Midwich’s unified comms and collaboration tools are firmly at the heart of its growth strategy, according to its Head of Technology, Jenny Hicks.

The distributor has traditionally focused on AV, but in its most recent fiscal results it highlighted its UC capabilities as it successfully navigated a challenging year.

Hicks told UC Today that though Midwich jumped on the UC trend at a good time, it was already moving in that direction because of the increasing integration of unified comms with AV products.

“UC is front and centre of our growth strategy, to be honest,” she said.

“We’ve always had a toe in the water when it comes to UC. If you look back at the history of video conferencing, it really was a predominantly AV-handled technology before the shift over to the cloud…and in that shift and through consolidation in the market, that all paved the way for UC to be considered more of an IT and telecoms tech – away from AV.

“The shift to cloud-based solutions was strong and we were witnessing this takeover. So we said ‘that’s a portion of the business that we can’t guarantee will stick around for us so we need to revise because it’s no longer just VC, it is now also UC and we have to make sure that we’re still relevant in meeting spaces of all sizes’. A lot of our partners got us into this space early and then it was very easy for us to see that this was what we were missing.”

The integration of UC and AV maximises the opportunity for Midwich in the corporate, public and education spheres, Hicks said, adding that refresh opportunities will give the distie’s presence in these sectors a boost.

“In three to five years’ time, tech evolution will give us a refresh opportunity which is great because kits are getting better and lasting longer…the software is dictating the need for that hardware to keep changing and evolving which is great,” she explained.

“UC has massively merged with audio visual; we’re maximising our opportunity into the corporate space, the public sector and opportunity into education because they need to be able to talk to people externally as well.

“I don’t see this going away, we’ve stepped firmly into this space and we mean to stay here.”

Midwich recently acquired the unified comms unit of German distributor eLink in order to boost its presence in the DACH region. UC Today spoke with Hicks prior to this announcement, but she did reveal that the distie’s M&A strategy was about acquiring skills and international expansion.

“It’s no secret that Midwich has been on a pretty aggressive acquisition journey recently,” she stated.

“We are interested in our core category: audiovisual, professional audio, broadcast, LED and unified communications. If we are expanding the business, it’s either to grow our expertise in one of those categories or expand our global footprint into a local territory.”

The AV industry has been one of the industries most hit by the ongoing pandemic as key verticals, such as touring and hospitality, have been effectively halted since March 2020. Hicks acknowledged that this has been a tough time for many of its customers, but praised AV specialists for adapting to the challenges and seeing the opportunities in remote working, such as shifting to education clients or enabling customers to turn their workspace into a smart space for presentations.

“We’ve been really fortunate that in none of our category divisions were we so engrossed in one vertical market that we couldn’t diversify and can consider new routes,” she said.

“That’s certainly not to say that we haven’t had some categories that have absolutely struggled, and we’re very grateful that we jumped on the UC bandwagon in time to carry us through, and that we’ve launched some really exciting partners throughout this period.”

 

 



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