Over the last three years, Cirencester-based tindirect has seen growing demand from its channel partners for midrange and networking hardware engineers to support large rollouts or routine installation and configuration work, often during unsocial hours. System i, iSeries and AS/400 make up some 15% of the company’s business.

Now tindirect has formalised its growing service area by launching a division called tinservices to meet the needs of this identified market skills gap. The expansion also involves the appointment of Andy Loydell as services development manager.

Part of tinglobal Ltd, tindirect has grown from a turnover of £10m in 2000 to £17m in May this year by refurbishing and remarketing high-end IT equipment for the secondary market. Its customer base already extends beyond 50 countries. The company has built a team of engineers with a wide range of experience across a variety of platforms such as IBM, Cisco, Sun and HP. Services include the commissioning of machines, fault-finding, upgrades, LPAR  tape solutions, system installations, system health checks and site surveys.

“Back in 2000, iSeries constituted about 60-70% of our business,” says managing director Rod Haddrell. “Today it’s more like 15%. We’re seeing growth from pSeries and networking stuff, mainly Cisco, and we also handle Sun and Hewlett-Packard. Yet System i remains a significant strand to our workload –- and we do expect this business to pop back up again. As a company, we deal with up to six product lines overall, with AS/400 making up 30% and System i up to 70% of its segment.”

With 60 employees, the company’s unique selling proposition is a large stock inventory held onsite at Cirencester which enables overnight delivery to major clients who depend on the speed of service.

Haddrell says: “It has become increasingly obvious there’s a skills gap for experienced engineers dealing with refurbished equipment who understand hardware intuitively. Our channel partners tell us that manufacturers’ engineers are often only trained on the latest product, and work largely with manuals to fault-find and fix things.”

Andy Loydell adds: “By contrast, our team of experienced in-house engineers have depth of knowledge of current and previous generations of hardware. Our engineers have a deep feel for the product and can fix and reconfigure it more quickly – which saves time and money for the client.

“We recently had a situation where a client had signed for the maintenance of a particular piece of kit without inspecting it closely. When something went wrong, their in-house engineers were unable to service this specialist machine. It had been down for four days before we received a desperate call. Within 24 hours, our man had it up and running and our client managed to recover its position of credibility with its own client.”

Tindirect and tinservices do not engage with end-users, so as a channel business its engineers represent the client’s company onsite. This may extend to wearing clothing branded with a client’s logo to ensure a true white label service. Clients benefit from the flexibility of experienced staff available on demand, without having to bear the fixed overhead themselves.

Whereas tindirect has a global territory –- 50% UK and 50% export (20% US, the rest mainly Europe) –- tinservices has a UK territory for the next two years (although some off-shore work has already been handled).

Commenting on the new developments, Haddrell says: “Tinservices is designed to deliver pain relief for clients with a more flexible workforce solution. It’s safe project management from a responsive unit. Our long-term goal is to be acknowledged as Europe’s leading supplier to end-user focused sales organisations. By widening our services offering, we help consolidate our position as the first choice supplier to the major trade participants. It’s a clear demonstration of moving up the value chain.”

Meanwhile, the WEEE directive specifically encourages re-use of equipment because it reduces the amount of resources consumed. Studies have revealed for every ton of equipment produced, up to 10 tons of resources are consumed.

Frank Booty