Intec Micros has recently rebranded to reflect its shift in focus. However, while the business is at the cutting edge of the industry, it is also rooted in traditional values, such as dedicated customer service.
For distributors in the channel, the cutting edge is always where they should be, offering the latest products to resellers and managed service providers. But sometimes, they need to lean on traditional principles as well, such as developing personalised relationships with customers. It isn’t an easy trick to pull off, but it is something that Intec Micros is doing with aplomb.
Intec Micros has been a distributor in the channel for 23 years, but post-pandemic has developed disruptive brands in the marketplace. However, with the market developing apace, the new CEO, John Hayes-Warren, decided to refocus the company and rebrand it.
Scope to add value
John arrived at Intec Micro in October 2024 and saw that there was significant potential; there was scope to improve and add more value to their customers. “Looking at the market, the appetite for digital – as well as the threats to it from cybercriminals – has gone through the roof since COVID,” he says. “Distributors must think about how they engage with that and add value to the vendors that they’re moving through. When I looked at what we had, I saw there was a good premise for us to specialise.
“In the past six to nine months, we have been looking after our core customers, and while we have been doing that, we have restructured the organisation and been building specialist resources in networking and intelligent connectivity, to add value on a core set of vendors that we want to build on.”
John adds that as the business refocused, it was also an appropriate time to refresh its appearance and clarify its identity in the market, along with its website. “We set out that premise of becoming a value-add distributor where we can help our channel partners not only deliver value to their clients but accelerate the time to value for their clients,” he says. “That’s been the big change in the market; end customers are more relaxed with the fact that ecosystems deliver their services, not just a single organisation.”
Sustainability has also played a role in the shift, with an increasing number of customers seeking transparency in the supply chain and an understanding of the measures taken to reduce carbon emissions, as well as growing regulatory and compliance concerns. “This combination of factors means the market is moving fast, which is why we have decided to enhance our specialism,” says John. “Focused organisations can be disruptive and offer customers an alternative.”
John adds that Intec Micros’ vendor list, which includes companies such as Ubiquiti, Zyxel, Netally and Netgear, is also evolving quickly. “They’ve got a high R&D focus. Their product evolution is fast, and they’ve built reputable cloud native platforms to simplify deployment and reduce management overheads,” he says. “The price points and innovations are resonating, especially for SMBs and the public sector. We’re delighted to have those partners because that’s what we’re building our expertise around. Those partnerships are the ones we’re looking for because they’re disruptive and high growth.”
Fast moving
But once the decision to change strategy was made, the business moved quickly. “On joining, I saw a level of urgency because of the pace of change in the market and that we needed to get a strategy in place. We decided in December that we would rebrand, as we needed to reset and modernise the market’s perspective of Intec Micros.
“We had the plan down in its entirety by March and went live in June, so it wasn’t a lengthy process. It was intense work to get everything in place, but in some ways, it was easy because we were very clear on who we were and what we were going to become. We’ve invested in our managers too. That’s key for me because managers are the lifeblood of your business. If you receive ownership and accountability from your managers to move this forward, then you can proceed quickly. But it was executed well as we were clear in our strategy.”
People-led customer services
However, while Intec Micros has evolved, it hasn’t strayed from its core values. “We are forming a new identity, but building it onto our existing DNA, which is all about customer relationships,” says John.
“The intelligent connectivity piece is about linking data centre and end user assets to the network. But it goes beyond that because you’ve got to secure it. We’re looking at vendors in the SASE space, for example. The intelligent area opens us to examine AI-driven network management.
“But our core DNA is about customer relationships and that symbiotic nature between vendor and the channel. This company has done that well over the years. Many of our reseller and MSP customers are in the sub-£100 million bracket and still appreciate the human side of relationships.
“Many companies are digitising to the extent where people can’t speak to someone else on the end of the phone if they want something and losing that human touch, but we aren’t doing that.”
Of course, AI is also influencing the company, but John says they have been careful to use it where it adds value. “We are about to put AI agents into our business, not to replace people, but to accelerate quote output,” he says. “It doesn’t detract from the human touch; it’s more about speed of operation and the administrative side to get customers what they need faster, at scale.
“It’s that marrying of cutting-edge technology, with the old-fashioned values of good people-led customer service.
“With AI, it is about putting it in the right areas where it adds value to that relationship rather than automation for automation’s sake. For customers, a human relationship is the bridge, but how can we mobilise the business with expertise and automation to make that deliver and be efficient for their customers?
“As we build that customer base, and build value into that, you have got to know your customer. No clever prompts on an AI system can give you that; it’ll probably give you a detailed report, and that’s fine, but that doesn’t tell you about a human relationship, how people behave, and how they want to deal with you, how they want to communicate or what works for them. We will not take that away. The feedback we get from our customers is that they love the human touch. However, they also appreciate innovation and development in how we deliver assets to them and add value.
“Our DNA is focused on that, and it’s how we measure customer success. It’s about building the expertise around that engagement to add value. That’s why we establish the brand and values; all our employees understand the strategy, where we’re going, and how they measure themselves against it, as well as how they can evolve and develop. We’ve created some new roles as well to assist that structure.”
New e-commerce platform
Alongside the rebrand has come a new e-commerce platform. This, says John, is about enhancing the customer experience again. “The decision on that was how can it improve the customer experience in line with the sales organisation holding the relationship up front. It’s more about adding convenience to the relationship rather than replacing it.
“It’s another avenue for our customers to choose to determine how they want to procure through the relationships that we hold.
“It’s something that customers are increasingly asking for. Some people want speed and efficiency in getting things done, and they want the option to do so digitally. Or they want the insights to help them analyse what they’re doing and how effective it is. Again, it’s about what we can do to add value to the relationship.”
Future
Now that the rebrand is live, John is focusing on driving growth in the company. “The strategy is to keep strengthening the ecosystem and our specialism around our sales funnel,” he says. “We’re investing in sales specialists that can add further value.
“We’re also focusing on business process automation where it makes sense, including increased digitisation and process automation. We also have a plan for how we layer on complementary vendors that take us further into the network, intelligent connectivity, and security markets and we will continue to expand from there.
“There’s plenty of headroom for Intec Micros to be brilliant in the UK with some disruptive vendors that we can add to with our strong customer relationships.”
