Julie Riggs (Spirit Technology Solutions)
Spirit Technology Solutions has merged two of its business units together in an effort to save costs, increase margins and boost customer experience.
The telecommunications and IT service provider intends to merge its IT&T (IT and telco) division with Trident, a unit formed out of its acquisition of Trident Business Group in 2020.
The move will see Trident’s name absorbed into the IT&T moniker as Julie Riggs, former COO of Trident, is named CEO of the merged business, reporting to the company’s managing director Sol Lukatsky.
Lukatsky said Riggs’ promotion would give Spirit a “more defined business structure with specific product target markets” that will fister cross-sell opportunities.
“In Julie, we have a commercially savvy and pragmatic leader at the helm. Julie has more than 25 years of senior experience in the IT industry,” he added.
Before joining Spirit via Trident, Riggs was general manager at IBM Global Technology Services for Australia and New Zealand, and prior to that, was CFO at IBM NZ.
According to the publicly listed company, the Spirit brand will offer a “comprehensive range of telco services including data, voice, cloud solutions and managed services to mid-market businesses with employees in the range of 100-to-500".
In order to further improve margins, Spirit has raised its prices by five to 15 per cent. “We continue to seek rationalisation savings and additional expense reductions will be identified over the next few months and the market will be advised accordingly,” the company told shareholders.
Spirit’s restructuring coincides with its third-quarter update for 2022, whereby it flagged cyber security as its fastest-growing business.
Known as Intalock, another acquired business, the cyber security unit was said to be “extremely positive with cyber software sales and consulting services growing organically”.
Spirit meanwhile said it had been a slower than usual January due to the divestment of its consumer business DGtek.
It is now currently finished due diligence talks with a buyer for its fixed wireless towers, but said it was yet to reach a decision.
“It was solid revenue performance during Q3 with demand for our SMB and cyber products rebounding,” Lukatsky said.
“Whilst we are seeing growing demand in the market for our services, we also continue to see significant supply side restraints, in particular accessing IT&T skills to meet demand. Labour supply side pressure and wage inflation will continue until borders are open and there is an intake of skilled migration.”
