A Chat With: Simon Whitney at Cloud, Voice & Data

By Donna Fielder and Sarah Cronk

Having received Highly Commended at the Eastbourne Business Awards late last year, we wanted to find out more about Cloud, Voice & Data, the Seaford-based telecoms company. We spoke to Simon Whitney, Director and Co-Founder, to learn more.

Chalk: So you’re about to celebrate four years since Cloud, Voice & Data’s incorporation. What led to the creation of the business?

Simon: “Four years: the time has both flown by, and yet it also feels like we’ve been doing it for a long time now! I think it was only about 18 months ago that we felt, ‘hang on a minute, we’ve actually built a proper business’.

“I’ve been in telecoms for 15-16 years, working for different firms, albeit never actually leaving the original company… having gone through a couple of acquisition processes. Building up from a local SME to a top 3 Vodafone partner and one of the largest Telco companies in the country.

“I started at the bottom and worked my way up, working in account management and sales, eventually for both mobile and fixed lines. At one stage I was a platinum account manager, travelling across the country and looking after our largest corporate account.

“After the last company I worked for was acquired, I ended up in a role I wasn’t as keen on. It was at that point I connected with an old friend that I used to play under 16s football with. We joined up for a short time for a firm in Hailsham, but we didn’t like the direction the company was headed, so we decided to give starting our own company a shot. Sometimes your hand is forced and, although it was as exciting as it was terrifying, we had to go for it."

“We both have young families and were looking for a more flexible work-life balance, so working for ourselves was really appealing. We managed to secure some investment and away we went! By April 2019, we were out and about selling.

“We both love tech, but also have some old-school values when it comes to customer relationships and values. We love meeting clients face to face and giving them really strong account management and support. We don’t disappear after the deal is done; we stay with them all the way through sales, installation, connection, and beyond.

“Customers have our mobile numbers and can contact us with any issues, although we have other account managers who can support them too. We ask them for feedback every three months and tell them they can be as honest and brutal as they like. We want that constructive criticism to allow us to change, grow, evolve, and improve.

“Our sales and account management strategy isn’t something the bigger firms offer now; it’s been lost. I believe upholding those good customer relationships has enabled us to grow faster, with happy clients wanting more and more products and services from us.”

How many are on your team now and what’s your setup? Are you office-based, remote, or hybrid?

“There are 13 of us on the team, made up of engineers, customer support, tech support, project management, and sales. It’s a great team. They all work hard, we trust them to get the job done, and we have a lot of fun too. We are currently on the lookout for another engineer and would be willing to take on an apprentice too.

“We have an office in Seaford, but Russ and I are out doing sales about two days a week. As a small business, we all end up mucking in to run things.

“We have partnered with some other organisations to expand our offering too. For example, we have a partnership with an energy broker, so we can help our clients get great deals on anything from gas and electric to solar and LED lighting - even EV chargers. All with the same consultative and informative sales approach, even ongoing account management.

“We have also recently formed a partnership with Fujitsu/Ricoh in order to provide print and scan to customers.

“It’s these partnerships that have helped us grow organically and be more than ‘just a telco’.”

What has been the key to your success so far?

“Our fresh, friendly and consultative sales approach and client relationship building have absolutely been key. Networking with other local businesses has also been really powerful.

“We are members of all the local Chambers and, through those relationships, we have won clients, been put in touch with potential clients, and even found new partnerships and suppliers. Some of our largest corporate clients have come through these connections.

“We also have a very strong telemarketing team who have done a brilliant job with our internal lead generation.

“All this together, along with a hardworking, motivated and talented team of sales, support and engineers, has definitely given us a great platform to service our clients successfully.

“As a result of all of this, we hit our target turnover last year and achieved 35% growth. We have surpassed 700 customers and our NPS (Net Promoter) scores are averaging 7 to 8 out of 10, along with 5-star reviews across Google and Trustpilot.”

You offer a great range of services. What would you say are the most popular of these amongst your customers?

“People know us as a telecoms company - and that is our core business.

“However we are adding more and more additional services. We might go into a meeting to talk about telephony, but then we run through what else we can help with and we can usually identify a few other areas. We can then be the one point of contact for a customer’s IT, telecoms and broadband, for example, which is much easier for them with one unified billing platform, one account manager, and one point of contact.

“80% of customers have multiple products, including telephony, broadband, mobile, energy, marketing services, and other value-added specialist services. It just goes to prove the general happiness of our clients, wanting more and more services from us.”

Aside from the pandemic, what would you say has been the biggest challenge for you when it has come to growing your business?

“We actually did very well through the pandemic! You could say we were lucky in that we didn’t have loads of staff to worry about. There were only 4 of us at that point. We weren’t in our current, larger, office either; we were just renting a room for us to work in with no contract. So when the pandemic hit, we just packed up and worked from home. As much as we were ‘lucky’, we also didn’t stop working - we adjusted our strategy and targeted those businesses that needed the help the most.

“Although we had installations cancelled or put on hold, in some cases, the pandemic accelerated our workload. People came to us needing help with remote working. We’ve also talked to clients about the need for a disaster recovery strategy; thankfully a lot of our clients listened to us and were able to easily adjust, but we also won a lot of new clients in desperate need of help moving their users out of the office and needing help with either a home working setup or a new, more flexible, agile telephony solution.

“We had been in talks with some schools and hotels, who had been delaying the work, but because they suddenly became empty due to the pandemic, it accelerated their need and we could get in and crack on. In one school in particular, we completed about two years’ worth of scheduled work in just a few months. We had people working for us non-stop during that time.

“We then came out the other side of COVID-19 in a strong position and found it very easy to recruit, as many people had either lost their jobs or were unhappy on long furlough. Our team instantly grew from 4 to 10.

“I cannot say that the pandemic was a good thing, of course. We had to drastically change our strategy due to the pandemic, and maybe we didn’t grow as fast as we could have done, but we worked.

“Other than the pandemic, the biggest issue for us has been finance. We’re not finance people, we’re not accountants, we don’t have an FD - so handling cash flow, management accounts, HMRC etc has been a real challenge and a huge learning curve. Especially since we’ve grown quickly, and the overheads with it. We now hold a monthly meeting with our board and our new accountant. which has helped us manage this better and educate us better.”

You did brilliantly at the Eastbourne Business Awards, taking the Highly Commended in the Digital/Creative category. What do you think it was that most impressed the judges?

“Funnily enough, I entered three different categories, but the one we achieved the Highly Commended in wasn’t one of them! We still don’t know who nominated us for the Digital category. If they are reading this, we would really love to thank them! 

“We won a number of awards last year - four actually - including the Business Growth Award at the Sussex Business Awards and the Reseller Sales and Account Management team at the Channel Champions Awards (national industry awards). It’s a great endorsement for all our hard work and brilliant for the team too - something to celebrate and something tangible to show our clients, potential clients, and our community that we are what we say we are.”

What excites you most about the year ahead for the company? 

“Last year, as enjoyable as it was, we experienced growing pains, as previously mentioned, particularly around finance, cash flow, and HMRC etc. I am excited that we’ve now got a great handle on this side of the business and projected figures for the next year and beyond look amazing and super exciting.

“Along with winning more business locally, we have some amazing large projects lined up. We’re working with an EV charging company, running a project to get WiFi in hundreds of underground car parks. Telephone systems on a line of cruise ships is another project we’re working on. And we’ve just won a tender for an education trust, so we are now the trust’s telecoms provider for over 100 schools.

“Education is the one vertical where we really stand out. About 5% of our entire client base is education. It’s also the one vertical where business approaches us! Schools come to us because they network with each other and we clearly have a great reputation in the industry. They’ve heard what a great job we have done for others.

“But, more than anything, we look forward to continuing to work with our local SMEs. They are our bread and butter, they are what the business was born to support and where all the best relationships are formed.”

What advice would you give people trying to start working in your field?

“You have to start by having a passion for it. A passion for tech, problem-solving and/or for customer service. Without passion, it’s just boring old ‘work’.

“My advice to anyone getting into telecoms or any other industry/sector is: think about what you love doing, your hobbies, your passions, and your skills. Then try to find yourself a career ticking a few of those boxes. If you enjoy it, it’s not ‘just work’, and if you have a passion for it, you’ll learn quickly, you’ll work hard at it, you’ll thrive at it, and inevitably make good money from it.”