTTC is an advanced fibre optic technology designed to replace the traditional copper-based connection between local telephone exchanges and road-side cabinets. Its backers claim the system will “radically alter” data transfer and allow download speeds of 60 megabits per second – more than seven times quicker than a typical 8Mbps connection – while speeding upload times tenfold.

The trials are set to run until the end of March. Within a year of the full launch, Abica hopes to have 1,000 Scottish companies accessing the system – business worth in excess of £1.2 million a year in revenues.

David Munro, joint managing director at Abica, said: “FTTC will make a transformational difference to the way business communicates and how people network.

“It will allow us to create wide area networks which will permit companies with geographically separate divisions to allow all their computers to talk to each other.”

The move follows Abica’s appointment to run the first trial in Scotland of BT’s £3 billion roll-out of faster internet services.

Speaking at the recent Scottish Chambers of Commerce annual dinner, Chambers chairman Mike Salter said improving broadband access was vital to prosperity.

“The digital network and access to broadband is now essential,” he said. “We must encourage not only the increase in speed and bandwidth of the network, but the spread of the network to allow 100 per cent coverage of broadband throughout the country.”

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Scotland On Sunday

abica has always put the customer at the centre of its business. The company knows that excellent service and support is really what wins new customers and retains them over the long term. An important part of this is the personal approach used by the company. For example, abica knows that customers want to speak to people, so when you telephone the company it is always a person who answers, never a machine. In a recent customer satisfaction survey, the company’s customers voted and gave the company a 96% customer satisfaction rating – no mean feat in an industry where customer dissatisfaction is the norm.

The company’s passionate belief and investment in both customer service and support processes and staff has culminated in being selected as the winner of the Excellence in Customer Services award at the 2009 Glasgow Business Awards. Against a record number of entrants and two highly respected finalists, Glasgow Housing Association and the John Lewis Partnership, abica has been singled out as the benchmark in customer service for 2009.

“This award is exceptionally important to us,” reports Gregory Barnett one of the company founders, “Service is something we are incredibly passionate about and to be recognised as being excellent with this important award proves to us that service is an important factor to the market as well. This award really underlines our commitment to being the best and we hope it is just the first of many”.

In the last 12 months abica has doubled its customer base and enjoyed very low rates of customer churn, even in such difficult economic conditions.

“We are an ambitious company and we aim to become the best telecoms provider in the UK for small and medium sized businesses,” states David Munro another of the founders.

Going forward the company will be run by remaining shareholders David Munro and Gregory Barnett as joint managing directors. Commenting on the changes Mr Munro said, “We would like to thank both Scott and Rod for their input in developing Abica. In the last year we have made significant progress in creating the UK’s best supplier of telecoms to SMEs by creating a new brand with a strong position in the market and significantly developing new recurring revenue streams”.

Mr Barnett added, “The recent success of abica has been highlighted with some significant new client and contract wins and also our shortlisting for ‘Excellence in Customer Service’ at the Glasgow Business Awards against some prestigious competition”.

Mr Allison commented, “I have enjoyed my time at Abica, building and working with a fantastic team and I feel proud of the progress made on the long term business objectives. I feel confident that I am leaving the company in good shape with lots of potential and I wish those who remain at the company the best of luck for the future”. He continued, “I am now looking forward to having the time to pursue other business and personal interests, including my role as a non-executive director of The Entrepreneurial Exchange. I am also looking at taking this ideal opportunity to study for an MBA”.

“We were constantly frustrated by how inefficient our old broadband was. It was far too slow for the kind of work we do”, said Robin, MD of Glasgow-based design consultancy, RHA Design.

“It started to become a huge problem especially when, as now, we are in a market where deadlines and budgets are tighter than ever and our ability to get work done quickly and to the highest standards is critical,” he said.

As a result, RHA Design investigated the market to see if it could resolve the problem by increasing broadband speeds and if possible make cost savings, before finally opting for the package provided by abica, a ten years old UK based telecoms operator focused solely on the small to medium sized business community.

Robin said: “abica’s broadband package is miles faster for both downloading and uploading information through the internet. There are no usage download limits and we also get a fixed IP address as part of the package. This is what I need to impress my customers and it means I don’t have to worry anymore about speed or file size because the new broadband works brilliantly. It also means far more productive afternoons for everyone involved in our business.”

On the back of faster and more reliable broadband, Robin decided to switch to abica to make him further costs savings by transferring over the company’s entire telecoms, mobile and landline as well, giving him a dedicated customer service manager and the facility to analyse, understand and manage his company’s cost of calls.

“The overall package, including broadband and telecoms gives me a 50 per cent saving on what we were paying to our former supplier and the ‘my abica’ facility means we can drill down to review the costs of each individual call.”

abica MD, said: Scott Allison: “abica is an SME, just like its customers, so we really understand the importance of reliable telecoms and, equally importantly, excellent service.”

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Top 10 Broadband

“Our business is coping well with the economic downturn but I was becoming increasingly frustrated by the inability of the big telecoms players to understand us or even tailor their services to our needs.

“Our cost of calls and the structure of the tariff we were on simply made no sense for us. Admittedly, and as it turned out, we had been on the wrong tariff for ages, but we were clearly being taken for granted since nobody at our supplier seemed to care about us or the fact that we were paying way over the odds”.

As a result, he said, Intellis went to market to see if there was a better way of purchasing telecoms. “I fully understand that telecoms providers have to make a margin from their services to us but I greatly resented being treated like a number rather than a living, breathing business with its own way of doing things.

“I wanted a single dedicated service contact responsible for handling and resolving everything from fault reports through to making regular contact at pre-determined intervals to ensure we are getting the service we expect and need. I also wanted aggressively priced call rates which reflect the nature of our operations and low minimum call charges which reduce further on a sliding scale as volumes increase.”

Mr. Byrne narrowed down his search to a handful of providers and eventually, to abica, a ten years old UK based telecoms operator focused solely on the small to medium sized business community. The company has built a long standing and loyal base of customers because it focuses on delivering reliable, good value telecoms products, covering mobile, landline, broadband and now IP telephony products.

Said Mr. Byrne: “Once we had signed up with abica, they took care of the whole process of transferring the contracts and numbers from the previous provider without any further need for us to get involved, leaving us to get on with the business of running a contact centre.

“I was particularly pleased with their ‘my abica’ electronic billing and analysis suite which really lets us analyse, understand and manage the cost of calls. Our telephone bill used to arrive in a box and we had no realistic way of analysing our call costs to see whether or not we were being charged correctly and no sensible way of working out if we could save money on call costs”

“We thought we had a good deal from our previous provider, but with abica we have saved 63% on our call costs. And while the cost saving is important, it is abica’s focus on our business objectives that sets them above all the other providers we have experienced.”

Said abica MD, Scott Allison: “Our first priority was to understand the nature of Intellis’s business and the pattern of calls it made. This enabled us to develop a real understanding of its service and product needs.

“We proposed our Contact Centre Tariff plan, adapted it to Intellis’s structure and as a result we were able to reduce its telecoms costs by a whopping 63 percent, though in my experience a 25 per cent reduction is more usual for most call centre operators.

“In addition Intellis has the ability to analyse their bills online or download them in spreadsheet format to analyse them in as much detail as they want. Equally, Intellis is much more confident that in a crisis their dedicated contact at abica will make resolving faults easier and quicker with less of the ‘run around’ needed with the previous provider,” he said.

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• Call Centre Clinic
• Call Centre Helper

Conducted independently by Market Transformations Ltd, the research found that only 5% of the SME market was happy with the service and value for money they received and would actively look to stick with their current provider.

The findings are supported by a separate survey published this month by the global- market research firm, JD Power which found that in terms of customer satisfaction the UK mobile market lags behind other industries.

As Scotland’s commercial engine room, the health of the SME market is synonymous with the health of the country and Scott Allison, managing director at abica, said that working with a committed telecom partner would help businesses improve their own performance significantly.

Canvassing opinions from the business community, Market Transformations Ltd also found that 30% of firms did not look past the front page of their monthly statement, while a further 15% did not understand it. This means 45% of businesses are unable to use their telecoms data to improve performance.

Used effectively, bills allow firms to save money, see how well their employees are working and improve internal processes and staffing levels. Ignoring the information held on these statements can only be detrimental for businesses at a time when things are already very difficult.

Mr Allison said: “Telecoms are an ongoing cost for businesses and the least they should expect from a provider is value for money and excellent service. Bills should also come in a format that allows management to analyse them easily.”

He added: “This is why we have an online billing platform that lets customers see exactly how much they have spent, who they are calling, when they are calling them and how often calls are made. Using this information can make a big difference to the way firms choose to do business and the effectiveness of their staff on a daily basis.”

The research pinpointed problems with flexibility and heard complaints from those that did not want to be tied into contracts that were 12 or 18 months long when the commercial environment was changing so quickly.

Complex tariffs left customers confused, poor service left them disgruntled and overall the research showed that customer had simply lost any expectation that their telecoms provider would service them effectively.

“These are damning findings for the big players and by offering a bespoke service focused purely on SME customers we are using them to our advantage,” said Mr Allison.

“There are alternatives for businesses unhappy with their current contract, we make it easy to change provider and in the last two months alone have welcomed 20 new clients who have done just that.”

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• SME Web
• Mobile Business
• Mobile News

Allan will report directly into managing director Scott Allison, who said: “We are growing very quickly and making sure we can handle that growth is going to be crucial to our long term success.

“Allan has an enthusiastic and ambitious personality and has fitted into the set up here incredibly quickly. He is exactly the right person to head up the sales team and we are delighted to welcome him on board.”

Allan has just turned 33 and brings a wealth of sales experience to the company. After injury prevented what seemed like a promising football career when he was still in his teens, Allan threw all of his energies into forging a successful future in business.

He has worked with big brands like Tesco and Telewest and also has valuable B2B experience from his last position as sales and marketing manager at IT support firm Thom Micro Systems.

He said: “After meeting with Scott, it was clear that joining abica was the right thing to do. The telecoms industry is very fast moving and the business has big plans for the future. That sits very comfortably with my own ambitions and I’m really enjoying working in the friendly and professional environment they have developed at abica.”

Last year abica recorded a profitable turnover of £1.1m and aims to grow that substantially over the coming three years.

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Comms Dealer

Scott Allison, managing director of abica presented the award to Ishbel Sutherland, partner at Anderson Anderson & Brown. The Aberdeen based firm also picked up the award for Fastest Growing Firm.

Receiving the award, Partner Ishbel Sutherland said that she was delighted to be collecting the award on behalf of the firm and that the success was just reward for the considerable hard work and effort that all Partners and Staff had put in over the last year.

More information:

• Scottish Accountancy Awards
• Business 7
• Anderon Anderson & Brown

Glasgow-based abica, the straight talking mobile network for business, has teamed up with global consultancy Shirlaws and will be offering customers a place on a bespoke half-day workshop.

The Thrive and Survive event will focus on four main areas:

• Achieving a business’s vision through an economic downturn
• Identifying growth strategies and knowing when to apply them
• Improving the efficiency of resources to support growth
• Managing a business through its business life cycle

Robin Th’ng of Shirlaws will be leading the event. He specialises in executive coaching for CEOs, partners and directors, supporting them to have clarity and focus in their business and personal life. Robin joined Shirlaws UK in 2005, having worked in the education, research and professional services sectors within the construction and property industry for over 30 years. He has a Bachelor degree in Architecture, an MBA and PhD and is a fellow of the Chartered Management Institute and a registered mentor for Business Mentoring Scotland. His career began as a Research Fellow in ABACUS, University of Strathclyde where he developed the first generation of computer generated architectural software.

Scott Allison, managing director at abica, said: “We have worked with Shirlaws in the past and it has been hugely helpful in developing our own business. We hope our customers will get the same sort of benefits and leave the day with a lot of ideas to take back to their companies”. Scott said abica was determined to forge tight relationships with its customers and help them grow their businesses to mutual benefit. He added: “Many businesses see their phone bill as an unwelcome fixed cost. We are trying to give customers as much value as we can and develop the way they think of their telecoms provider and improve the level of service they receive in innovative and unusual ways. ”

More information:
Shirlaws