Kent joins Datapoint with a strong track record in business transformation and growing profitable services businesses. Whilst at HP he led the successful merger of HP and Compaq’s services businesses in the UK and Ireland. More recently he was credited with turning around Vistorm into a profitable services company known for Information Assurance and Security. The company was acquired by EDS in 2008.
“As we emerge from the economic downturn, customers will look for new, more flexible communication integration capabilities from their IT and telecom suppliers. We plan to build on our excellent multi-vendor relationships and geographical reach by offering added value through an even stronger and more comprehensive services portfolio,” said Kent.
The appointment of CFO Richard Wingfield, who was CFO at Azzurri Communications, strengthens the company’s financial management team and brings extensive experience in financial management of fast-growing systems integrators as well as expertise to finance and develop large-scale managed services projects for enterprise customers.
Datapoint aims to grow its business by providing a greater services-led communication systems integration portfolio and more than double services revenues and profitability within the next three years. Currently, Datapoint has revenues of over £65 million and employs 240 people across Europe.
The company’s services business accounts for 20 per cent of revenues and is focused around professional and managed services. Datapoint aims to extend this capability and add new project and consultancy-led services.
Kent said, “We already enjoy excellent vendor relationships with market leaders. Going forward we aim to strengthen these relationships through complementary services.”
“The communications systems market is relatively under-served in terms of services compared to the IT sector and is ripe for this kind of development. Expanding our capability will benefit our vendors, partners and customers alike.”
Kent and Wingfield take up their roles with immediate effect and replace Vim Vithaldas and Paul Lewis.