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Today, we are delighted to announce that for the third consecutive year the ASM Group has delivered double digit growth. Turnover has increased across all entities in which we operate.

Yet again we have experienced strong organic growth across EMEA, through the strategic expansion into more regions and acquisition of new customers. ASM’s unique business model continues to support a fulfilment infrastructure across 4 continents and 55 countries globally.

We continue to partner with disruptive vendors to bring value to Global System Integrators and Value-Added Resellers, which in turn support organisations across the globe.  We have also expanded our ecosystem of Partners and forged new relationships with vendors whose technologies are truly disrupting the market.

During the year, we opened the doors to our prestigious, state of the art office at Gadbrook Business Centre which was built with sustainability, innovation and collaboration at the forefront. Our expansion has also created new positions within the business, and we are delighted to welcome our new colleagues to the team.

As we look forward to the coming financial year, we are excited to collaborate in person with our customers, partners and vendors, developing our strong relationships to stand us in good stead for continued growth.

We’d like to extend our thanks to our team, customers, vendors and partners for their continued support.

ASM Group delivers double digit growth for another consecutive year

We wanted to share some exciting news with you.

We are delighted to announce that for the third consecutive year the ASM Group has delivered double digit growth. Turnover has increased across all three of our businesses (UK, Germany and France) driven both organically, and through the strategic expansion into more regions and acquisition of new customers.

Our growth demonstrates the resilience of our footprint across EMEA and continued commitment to our customers. We continue to be the partner of choice to Global System Integrators and Value-Added Resellers. ASM’s unique business model continues to support a fulfilment infrastructure across 4 continents and 55 countries globally.

Through our team’s work on a variety of exciting projects, we have expanded our ecosystem of Partners and forged new relationships with vendors whose technologies are truly disrupting the market. To recognise the dedication of our excellent collaboration with our vendors, we’ve received numerous awards.

During the year, we opened the doors to our prestigious, state of the art office at Gadbrook Business Centre which was built with sustainability, innovation and collaboration at the forefront. Our expansion has also created new positions within the business, and we are delighted to welcome our new colleagues to the team.

2021 also saw the launch of series 2 of the ASM Connected podcast, in which hosts, Iain Tomkinson and Stephen Dale, collaborated with key speakers, futurists, and business leaders from across the globe to explore emerging technology trends, innovation and more.

I’m incredibly proud to work with such a dynamic, resilient, and dedicated team” said Iain Tomkinson, Sales Director.

“In September, ASM will be 30 years old and I believe that our ability to adapt to everchanging landscapes and customer demands has been key to our success. As we look ahead, this coming financial year is really about developing robust, long term relationships with our customers and partners to equip us for strong growth in the future. After two years of remote working, video conferencing and virtual events, we’re really looking forward to coming together with our customers, partners, and team to celebrate our joint success over the last two years”.

Something exciting is coming, watch this space for more updates…

Financial year end 2021-22

We were thrilled to have been announced as the 2021 UKI Distributor of the Year by our Platinum Partner, GoTo at their UKI and Nordics Partner Summit 2022.

Adele Hope-Urwin, Head of Vendor Alliances at ASM Technologies said

“We are delighted to have won Distributor of the Year with GoTo. After working closely with their excellent team, it’s great to have been recognised for such a prestigious award”.

Working in partnership with ASM, GoTo software is designed to support end-users’ unified communications & collaboration (UCC). This award is a true testament of fantastic collaboration and we look forward to a long and prosperous continued partnership with GoTo.

2021 Emerging Tech in Review. It’s not really a panda burger!

We talked about emerging tech a lot throughout 2021. Series 2 of the ASM Connected podcast has been a great success and our esteemed guests have told us how far we have come and where we are going next. Futurist Matthew Griffin of the 311 Institute, who started out in distribution, even talked about as far forward as 30+ years from now. But in order to predict the future, we must look at the past, said Brett King in episode 3, so we have looked back at 2021 to see how our business has aligned with what the futurists have been talking about.

Starting off with Enterprise Content Delivery Network (ECDN). This has moved rapidly from emerging to essential and we’ve enjoyed this journey with our partner, Kollective Technology. It’s no surprise that big companies are using more video for internal communications and the need for scale has challenged many. In episode 2 of ASM Connected, Richard Potter from Microsoft discusses their focus and commitment to the hybrid and remote working future which Kollective are supporting. Together we’ve helped deliver a greater ROI for users of Teams throughout 2021.

Biometric Authentication reminds us of this year’s challenges, when making payments using facial recognition on our phones was thwarted by our face masks. It was back to entering a passcode which is so last decade. Thanks to our partner, Idenprotect, we’ve seen some great steps forward this year towards eliminating all passwords. In episode 3 of ASM Connected, Futurist, Brett King explains a whole new future of payments technology which will change our in-store experience entirely. Goodbye passwords, hello responsible proactive finance.

Virtual Reality has been building for a few years now. You may have seen a virtual reality tour of Tottenham Hotspurs new stadium before it opened in 2019 or enjoyed the TV show “Your Garden Made Perfect” which introduced many of us to the practical uses of VR during lockdown 1.0, when we all got into gardening. Oculus seem to be leading the charge, but if you listen to ASM Connected episode 5 with Futurist, Amelia Kallman, you’ll hear how Ray Bans, Microsoft and obviously Apple will all be in the race for our brand loyalty in the future. VR has been the most popular answer this year when we’ve been asking our podcast guests about their favourite tech gadgets.

Internet of Things is another buzzword we have all heard a lot about this year. Other than our connected home devices, the enterprise use cases have been slow to emerge outside of the manufacturing sector. However, it’s picking up pace and we may even see a leap directly to the Internet of Everything next year. We’ve seen significant development with our customers in IoT in the utilities and in the facilities management sector this year, but don’t rule out the progress that has been made in the retail and supply chain sectors. In podcast episode 7, Cate Trotter gave us some great insights into the massive transformation in retail. Subscribe to ASM Connected to be the first to hear the episodes with Brett Phaneuf and Inma Martinez; due out early next year, as they discuss IoT projects ranging from autonomous boats to smart cities and cars that are superior to humans.

Robotic Process Automation is the trend that has probably been talked about more than any other.  We all can’t decide whether to fear it or embrace it. I think on every podcast this series we have talked about how AI, machine learning and RPA are supposed to be bringing about the leisure society, but I haven’t seen many people work less hours in 2021, so I think there is some distance to go yet. Even automating simple tasks has been a challenge for many of our customers, but we have been really impressed with our partners at Keysight Technologies, Eggplant who are leading the way in automated software testing. It’s our favourite application of automation as it’s adding value in every sector our customers work in.

3D Printing is an interesting one. The tech is not so new, but it’s the use case and application that have advanced this year. We’ve come a long way from printing that missing Lego brick to solar roof tiles, replacement human body parts, and DNA matched meat free food. In Episode 4 of ASM Connected, Futurist, Matthew Griffin shares his thoughts on 3D printing and is a huge fan. You’ll soon hear our podcast with Dr Ruchi Pathak Kaul who is changing people’s lives with the use of 3D printing as a pioneer of maxillofacial surgery.

API Security is nothing new to us at ASM Technologies. We’ve been working with the industry leaders and pioneers at Forum Systems who have worked in this emerging space for the past 18 years. Everyone is integrating via API’s now. They are like digital glue, but any interface is a threat in a zero-trust world, so the more interactions we create, the more API Security becomes significant.

Device Management sounds a little less sci-fi than some emerging trends, but don’t underestimate the important role it has played in empowering and connecting people during the Covid pandemic. Our partners at Jamf have gone from strength to strength this year with use cases across health, education, business, and public sector bringing the familiar Apple user experience to enterprise and so much more. In the first series of the ASM Connected podcast, episode 2 with Elizabeth Lucas from Jamf covers the important role this technology has played in patient visitor communication in hospitals.

Big Data Security and Analytics has been one our most active trends this year. Our partners at Grafana have been super busy as their open-source platform delivers impressively on the observability imperative. In ASM Connected episode 6 of series 1, podcast legend Dave Russell explains the complexity of the layers of big data, in a way that even we understand.

Finally, Human Insight AI is an exciting trend, even if it sounds a little more niche than the others we’ve reviewed. In fact, the human and societal impact of new tech and our curiosity about AI have been consistent threads during Series 2 of ASM Connected. Keep a look out for our soon to be released podcast with Inma Martinez where we learn how emerging technology in the transport sector is already superior to humans and is improving further to keep us safe. Subscribe here to ensure you don’t miss an episode. Our partners at SmartEye are ones to watch in this emerging trend.

We’ve really enjoyed our contribution to emerging tech trends throughout 2021 and would like to thank all our excellent customers, vendor partners and podcast guests for joining us on this journey.

You’ll have to listen to episode 4 of ASM Connected with Matthew Griffin to hear the story about the panda burgers!

Recently the ASM team joined Atos for their 5th Annual IT on the High Seas, raising money for The Princes Trust through their Million Makers scheme.

Stephen Dale, ASM Account Director for Systems Integrators said

“What’s knot to like? Raising money for a great cause, whilst learning an exciting new skill, it takes remote working to a whole new level. As the conversation flowed from the weather to waves to work, we were out of our comfort zone and learning about teamwork whilst supporting The Princes Trust Charity. This is my favourite corporate event and was superbly organised. Thanks to everyone involved, especially our Atos crew members for daring to sail with us novices. Ahoy!”

We were thrilled to be announced as the Top Distributor of the Year by our strategic partner, Grafana Labs at their 2021 GrafanaCONline partner awards.

Christina Gillman, Worldwide Channel Sales Manager at Grafana Labs said

‘The flexibility and intuitiveness of the team to help facilitate and close deals has been a real pleasure to see. We know there is so much more we can do together, and I very much look forward to that growth.’

In partnership with ASM, Grafana Labs supports organisations’ monitoring, visualization and observability goals through an open and composable platform built around Grafana. Grafana dashboards are the world’s most adopted operational dashboards with millions of users and hundreds of thousands of organisations. The unique value is that data can be rendered without moving the core source and data can be combined and correlated like no other solution.

Adele Hope-Urwin, Software Channel Manager at ASM Technologies said

“It’s been a pleasure working with the team at Grafana to develop our business relationship and add their solution to our portfolio of innovative technology”. The team always go above and beyond to support projects with our customers and the level of knowledge spread across the team is exceptional. I look forward to developing our partnership with Grafana in the future”.

This award is a true testament to the fantastic teamwork at ASM Technologies and we look forward to our continued partnership with Grafana Labs.

We were thrilled to have been announced as the winner for the Most active partner in Marketing by our strategic partner JetBrains, at their 2021 partner awards!

Working with ASM, JetBrains make professional software development a more productive experience. Their products make it easy for developers to take care of quality during all the stages of development and spend much less time on maintenance tasks. By automating routine checks and corrections, their tools speed up production.

This was a great team effort by our Marketing team, and we look forward to our continued partnership with JetBrains in the future.

We are incredibly proud to have been ranked for the second year running in The Sunday Times International Track 200. This is a fantastic achievement and a true testament of the hard work from the whole team at ASM working together towards a common goal.

To qualify for The Sunday Times HSBC International Track 200 companies need to be registered in the UK and be independent, unquoted, and ultimate holding companies. They are ranked according to the compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of their international sales over their latest two financial years.

Since inception in 1992, ASM Technologies have become leading experts in their sector and partner with the world’s largest and most successful Resellers and Systems Integrators. We are a multi-national business with offices in London, Paris, Dusseldorf, and a head office in Cheshire and our fulfilment infrastructure delivers to 4 continents and 55 countries globally. ASM Technologies improve profitability through agile technology distribution with customers gaining access to an infinite portfolio of innovative technologies and disruptive vendors.

ASM Sales Director, Iain Tomkinson said

“Thank you to our customers, vendors and the fantastic ASM team that continue to deliver robust organic growth across Europe and beyond. We are very proud to be recognised by The Sunday Times Fast Track for International growth for the second year running and I look forward to further growth in the future”.

Digital Marketing Executive, Molly Oakley started with ASM in July and is working from home for the first time. In this blog, she shares her experience of remote working for the first time, her thoughts of starting a new job during lockdown and the advice she would give to others looking to start a new role remotely.

How did you feel about starting a new role from home during lockdown?

I was quite apprehensive about starting a new role from home during lockdown because I had never worked from home before so didn’t know what to expect. I was however very excited and very lucky to be starting my new role during this uncertain time and was looking forward to getting back to doing what I love and learning even more about the IT industry.

How did ASM support you starting your new role working remotely?

Any worry I was experiencing ahead of starting my role quickly disappeared when I spoke with my manager as she assured me that I would have my induction completed in person (socially distanced of course) and I would learn about the policies and procedures at ASM and receive all my equipment that I needed to fulfil my role. On my first day, I was introduced to both founding directors of ASM and was greeted with a warm welcome which was lovely. My manager got me set up with equipment and arranged for skype calls with each member of the management team and various other colleagues. It was lovely to meet the different people I would be working with and gain an understanding of their role. I also attended virtual coffee mornings with colleagues from different teams who I wouldn’t be working as closely with which helped me gain a better understanding of the wider business but also broke the ice and allowed me to have more informal conversations and get to know them much better.

Were there any challenges you faced starting a new role remotely and how were these overcome?

I was quite worried initially about how the communication with colleagues would be, specifically if I was unsure about a task I had been set or something was not working. In previous roles, I had never worked at home so I’d never needed to use video conferencing systems and although I vaguely knew how to use them, I didn’t realise how sophisticated they were and how many features they had. Upon discovering these features and receiving training on how best to use them, my mind was instantly put to rest as I had the confidence that I could communicate easily with my colleagues and raise any issues I had with ease and efficiency.

How did you find the process of building relationships with your new colleagues remotely?

I really enjoyed getting to know my colleagues and building relationships with each of them. I was assigned a buddy when I started who was someone I could go to (aside from my manager) who could answer any questions and be a friendly face/voice. My buddy was Sam Scott who you’ll hear from in another new starter blog and he started at ASM just as we went in to lockdown so aside from the two people he met at his interview, he met all colleagues virtually too. My manager thought that he would be a good fit as a buddy for me as he had been through the same recruitment process as me and could answer any questions from first-hand experience. Technology has played a vital part in making it possible for me to build strong personal and professional relationships with colleagues and partners. There is something much more powerful about a video call compared to a voice call in being able to build relationships with people. I’ve found it easier getting to know people in their natural home environments. Without technology, I think my remote working experience would have been very different and felt a lot more isolating.

What advice would you give to someone starting a new role remotely?

I would say keeping an open mind is important because my experience has been amazing and although I had my worries at the start, the support from all my colleagues at ASM has been amazing and any worries I had very quickly dissipated.