The Business Exchange Swindon & Wiltshire December/January edition 2014 | Page 22

IN PROFILE
How did you start out in
the industry?
After leaving university I got my first role at Vodafone.
I was employee number 74 and worked for the company
for 16 years. My last appointment at Vodafone was head
of indirect sales and prior to that I had held various sales
and marketing roles.

What did you do after
leaving Vodafone?

Andy Tow

Chief Commercial Officer,
Excalibur, Swindon

Andy Tow is the newly
appointed chief commercial
officer of Excalibur
Communications, the Swindon
based IT and communications
for business firm.
Andy’s role is to drive business
development and company
growth at an exciting time for
the company which is set to
announce its most successful
year of trading ever, with an
increase in turnover expected to
be £2M.
Andy is a mobile and wireless
industry specialist with nearly
30 years experience in the
sector, specialising in strategy
and business growth. We
interviewed Andy to find out
more about his career and
plans for taking Excalibur to
the next level.

22

THE BUSINESS EXCHANGE 2014

I joined a customers board and became a share holder of
a company called Adam Phones Limited. As managing
director I ran this telecoms business which specialised in
short term line rental for high net worth individuals. Our
clients were really high profile with a list of household
names as customers as well as professionals from the TV
and film industries.
Adam Phones also offered a bespoke service delivering
replacement phones to clients within an hour’s distance of
London. We worked closely with five star hotels in London
providing UK sim cards and phones to travellers.
After 6 years at Adam Phones I left the business to work
for Unique Distribution Ltd. I enjoyed this role as it was
a great challenge. The company wasn’t in good shape. I
salvaged the profitable bit of the company and moved it
to Phones International and ran the gauntlet with Dragon’s
Den star Peter Jones CBE.

Can you give us a little gem from
working with Peter?
The 6 ft 7 inches famous TV personality Peter once signed
in to a business we were looking to buy together as
“Anon”! He might have got away with it were it not for
the stripy socks!

What are your ambitions for
Excalibur?
We have a plan to increase our annual growth by 25%
each year for the next three to five years by ‘sticking to our
knitting’ and hitting targets. We are looking to organically
grow our IT and support services, whilst increasing our
Vodafone business too.
Excalibur is on track this year (ending January 2015) to
be touching on a £9M turnover from £7M the year before.
Our ambition is to grow this to a £25M business, this won’t
happen overnight, but I’m looking forward to help steer
the business in this direction and be part of the company’s
ongoing success story.
Excalibur are well known for championing local business,
working with local partners and supporting local charities.
Will you be looking to continue this in 2015 and beyond?
Of course, this is something I am very passionate about
too. We have plans to work closely with Business West to
cement relationships across the South West. Our target is
to grow our business within an hour’s drive of our offices in
Swindon and Bristol.
Excalibur’s dedication for supporting local charities
will not wain either. Giving something back to the local
community is an important part of our company ethos.

Can you share with us your top tip
for business success?
Keep it really simple. Develop and implement a strategy all
your colleagues can understand and see clearly what their
role in achieving it is.

What are Excalibur’s predictions
for the technology and telecoms
markets in 2015?
Customers will be keener than ever to use the best
available communications tools to help them advance their
business. Increased connectivity through 4G will further
enhance how they manage their own operations and how
they can offer more to their market places.
Solutions are set to become even more varied. Whilst
this will ultimately provide sizeable benefits when the
correct systems are in place, it means that solutions will
become even more complex.
With mobile working set to become even easier, the
demand for a single supplier will be all the more logical.
Already we’re beginning to see companies looking
to offer extra services as they try to present a more
all encompassing offer, but many are perhaps setting
themselves up for a fall. Establishing a foolproof customer
journey requires a serious investment in the right people
and right systems to become that true service provider.
Merely doffing your cap in the general direction of this
claim or hiding behind your ‘tardis-like’ website isn’t
going to work. Those firms trying to set themselves up as
something they’re not will soon find that their increasingly
savvy customers, who have critical communications needs,
will see right through them.
Tablets will continue to outsell PCs and this will see
IT companies getting a little hotter under the collar as
tablets with SIM cards become viewed as more of a
communications device. Likewise, comms businesses will
feel further threatened by the mobile becoming seen as
more and more of an IT device.
Whilst Nokia’s B2B should significantly increase in 2015,
there will be a reduction in resellers. It’s not impossible to
manage a supply chain of course, but by its very nature, a
giant product portfolio makes it difficult to focus and ever
tougher to offer a decent customer experience. I’d like