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Interviews

How businesses can respond effectively to the second wave of COVID-19

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By William Copley, Founder and MD of leading business telecoms and connectivity solutions provider, Armstrong Bell is focused on helping other business in response to the pandemic. In this interview he provides advice to businesses on how they can response effectively to the second wave of coronavirus.

Tell us about your background. What were you doing prior to establishing Armstrong Bell and how did the business come about?

Prior to working within the telecoms industry and establishing Armstrong Bell, I was actually the frontman of a signed band for about 10 years. In between recording albums or playing shows, I worked varied hours for a company owned by a mate’s dad, pulling cables as a telephone engineer. So when the band wound down, I took on the role full-time.

After a few years, that business actually changed ownership, and they didn’t share the same focus on providing quality end user experience and in working with new technologies that I was both used to and valued as part of my role.

Ultimately, I knew I could improve a number of processes to make the organisation better, whilst cementing long-term relationships with customers. However, I also knew that the new management didn’t value my ideas, so I took the leap and founded my own telecoms systems business with a partner in 2001.

Although the business looks very different now, our values and my inspiration remain the same: To deliver tailored business telecoms solutions with exemplary customer service.

How has Armstrong Bell grown over the last 20 years? What do you attribute your success to?

Over the last 20 years, Armstrong Bell has grown from a start-up into one of West Midlands’ leading telecoms and connectivity solutions providers for businesses and other organisations across the region.

I think our success has been down to a number of things. The first is that we have always focused on solving a problem and delivering exemplary service to our customers as opposed to looking at where the next sale is coming from. Although establishing a strong sales operation is a key focus now as we aim to double our revenue in the next two years, our resolve to listen to our customer’s needs, create new and efficient solutions and help businesses find new and innovative ways of working through telecoms and connectivity solutions has and will continue to be fundamental to our growth.

Having been in business for 20 years, I also believe that persistence and tenacity have attributed to the success of the firm. I have worked through multiple recessions and survived and I’m always looking at new ways to solve any business problem, but without that sense of perseverance and drive to just keep pushing, I don’t think the business would be where it is today.

Besides the coronavirus pandemic, what are the biggest challenges that Armstrong Bell has had to face throughout its history? How did you respond to these challenges and what did you do to overcome them?

I think one of the main challenges I have had to work through is ensuring Armstrong Bell is as robust and resilient as possible. In the early days, we secured three main clients by being as responsive and helpful as possible, which meant all three grew into decent sized accounts. However, during the 2008/09 recession, one of the firms went into administration which made me realise how exposed to risk we were in relying on just three businesses for the majority of our monthly and annual revenue. As a result, I made the decision to spread the risk and work hard on driving new sales, upselling existing clients and establishing a strong client base, which meant if one left, we wouldn’t experience financial difficulty.

In the year that our biggest client went into administration, we ended up growing both in turnover and profit and were able to cement Armstrong Bell as a robust business, with robust foundations.

Do you think these experiences meant you were better equipped to approach the coronavirus pandemic than you would otherwise have been? How has the crisis affected the firm and what have you done in response?

I think when you have been in business for a long time, you learn not to panic regardless of the size of the challenge ahead. COVID-19 or no COVID-19, we all have cycles in business, which means there will be times when things are running smoothly and you are continuing to progress and others when sales are slow due to seasonal dips or growing pains.

However, building a business is a journey and it is in times of challenge and hardship that we learn the most, come up with our best ideas and create new ways of working that we otherwise wouldn’t have thought of before. At Armstrong Bell we’ve heard there’s a recession, but we’ve chosen not to take part – and that’s not because we haven’t been impacted by COVID-19, but because we are continuing to push forwards with our growth plans regardless of the destruction caused by the pandemic.

What support have you been providing to other businesses in response to the pandemic?

William Copley

William Copley

We have helped businesses in a number of different ways during the pandemic. When lockdown initially hit, we took the time to proactively contact our most impacted clients, such as those in events and hospitality, to see if they needed us to dial down their service or even turn it off, which the majority agreed to and were grateful for.

In addition, we have helped many businesses move to mass remote working by creating Connected Workspaces, which allow team members to collaborate with anyone, at any time from any place through simple, fast and flexible telecoms and connectivity solutions. For many businesses, it is the development of a Connected Workspace that has enabled them to continue to adapt and respond to the changing COVID-19 landscape, without impacting operations and resulting product and/or service delivery.

What must businesses learn from the first wave of coronavirus in order to survive the second? 

COVID-19 hasn’t stopped at any point, but I think how business owners now respond to the ongoing pandemic has completely changed. Initially, I think there was a clear divide between reactions, with many business owners panicking and pausing activity to ‘wait and see’ what would happen and others pushing on full steam ahead so that as markets started to recover, they would come out on top. However, now there is no definitive end to the pandemic, businesses have no choice but to continue to push through the challenges and find new and innovative ways of working that ensure they will survive for the long-term.

What gives you hope for the future? Are there any words of encouragement that you can give to other business owners who might be struggling/fearful for the future?

There will be an end point to COVID-19 in that we have either learnt to live with it and can control it or that we would have found a vaccine that works to protect the most vulnerable members of our society, at the very least.

In the meantime, despite how challenging the last 6 months and the next 6 months may seem, there are so many positives that can be taken from this situation. In business, this includes the opportunity it has provided to evaluate operations and to find new, innovative ways of working and, in life, to remind you of what is most important.

The power of mindset is an incredible thing, meaning if you focus on what you can control, what you change and what you can achieve, you are far more likely to experience a better outcome.

Global Banking & Finance Review

 

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