Computerworld

Snap Business looks to increase revenues from North Island

It opened an office in Auckland with a staff strength of six about five months back, and has gotten a full-time sales manager at Dunedin recently

The business arm of Christchurch-based service provider Snap aims to make the revenue share from the North Island around 50 per cent of the national total in three year’s time. Currently, corporate customers from the North Island contribute around 10 per cent to 20 per cent of national revenues for Snap Business.

“This is not to say that there will not be any growth in the South Island. We still see a lot of opportunity there, especially with the rebuild that is happening at Christchurch. However, the majority of the growth for us will come from the North Island,” says Charlie Boyd, GM for enterprise and wholesale at Snap Business

The company is investing in the North Island to facilitate the growth. It opened an office in Auckland with a staff strength of six about five months back, and has gotten a full-time sales manager at Dunedin recently.

“Our next target cities would naturally be Wellington and Hamilton. We are going to take time about our expansion though. We don’t want to bite off more than we can chew. We want to raise awareness about Snap among customers here, and present them with success stories and references that we have completed in order to build confidence,” says Boyd.

Though unwilling to share actual revenue targets, Boyd states that the company will be reviewing progress across relevant parameters at the start of its fiscal in April 2014, and make decisions on further investments based on growth it is seeing in the market.

Snap Business’ focus remains on mid-market customers, which encompasses businesses that have anything from 10 to 550 staff.

“We understand that we are going against the big guys. This is why we want to build awareness and help businesses understand who we are and the credibility we possess. We also know and understand our resources and capabilities, and try not to over step them. This is why the mid-market is a perfect fit for us,” says Boyd.

The company expanded its national network recently, and will continue to expand its international capacity going forward.

“The cloud position is of interest to us. We are currently working with Amazon and can offer customers AWS Direct Connect services. We would like to work with another cloud provider as well, such as Microsoft. We are also in the process of getting ourselves certified for the Lync solution, so we could potentially offer that to customers as well.”

Snap Business contributes 60 per cent of the company’s overall revenues now. Though unwilling to specify how the ratio might change with the investments on the business side, Boyd states that he expects both consumer and business sides to grow in the near future.