Interview with Matthew Parker, CEO at IT Company: Babble

Babble is a cloud solutions reseller, helping customers make next-generation technology simple to use, deploy and manage. We aim to give customers easy-to-use tools to create an agile, scalable and secure work environment – with a focus on comms, contact centre, cyber and mobile.

We help ambitious, growing companies make the most of the transformational benefits of cloud technology so they can build the organisation they want.

Since 2018, we’ve acquired 16 businesses, large and small, from across the UK, worth a combined £300m. In 2021 alone, we made a record nine acquisitions, leading to us being named the UK’s largest buy and build consolidator of the year, by ICON Corporate Finance.
 
 

 

Who is your target customer?

 
Our target customer, in theory, is any business which is ambitious, focused on growth and keen to embrace the most modern technological solutions. Our current partners range from television networks, holiday providers and hotel chains to insurance companies.

We partner with businesses who are doing something interesting – whether it’s shifting their wider focus, looking to disrupt a new market or adapting their offering, and we support them through this period of change.
 

 

How has the company evolved during the pandemic?

 
The pandemic had a two-fold effect on us. Firstly, in March 2020, we had to help customers move from one office with hundreds of people to hundreds of offices with one person overnight. As time went on, we had to continue adapting to changing ways of working and now help customers manage and support their scattered workforce, be it remote, hybrid or fully in person.

Then it helped us to develop our own regional focus. From the outset, we wanted to create a nationwide business with hubs across the UK. Lots of our customers want to deal with someone local when they call us. As a proud Scotsman, I get it. Ultimately, we want to be local but with the talent and resources of a national organisation.
 

What can we hope to see from Babble in the future?

 
Evolving and improving our regional presence is really important to us. In the long term, we want to have hubs dotted across the country – Babble Scotland, Babble Northwest, Babble Northeast, Babble South and more. We’re planning on eventually having a general manager running each hub, giving local counsel to businesses there.