WORKFLO SOLUTIONS PROFILE
Going with the flo Workflo Solutions has become an established managed service provider over the past 15 years across the UK – and its success is down to pragmatism, a willingness to continually evolve and the belief that service is king.
When Michael Field started Workflo Solutions in 2007 as a photocopier and printer supplier, he’d worked in the industry for more than four years by then, but was disillusioned with the way it worked, and thought he could do better. “The business I had worked for, and the wider market, seemed to operate in a similar way, which was very much flood the business with sales staff and then go and maintain what’s out in the market. But I wanted to flip that on it’s head,” he says. “To me, it is a service market. “Even in 2007 when we were photocopier printer supplier, the hardware is, in my opinion, secondary to the relationship, trust, service and value that’s delivered by a provider. I thought there was a space in the market for somebody who’s focused on that, and somebody’s got to do it, so why not me?” Workflo started small – three people, including Michael, working out of a small serviced office in Edinburgh. But he had a vision of how the market should operate and what the business should look like and stayed true to that vision. “Everything we’ve done, in every decision we’ve made has been about service provision and the market, which has changed drastically over the years as technologies evolved and matured.” That vision has worked too – today, Workflo Solutions is a managed service provider, specialising in managed print services, records and archive management and digitisation, digital workflow solutions, electronic document management software, cloud computing, IT infrastructure support and hosted telephony, with a turnover approaching £3.5 million. Workflo Solutions is now headquartered in Livingston, West Lothian and has offices in Glasgow, Aberdeen and East Lancashire, providing services to a UK national customer base of more than 1,000.
Maintaining standards As the business has grown and the market has changed, Michael has added additional services to the business, but he’s always been careful to ensure that when he does, it can be done to his high standards – as per his original vision. “For example, in 2016, I had the opportunity to take on the IT support for one of our large print clients,” he says. “I was honest with them and they understood that we were in our infancy in terms of our IT service journey, but they knew that everything we promised to deliver in the eight years prior to that we delivered and then some. “We entered into that market very much with the same mindset we had with print in 2007: it has to be service and technology led. And, when moving into a market that’s saturated, we must have an offering which gives better value, because if we don’t, the client is better staying where they are. We’ve managed to pivot our business very well into that space and have forged good working relationships with Microsoft as accredited partners and with some of the other big players such as HP and Dell. We opened that service to the market and our client base, and it was warmly welcomed, because much like print had been, there wasn’t the focus on technology and innovation that was once there.” Digitalisation journey With the success of this, Michael looked to expand Workflo Solutions’ services to cover a business’ entire digitalisation journey. “We took some time to work at where we think the market should be going, not necessarily where it’s going and what we could do help customers to increase their bottom line?” To this end, Michael set up a digitisation wing of the business, rather than look to partner with any third parties. “I’m not a big believer in third party parts of service provision,” he says. “My view is the moment you have third parties involved is when
Michael Field managing director
workflo-solutions.co.uk
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We took some
time to work at where we think the market should be going, not necessarily where it’s going and what we could do help customers to increase their bottom line?
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