Gallium proves that change is good

Gallium (an EOH company) has experienced outstanding growth opportunities in professional services since the launch of the company in August last year. Gallium came into being after HP Software announced its international acquisition of software company Mercury Interactive. Mercury Africa was at the time a division of EOH and the acquisition was identified as the perfect opportunity to revisit and evolve its South African business model, and to re-brand as Gallium.

Haydn Pinnell, MD of Gallium, says a change in vision and operational strategy has shown impressive returns in the last year. “Today Gallium employs 130 people, 75% of which are consultants out in the field. Our biggest growth by far has been within our professional services team, as we no longer simply operate off the back of licence sales, but deliver services and solutions which are not necessarily software or product dependant.”

Pinnell says the software industry has traditionally categorised products and associated services based on the sources of revenue - in other words, software products are associated with off-the-shelf sales or licence fees, and software services are associated with implementation, maintenance revenues, and technical support. The industry has however changed dramatically over the past few years with important implications for customers, resellers and vendors alike. As a result, the software industry is also undergoing a dramatic shift as players embrace services in the wake of declining product revenues.

Gallium is perfectly positioned to take advantage of this as, in the process of revisiting the business model, it has essentially been able to expand its product offering with a far more comprehensive range of services and solutions backed by industry-leading software to offer both existing and new clients. As HP Software's largest southern African reseller and services provider of HP Software, the primary need the company has addressed over the past year is business technology optimisation: aligning business and IT, aligning functional and strategic initiatives within the business, and ensuring IT delivers real value to business.

“As part of our drive to position our specialised application services, and in the process of delivering these services to our customers, we have bedded down our delivery methodologies, best practices and value add, and at the same time forged long-term partnerships with our customers. This ultimately sees us delivering bigger, better longer-term projects for our key customers and has created the momentum and demand to grow the team,” Pinnell says.

Gallium has seen an ever-increasing demand for its services and as a result continues to add new initiatives, like a support centre which currently outsources second-level technical support for HP in the UK. Pinnell says that support for global customers and partners is also fast becoming a very large focus.

He concludes that although companies around the world are finding lucrative opportunities in professional services, building professional services organisations at product-centric companies can be challenging. Gallium's success has been based on managing professional services at every stage of their lifecycle, establishing metrics and business review processes, and staying focused on the key factors that drive success - value, references, and repeatability. “We obviously need to balance our revenue and growth and ultimately make sure that we still deliver the goods to our customers, but one thing is certain - Gallium will continue to grow.”