Daisy Group is a provider of digital business communications and IT infrastructure services. It empowers businesses of all sizes to embrace the relentlessness of technological change and provides services to half of the country’s high street retailers. The company is at the technological heart of the nation’s critical infrastructure; connecting businesses of every kind to the customers they serve. CEO Neil Muller talks to Finance Monthly about the opportunities within digital convergence and having his hand in the construction of a new British IT and communications infrastructure.

 

With his full grasp of knowledge of digital convergence, Neil Muller believes that it is vital for large and small businesses to embrace digital convergence if they are to grow their share of their particular market. Companies must navigate to a place where their key functions communicate with each other seamlessly, to the benefit of the customer; whilst embracing technological innovation in order to boost efficiency and drive down costs.

Put into simpler words, in a converged digital world, businesses must join their dots. Naturally, orchestrating and facilitating such a fundamental sea change requires more than a snappy soundbite, but the last few years’ seismic shift in technological advancement certainly suggests that Muller’s vision of the future is nothing if not tantalising.

By any measure, the coming years are set to transform the way customers interact with businesses. Connectivity, agility and security are already the buzzwords. The cloud is already reality, not just a futuristic pie in the sky, while global digitisation is like the industrial revolution, but with brass knobs on. Consequently, it comes as a surprise that the results of a recently-commissioned Daisy survey show that 79% of small to medium sized-businesses do not have a digital strategy, while the same goes for 51% of enterprise-sized organisations.

“Technological convergence is rapidly changing everything,” he says. “In order to serve their customers and their investors in the best possible way, businesses of every kind have to gear up. They have to have sight of the near future in order to grasp where they have to go, and how quickly. Daisy is perfectly placed to provide those businesses with the guiding hand they need. We have designed and engineered a set of products and services which provide the complete end-to-end solution for any organisation – big or small – to understand the demands of the digital world and, more importantly, to use it to deliver a brilliant experience for them AND their customers. Owners, entrepreneurs, CEOs, CIOs, CFOs – everyone who is in the business of doing business is faced with the same ultimatum: get your digital strategy right, or risk getting everything wrong.”

 

Ways of assisting clients

Ever since joining Daisy, together with his boardroom team, Muller has been working on developing a set of three ‘propositions’ - Always On Infrastructure, Agile Workforce, and Connect & Protect – all three covering every aspect of a business’s digitisation. Encapsulated within those over-arching concepts, are 12 ‘solutions’ or products – Connectivity, Lines & Calls, Mobile, Wi-Fi, Managed Services, Security, LAN, Contact Centres, UC&C, Supply Chain Services, Cloud & Hosting, and Business Continuity. Each solution is packaged, priced and delivered in a way which represents a compelling set of individual offerings. When combined, they guarantee that a business will begin to equip itself with the tools it needs to harness the digital age’s limitless potential for increased efficiency, customer satisfaction and growth.

“It’s a comprehensive and relevant set of products and services which can be tailored to meet specific customers’ needs,” says Muller, who likes to jokingly call the Daisy Group - the ‘Daisy adventure’.

“We have made them easy to buy and we have made our organisation easy to do business with. There’s just one hand to shake and everything is on one, accurate bill. But there’s more to it than that. Execution is everything. That is why I am on a mission to put our customers first and to deliver on our promises at all times. Customer-focused teamwork is at the heart of everything we do. We work together as one team with a single sense of purpose, belonging and belief. It’s what drives us. And it’s what defines us.”

 

What does the future hold?

“The adventure is only just beginning,” he says. “Our customers’ digital journey is only just beginning too. That’s what I am fully focused on. And that’s what drives me. Of course the opportunities are huge – for our customers as well as for us. I just want to ensure we both make the most of them.”