PAV IT Services is celebrating its 30th birthday! To celebrate we’re having a quick look back at how the world has evolved in those three decades, the changes we’ve experienced as a business, and our plans for the future that are designed with our customers at the front and centre.
From Reagan and Thatcher to cloud and Apple
Since 1988 we’ve been through the fall of the Berlin Wall, the 90s and noughties, at least two recessions, a global financial crisis, 6 Prime Ministers, virtualisation, the shift to the cloud, and loads more. We like to think we’ve weathered all this chaos around us by continuing to stay close to our core values of service-led IT provision and flexible approach to business, and helping our customers make IT a truly value adding part of their business instead of a cost centre.
In this time we’ve also been through a name change of our own (from Pavilion Computing to PAV IT Services), sponsored Sussex cricket, cycled to Paris for charity, and established ourselves as a leading and proactive member of the county’s business community.
Delivering the right IT solutions for many years
Unlike most IT companies, technology is not actually at the heart of what we do. That’s an odd statement for an IT company to make, but what we mean by that is that we’re not driven by the pressure and targets of IT and software manufacturers.
Instead we’re driven by our customers’ business needs, drivers and goals, and once we’ve understood these we work to find the right IT and business solutions to fit and deliver upon those objectives. Our customers are happy with us if we work with them and advise them on what they need to do what they want to do, how to extract the most value from their IT systems, and how to squeeze the most value out of their existing investments. Our relationships are long-term, two-way, and based on an understanding and transparency that means we have an extremely high customer retention rate.
Every cloud…
The core of what we do hasn’t changed in 30 years. But a great recent example of how we can help is with the phenomena of cloud computing. Although everyone has heard of it, many businesses have different openness to and interpretations of it. From PAV’s point of view, the term is relatively new but the concept isn’t – we’ve amassed over 10 years of experience in working in these types of OPEX-based expenditure models.
Conceptually, we feel it helps our clients better manage cashflow by minimising the need for CAPEX purchases for infrastructure, provide a greater level of flexibility and agility to IT, and saves many headaches for legal and compliance departments. So for us cloud has clear and demonstrable value that we’ve seen working in practice, and should you wish we can apply these skills and experiences to your business too. In short, we help cut across the jargon, bust myths and soundbites, and put into plain English what the cloud can offer.
Getting reflective
The 30 years of PAV have seen some amazing changes and developments both in terms of the technology we’re working with, and how it has become more and more integral to the way businesses operate.
We’ve also noticed that as recently as 10 years ago IT’s role was (or was viewed as) more about ‘keeping the lights on’ and spending as little as possible in doing so. This strategy of ‘sweating the asset’ focused on prolonging the life of each piece of infrastructure in order to extract the most value from that piece of kit. Now, we’re working with our customers to bring a much more proactive approach to IT, embracing its intrinsic business value and the cost-saving, revenue generating and analytical functions it can serve if approached in the right way.
Because of this, the last decade of PAV has been one of the most rewarding for both ourselves and our customers as we’re able to work together to harness the power of IT to guide business decisions as opposed to IT being issued with an (inadequate) budget and left to get on with it. This has led to much greater levels of investment in collaboration, mobility and security solutions, and customers with happy, enabled users that are able to work productively from home, on client sites or in transit with ease and peace of mind that their work is in good hands.
We’re not resting on our laurels
Okay we may have allowed ourselves a brief celebration of our 30th birthday, but now it’s straight back to work to execute our plans to setup the next 30 successful years. We’ve recently been through an MBO, and as a result of this new investment we’re now even better positioned to focus on growth and our future plans.
This investment starts with our new offices in London and Leeds designed to give our team regional base-camps and to better facilitate serving our customers across the whole of the UK. We’re also continuing to invest in our team to better support our customers, with talent and attitude always a priority in our new recruits.
So that’s the first 30 years of PAV – we’re proud of what we’ve achieved and what we’ve done for our customers. Give us a call if you’d like an informal chat about what we could do for you.
