The Fusion Blog

Fusion Business Solutions Awarded ISO 27001 Standard

Wed, 18 Jan 2017 11:25:00 GMT

Fusion Business Solutions (UK) Limited are pleased to announce certification achievement of ISO/IEC 27001:2013. This attainment is evidence of the successful implementation of this internationally recognised standard that helps organizations keep information assets secure. Fusion continues to demonstrate its commitment to the security and management of information, data protection, and continuous improvement.

The decision to implement the 27001:2013 standard was a response to Fusion’s customer and supplier needs and forms part of the company long term strategic vision for security and best practice. Fusion continues to work with many organisations in secure environments as a trusted partner and meeting this standard will enable Fusion to further assist clients working in secure environments.

“We are pleased to have achieved this recognition for the high standards that Fusion strives to maintain for our customers. We will continue to work with our customers to be the supplier of choice for their service management, IT operations and cloud needs.” Explained John Mohan, Fusion CEO.?

ISO 27001 covers all areas of business operations and is not specific to IT, and overlays a framework to help businesses identify, manage, and reduce risks relating to information security as part of an internally recognised standard. Previously only very large enterprises required information security management accreditation from their suppliers and partners, but increasingly organisations of any size are seeking assurances to manage risks within the business and secure the information it relies on to be successful.

Fusion began the process of implementing the standard in Autumn 2015, and the company and its subsidiaries ‘Fusion Business Solutions Inc’ and ‘Fusion Force Limited’ were awarded the ISO 27001:2013 standard in December 2016.

Our Review of BMC Exchange London 2016

Tue, 29 Nov 2016 11:30:00 GMT

Fusion's graduate program members attended BMC Exchange in London in November. They each provided a report of the stand out messages from Exchange below.

General Feedback on BMC Exchange London

(By Anton Hasaj)

It was good to hear from customers about how they use the products and how these products have helped their businesses and added value. One of those customers, BT is a Fusion account.
During the Digital Service Management track there was a session on the Discovery tool. It was really interesting to see how this tool is used and how powerful it is. The speaker also spoke about the updated features in the new version.
The Innovation Suite session was very interesting. We were given some insight into how the tool is to be used and I am very interesting in experimenting with this tool when it becomes available to us. The tool seems different to what we currently use for developing and it will be a good opportunity for learning something new.
The Service Broker session provided a good insight into what the intended use for it are. Having catalogues from different providers in the same place and making it easier for users to find what they need is a good idea.
The session with the editor from Wired magazine was very interesting. He was very insistent that change and developments in technology should be embraced and encouraged and this is something BMC should look to provide to its customers.

Evolving IT Service Management for the Digital Era

(By Nikita Parmar)

Speaker: Michele McFadden, AVP Product Management & Marketing Digital Service Management, BMC

Digital Service Management roadmap:

Digital is shifting IT priorities, these include Self-service support, Decentralized and Agile Development. Agile development is the future and keeping up with business.
Digital workplace maps to real business cases like service management excellence. Service management excellence provides end to end service delivery which allows it to track better.
Marketplace value will increase, good productivity, more you keep people in flow = better productivity. Rank solution on use cases

Stages:

Service desk modernization
Service awareness
Service operations
Service management excellence

These provide great benefit at any stage and provide real business value.

What’s next:

In progress is service management excellence and data compliance for 365. Data compliance for 365 automatically create incidents for Microsoft Data loss prevention.
Below are the future applications:

Change automation:

Change automation is integrating with Bladelogic and requests via Blade. The purpose of this is to automatically create change and this should be out in the next 6 months.

Below is a link for a webinar containing information about change automation:
https://communities.bmc.com/community/bmcdn/bmc_it_service_support/blog/2016/11/03/connect-with-remedy-remedy-91-service-pack-2-update-webinar

Remote support for Client system via BMC Client Management integration:

This application triggers remote actions on client system from Smart IT. This should be out in next 6-12 months.

Pro-active problem management:

This application is to automatically identify clusters of similar incidents, automate remediation and accelerate root cause analysis. Its key purpose is identifying and solving problems and known errors before further incidents related to them happen again. It also creates a less stressful working environment and keeps people working which equals better productivity. This is plan to be set out in the next 6-12 months.

Innovation suite:

This is a cloud-based dev environment which is a platform for developers and it also is a drag & drop UI design. This should be out in next 6 months. Below the link is a webinar where Innovation suite is introduced where you can register and find out more information on it.
https://communities.bmc.com/community/developer/blog/2016/11/04/introducing-bmc-innovation-suite-launch-webinar-dec-7-registration-requested

Developer Experience Using Innovation Suite

(By Steve Gale)

Speaker: Michele McFadden, AVP Product Management & Marketing Digital Service Management

Customised development has always been possible with BMC Remedy but this often takes the form of IT service management. With the introduction of the innovation suite BMC hope to give both developers and business users the ability to create a whole variety of applications.

The platform itself is cloud based and is made up of several different components:

Innovation Studio: A simple drag-and-drop UI for codeless development
A software development kit (SDK): tools and samples integrated with the studio
A library of connectors and components
REST APIs to integrate with external systems
Developer Education: Self-learning content

As put by Robin Purohit, group president, Enterprise Solutions Organization at BMC - it is and attempt to support “no-code, low-code, and pro-code developer environment capabilities”, meaning that BMC are taking a step in the direction of making everyone a developer which will give them a huge advantage over any competitors not taking this approach.
In my opinion this is a huge step forward for BMC providing a platform for quick and easy development with the additional option of making more complex Java applications if necessary.

For further reading on the innovation suite visit these links:

https://communities.bmc.com/community/developer/blog/2016/11/01/designing-beautiful-processes-in-innovation-suite
https://communities.bmc.com/community/developer/blog/2016/11/04/introducing-bmc-innovation-suite-launch-webinar-dec-7-registration-requested

Top Ten Things You Didn’t Know BMC Discovery Can Do

(By Jonny Hercock)

Speaker: Raphael Chauvel, Director of Product Management at BMC

Did you know that BMC Discovery knows what you don’t know, can travel in time and help you survive the zombie apocalypse? They might sound outlandish but these were part of the Top 10 in yesterday’s talk at the BMC Exchange. To elaborate, please don’t expect BMC Discovery to save you from the undead or act as your personal time machine, these are just the head-turning titles from the speaker. They were used to portray the use of the History function to find out when everything happened, and to assist in locating and decommissioning underused (“zombie”) servers to reduce costs. Also of interest was number 7 in the Top Ten; the lack of an SQL Database. This not only means everything in Discovery is indexed and searchable, but there’s no strict schema and an extensive history function attached.

As of November 11th, BMC Discovery v11.1 is available, building upon 3 key concepts;

Open Discovery
Event-Driven Model Updates
“Start Anywhere” Application Mapping

If you would like to know more, a webinar on What’s New with BMC Discovery 11.1 has been scheduled for 22/11/2016, which you can register for on BMC’s website.

Fusion Have Another Gold Engage

Mon, 03 Oct 2016 09:57:00 GMT

Fusion Business Solutions were again a Gold Sponsor of BMC Engage 2016 from the 6th till the 9th of September 2016. Again held at the Aria Resort and Casino in sunny Las Vegas this year’s show saw over 3000 executives, users and developers converge in the desert.

Gary Pruden, Fusions CTO was asked by Robin Purohit, Group President of Enterprise Solutions Organization for BMC to join him on stage for the Keynote on the Thursday of BMC Engage 2016. Gary was asked to introduce Fusion’s Secure Site Visitor App and demonstrate uploading it LIVE to the BMC Marketplace. BMC’s new Innovation Suite that is due to be released by BMC in early 2017 and it was the first time it was showcased publicly at the event.

The Secure Site Visitor App combines several of the requirements requested by some of Fusion’s customers around the Data Centre environment but translate across any secure environments. The App allows for visitors to be requested, approved, notified and checked on and off site with the ability to link swipe cards and other security automation.

Fusion’s App was judged as one of the top apps at the event by attendee vote. Guru Balachandra accepted the award on behalf of Fusion as the chief project manager and developer for the Secure Site App.

BMC Engage 2017 will be back in Las Vegas in October 2017.

To view the full Gary in the keynote follow this link to YouTube https://youtu.be/nykyYQTtFTg

Fusion Are DSM Partner of the Year

Mon, 03 Oct 2016 09:23:00 GMT

Fusion were big winners at BMC’s Partner Appreciation Awards is Las Vegas Nevada on the 6th of September 2016. Fusion was named the Digital Service Management Partner of the Year for EMEA highlighting the significant role Fusion plays in the region and the scope and standard of the projects delivered. The Awards recognised BMC’s outstanding partners globally and highlighted the achievements across a variety of product pillars as well as outstanding projects.

Fusion Graduating to the Next Level

Fri, 30 Sep 2016 15:20:00 GMT

September 19th saw a new wave of graduates join Fusion through the highly successful graduate program. The group comprising Jonathan Hercock, Nikita Parmar, Stephen Gale and William Collyer join under the watchful eye of Fusion veteran Maxime Saporta. The 12 month program consists of intense training and mentoring with hands on experience shadowing some of fusions experienced consultants across a variety of projects.

The graduates bring a cross section of skills and experience from Computer Sciences, Information Technology, Computational Mathematics and even vocational based training.

Fusion’s CEO John Mohan proudly stated, “I am delighted that Fusion in conjunction with our partner BMC Software continue to invest in high quality personnel to ensure we deliver the best results for our Customers. By investing now we are ensuring the future for Fusion/BMC and demonstrating to our staff that Fusion is not only the ‘Supplier of Choice’ but also the ‘Employer of Choice’ in the BMC Eco-system.”

“We started this programme a little over 8 months ago, to bring fresh ideas and new energy into the Eco-system. I am pleased to say we will continue to invest and grow because of it."

"I look forward to seeing this team progress, they had better get a move on, because the next intake is hot on their tracks.”

With the continued success of this and other development programs, Fusion is already planning the next imminent intake of graduates.

Sunil's Marathon For Marigold

Sun, 24 Apr 2016 23:00:00 GMT

Sunil Duggal the Director of Fusion Resource Management has completed the 2016 London Marathon on behalf of the charity Unique who assist families of children with rare chromosome disorders. He was inspired by his own daughter Marigold, who was born with a rare chromosome disorder which is still to be thoroughly diagnosed.

Sunil says: “Marigold has been happily developing slowly and in her own way. She, and her older brother, are the lights in our lives, but living with our own challenges has needed some extra support and Unique has been invaluable.

“There is a gap between advanced genetic testing and the care and support offered to those who are given unique diagnoses and Unique does all it can to bridge that gap.”

Sunil completed the course in a very respectable 4 hours 18mins and 42 seconds. He has raised almost £10,000 for Unique, which provides support, information and an active community of families experiencing similar situations and has been a big help to his own family.

"Fusion are very proud of Sunil and the effort he has put in to train and run the London Marathon for an amazing cause so close to his heart that he has so worked tirelessly to fundraise for. We are pleased to be able to support him in this endeavour in reaching and exceeding his fundraising goal and hope it will help make a difference." John Mohan Fusion CEO.

To follow Sunil’s family’s journey visit their Blog - https://measuringthemarigold.com/marigolds-story/

To learn more about Unique visit - http://www.rarechromo.org/

To contribute to Sunil’s fundraising efforts visit - http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/SunilDuggal

New Starters in Chicago & Boston for Fusion

Tue, 22 Mar 2016 00:00:00 GMT

With continued customer ‘wins’ in America, Fusion is growing the US sales and presales team by hiring in Boston & Chicago.

Evan Colleran joins the team in Sales and brings not only enterprise sales experience, but industry knowledge from the banking and Hi-tech industries. Doug Hynes joins the presales consulting team and has over 10 years of Remedy experience. Raj Jandu, Director of International Sales said, “After a strong 2015, we are building a team to manage the 2016 growth we are already seeing in the US. The relationships with BMC in the US are growing from strength to strength, and together we are winning new business. Doug and Evan are strong additions to the BMC Partner ecosystem.”

Doug & Evan spent a week in the UK offices getting up to speed on the BMC products and the Fusion organisation. An opportunity to meet with our global team’s in presales, consulting, support & sales.

“The US is an exceptional area of growth for Fusion as we continue to demonstrate our world leading expertise with BMC Software. We’re pleased to support this continued rapid growth in the US by investing in the best people. Evan and Doug are exceptional at what they do and we are excited to introduce them to our customers and partners.” John Mohan, CEO.

Fusion Kickoff 2016

Wed, 27 Jan 2016 16:56:00 GMT

In January, Fusion hosted our 2016 launch at the stunning Lensbury Hotel. This saw the largest gathering of Fusion staff from across the globe ever. The day provided a great opportunity for colleagues new and old to catch up and renew acquaintances.

Fusion’s CEO, John Mohan, welcomed everyone with a recap of the year past and the fantastic growth and highlights. He drew attention the stand-out achievements of key staff with 3 awards being presented to the Employee of the Year, Salesperson of the Year and Outstanding Achievement.

Mark Twomey was deservedly awarded the Employee of the Year award for his constant performance above and beyond for Fusion and our customers. The Salesperson of the Year was presented to Gavish Patel for his tireless efforts to support Fusion’s customers. The final honour was presented to Michael Woods for his Outstanding Achievements for Fusion.

Other notable acknowledgements included Rachael, Guru and Suzy for their exceptional performance on behalf of the company.

Raj Jandu and Tim Haenggi presented to the company on the continued growth and disruptive force that they are causing to the partner channel in the US by doing a different and better job than other partners. Gary Pruden spoke about the new Digital Enterprise and how this effects Fusion.

Murray Sherwood and the various professional services managers then took centre stage to discuss the performance last year and the forecast for the future and how Fusion will continue to grow while ensuring we maintain the standards of delivery and customer satisfaction. Nii Addy highlighted that fusion continue to have a 100% customer satisfaction rating from BMC.

The day was a huge success celebrating Fusions heroes and the team efforts that make the difference to our customers.

Later in the evening the team all had a chance to unwind and share a 3 course meal and some light entertainment topping of a thoroughly rewarding day for all attending.

Fusion Grows in 2016

Wed, 27 Jan 2016 10:41:00 GMT

Fusion has started 2016 with a flurry welcoming new members to the team. The New Year saw 5 new starters, expanding Fusions already impressive skill base and renewing Fusion’s Graduate program into 2016.

Saeed Bor joins the team as a Client Engagement Manager. Saeed joins Fusion to help grow our IT Process and Business Service Management practice. He has worked in the BMC skilled resource space for many years and brings a wealth of contacts and experience with him.

Brijesh Patel, Anton Hasaj, Sam Vydulinska join as Junior Software Consultants as part of our 2016 Graduate intake. Each of them brings a variety of skills to the role and universal for all is the excitement of the role and opportunities to experience a variety of new and exciting projects.

Ioannis Lantouris joins as a Managing Consultant, with over 10 years’ experience with BMC and Remedy ITSM, he will be a valuable addition to our Professional Services team.

"I'm delighted to welcome both new and existing talent to the BMC channel ecosystem. This new investment represents a circa 10% increase in our UK headcount and forms part of Fusion’s continued investment with BMC Software.” John Mohan - Fusion CEO.

We wish all of them a very friendly welcome and look forward to sharing our continued growth throughout 2016.

Lessons in leadership for businesses, from a primary school in Tottenham

Thu, 17 Dec 2015 13:17:00 GMT

Many of us start strategic initiatives relating to long term business objectives but fail to deliver on these or allow them to fizzle out. How can a primary school in Tottenham set an example? Well read on !

Allowing children to miss school sends a poor message to children and parents about the value and importance of education and that’s why most schools set “attendance” as a strategic initiative or target. It is also why the government has statutory requirements. I have seen first-hand how a primary school in Tottenham executes on their strategy, making dramatic improvements. First of all they communicate the importance of attendance and the overall attendance target for the school through notices in the school and communications home to parents. They then employ “door knockers” who encourage children (or I suppose their parents) who have not arrived in school that day to come in as soon as possible, a kind of soft stick approach I would say. At assembly every week, the head teacher announces how the whole school has done the previous week e.g. “96% attendance”. They then award a cup to the class with the best attendance each week and, boy, is there competition between classes! Finally, all pupils who have a 100% attendance the previous week are entered into a draw and prizes are awarded in assembly to five pupils drawn at random. The importance of attendance is in this way emphasised every week in the school. Any visitor to that school and of course all the pupils and parents are in no doubt that the school values its attendance and it has an end to end process for driving through the strategic importance, through strong leadership.

So this has revived some important lessons for me in leadership and strategy as often defining a strategy is easy enough but implementing it successfully is quite another thing. It requires leadership and clear communication:

Be clear on where you are going and how you are going to get there. This is often about having a long term objective that is specific, meaningful, action oriented, realistic and timely and a strategy that identifies the means of getting there.
Get your message out there. Business plans and strategies need to be understood and embraced by your whole team so that actions on the ground are consistent with the objectives and strategy.
Measure progress. Regularly updating your team on progress against the target both in quantitative and qualitative terms. Breaking down the target by week or month or into sub-targets may allow different groups or business areas work hard to make their contribution while retaining an overall target. Identifying those that are making the most progress may help as well.
Sustain the progress, relentlessly. Consistently focusing on the objective by regularly keeping it to the forefront. After all the progress is achieved in bite sized chunks over longer periods of time.

By doing this, we may achieve more of our strategic objectives, just like the primary school in Tottenham.

Mark Lyttle
Executive Chairman

Better Incident Management Categorisation Model

Thu, 10 Dec 2015 16:51:00 GMT

Through our many years of implementing BMC Remedy ITSM we have worked with many customers who have struggled to define categorisation data that brings value to their service management processes.

Why is it so important to define good categorisation data?

They provide classification for reporting and trend analysis – for example without good incident categorisation you’d never know how many Operating System versus Application issues your organisation experienced and what actions are needed to reduce them from both Incident and Problem Management perspective.
Enhanced matching of records within Incident Management and other sources (Problems, Changes, Knowledge Base) for quicker solutions and diagnosis
Effective Assignment and approval rules – for example to auto assign the Unix related tickets to the right team for increased productivity and enhanced customer satisfaction

BMC Remedy Incident Management provides excellent granularity of the 4 categorisation sets in Incident Management.

Fusion are asked by many customers on how to structure their foundation data, how to define a consistent model and differentiate the 4 different types of Incidents categorisations:

Initial Operational Categorisations
Initial Product Categorisations
Resolution Operational Categorisations
Resolution Product Categorisations

The most frequent questions which we are dealing with are:

What should be recorded – the symptom (reporting issue) or the CI causing it (hardware issue)?
But how do you know what is the root cause actually is at incident submission time?
Every company has their own culture for categorising, so is there a cure-all data model?
Is there an easy way to understand the differences between the 4 categorisations types and apply a consistent data model which to be understood by everyone?

Yes, there is! Let’s give you an analogy which drives a model for the questions above!
Let’s imagine what would happen with the Incidents if they are treated in a hospital (they are different too, but follow pretty much the same way):

The patient (our customer) experiences an incident and goes to (or calls) the clinic (the service desk).
Customer then provides symptoms (issue) and the doctor (engineer) records them in the Initial Operational Categories - e.g. Failure / Connectivity / No Outgoing.
The patient (customer) does not know which exact part of the body is causing the pain so shows a wide area (Service related) which is recorded in the Initial Product Categorisations – e.g. Software / Application / Reporting
The doctor diagnoses the exact part of the body (noun) which is causing the pain and documents it using the Resolution Product categories - e.g. Hardware / Component / RAM
The doctor applies a treatment as Resolution Operational Categorisation where Tier 1 is the action (verb) done – e.g. Modify / Hardware / Upgrade

This is how easy it is to define the various Incident Types and Incident Use cases into just 4 sets of categorisation – in a descriptive, consistent and driving the future continuous service improvement way which connects the user symptoms and their resolution from our teams.

Interested in learning more about the real-life use cases or the BMC products involved in making this happen? Or see how can Fusion help transform the way you approach categorisation data in your Service Management toolset? Contact Fusion Business Solutions

Boris Lozanov
Senior Consultant

Service Management With IoT – The Evolving Landscape and Real-life Implementation Experience

Wed, 09 Dec 2015 11:32:00 GMT

A driverless car automatically reroutes detecting an accident on its way. A doctor receives an alert about a patient having low blood pressure. A farmer receives a notification regarding depleting moisture levels in the soil. A plane sends a message mid-flight for a component to be replaced – the base procures the component from a supplier and is ready in-time for landing.

And a wearable fitness device periodically reminds me to exercise!

As the Internet of Things (IoT) Changes the World around us, it also generates new opportunities in the Service Management space. With the most critical aspects of your business – People, Assets (Devices), Systems and Processes interconnected, the possibilities are endless.

As the number of "things" or “connected devices” predicted to grow around 50 billion by 2020*, it will not be long before the IT organisations will have to plan the next big leap to manage various devices and end-points. The Companies are increasingly becoming more heterogeneous – and at the same time, IT customers now expect a fully monitored, more predictable “smart infrastructure” which can even do preventative maintenance if required – rather than the traditional “break-fix” model of IT operation.

The Smart Devices along with IT Service Management systems can reduce the need of human intervention with automated alerting, diagnostics and run-book capabilities. The Opportunity lies with the always-on, always-available connected devices that will enable the IT systems to take automated decisions based upon real-time information.

And that’s exactly what we have done recently.

The IT Service Management communicates securely with the “intelligent devices” bi-directionally. Let’s examine these real-life scenarios of Incident Management with IoT, which Fusion have implemented:

An Intelligent Device sends an alert to the IT Service Management system when a critical threshold is breached
An Incident Ticket is raised in ITSM pertaining to a particular Intelligent Device

In both these scenarios, the following steps which are automatically performed within the Service Management process:

The relevant information about the intelligent device in question, is gathered from the Federated Configuration Management Database (CMDB)

The Federated CMDB is a common, centralised repository for the intelligent devices, which gives Service Management an understanding of

What these "devices" are

Who owns them

Where they are physically located

and How can they be repaired or examined

The system securely executes a set of device-specific diagnostic routines, which include real-time information from the device
The system then automatically takes appropriate decisions based upon the results from the intelligent device, to resolve the issue
If the issue is resolved, the Incident Ticket is updated and all the parties are notified accordingly. Otherwise, the Incident Ticket is assigned to the specialist with all the relevant information from the device diagnostics, for further investigation

As you can see, the benefits are innumerable – With reliable infrastructure, where problems are diagnosed and automatically resolved even before they manifest. Improved quality of service and automated decision-making, enables IT teams focus on important things, ultimately resulting in cost benefits.

And this is just a start of a long but exciting journey.

Meanwhile, the connected fitness device again reminds me that it’s the time to exercise!

Hrishi Nandedkar
Managing Consultant
Fusion Business Solutions

Interested in learning more about the real-life use cases or the BMC products involved in making this happen? Or see how can Fusion help transform the way Service Management enables IoT? Contact Fusion Business Solutions

References
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_of_Things#cite_note-9

Customer Service - So What?

Mon, 07 Dec 2015 16:22:00 GMT

Customer Service is the third key element of Fusion’s strategy and some of you will think “so what?” As a software services business, the clue is in the second word – services. Fusion does not produce software but provides services around software – we are a service provider. Customers buy from us mostly for our service whereas a software vendor produces a product that the customers buys. Of course this has become blurred with the SaaS model and software companies are both service providers and producers, with mixed success, it has to be said. More importantly once a customer buys some software and starts using it, their switching costs are quite high – not true for a service provider! So we must provide a higher level of service than a software company.

It is very hard to consistently deliver a top service, something we all know as consumers. Services are delivered by people and things go wrong from time to time. A key part of our role is to continually improve processes and systems to reduce problems and service dissatisfaction. When things do go wrong, putting it right as quickly as possible is key, accepting quickly that the problem exists. Sometimes this involves going the extra mile or spending what money it takes to put it right. I certainly believe it is the response to a problem that is critical to service providers.

In my experience, some software companies and service providers often distort their interaction with customers through their quarterly targets. As a private company doing a deal or fixing a problem is not impacted by an artificial deadline. We are there for our customers for the long term, quarter after quarter, not just at quarter end. The same applies to aggressive sales commission plans that have thresholds at quarter end that make one quarter more important than the next. It distorts behaviour and ensures that customer don’t come first.

Mark Lyttle
Executive Chairman

Is Fusion a cockroach?

Mon, 02 Nov 2015 10:35:00 GMT

In my last blog, I discussed the importance of “focus” in Fusion’s strategy. Another element of our strategy has been to consistently make a profit and I am reminded of this reading an article about The age of the cockroach in the IT market. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/age-cockroach-caterina-fake. We have certainly survived, even thrived, over a number of cycles in the IT economy, so maybe we are a cockroach?

Making a profit many seem strange as an element of strategy but Fusion became an independent company at the end of the technology boom in 2002, when many technology companies had been focused on revenue growth, rather than making a profit and valuations were based on revenue growth and a “price-to-sales” ratio. Indeed, our then parent company was quoted on the stock market, and that’s where all the focus was from analysts and investors. When many of these companies ran out of the cash needed to fund revenue growth and had no sustainable profit basis, they went bust. So it is not surprising that Fusion started with a strategy to make a profit every month and every quarter.

But of course the stability and sustainability that comes from consistent profitability are very important to customers, suppliers and employees. It is quite subtle to manage as costs are often fixed in the short term, where revenue can fluctuate from month to month. That is why a conservative approach is needed, aligning costs with conservative revenue estimates and only making decisions to increase hiring or investing, when the underlying revenue is sustained. Employees like this approach as it increases certainly of employment and the same applies to customers and suppliers. We are often surprised how many customers return to us because we are still here, at the same address and telephone number after 15 years.

At times too we have made bigger investment decisions that affect profits in the short term, but never “betting the business” and always assuming we would continuing making money if the investment did not work out. As when the cycle turns downwards we quickly adjust to the new environment…. just like a cockroach.

Mark Lyttle
Executive Chairman

Why “focus” is so important to Fusion

Thu, 15 Oct 2015 15:24:00 GMT

Fusion has been operating as an independent company for over thirteen years, with over 50 consecutive quarters of profitability, and in that time one element of our strategy that has remained unchanged is “focus”. It has been a consistent mantra for the way we manage our business and make decisions and, I believe, it has probably been the key element. Let me explain what it is and why is has been so important.

According to Michael Porter (Competitive Strategy, 1980), focus is one of three generic strategies that a business can employ. It means to focus on one segment of a market to ensure you differentiate yourself or become a low cost leader in that segment. For Fusion, at first, we set out to be a BMC partner, with deep and broad expertise in the ITSM market in the UK. That remains part of our business and has allowed us to be both an efficient operator and differentiated from our competitors.

Today our focus has broadened somewhat, adding complementary elements. We are more of an ITSM services business, operating in a number of major geographies, including France and the U.S. We also provide product independent services as well as dealing in products like BMC. One downside of our initial focus strategy was that it limited our share of the global ITSM market but through broadening into closely related areas, we still retain a core focus.

Why has this focus strategy been so important of us? The first reason is to do with management. As managers, we are faced with many decisions – whether to invest in selling and delivering new products, whether to bid for new contracts and whether to hire new employees, for example. Our focus provides a framework or basis around which to make decisions easier. We only decide to do something if it consistent with our focus strategy.

Of course our focus strategy is great for customers. Customer know that our expertise is ITSM (often BMC related), where we have deeper and boarder skills than our competitors. We brand ourselves on being the biggest dedicated supplier in this niche segment. We know the market better and customers know us for being in the market.

Our suppliers know we are committed to them because it is our niche. We can train our people to work on a limited set of products, lowering costs and ensuring better training in one focus area.

Our employees also know they are working with the best company in the niche segment. They can be proud to be experts and turn their attentions on making us even better within that niche, rather than being distracted by other segments.

This focus strategy ensures we are more consistent in making profits, ensuring stable employment and avoiding making poor decisions on diversification.

Mark Lyttle
Executive Chairman