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Tom’s First Six Months

March 28, 2024 by Tom Clarke

We talked with Tom Clarke, appointed as Reliance High-Tech Sales and Marketing Director last June, to get his take on how his first six months with the company have gone.

“It’s been a fantastic, fascinating learning curve since joining Reliance, who I have always considered to be the UK’s leading independent security integrator,” said Tom, previously at Mitie.

“The Reliance culture is completely different to that of the corporate giants – we feel much more dynamic and agile in responding to market changes and the evolving requirements of our customers,” he explained.

“At Reliance, everyone has a voice. We work collaboratively to make the best decisions for our customers. It’s a real team effort, focused on improving their customer experience, and helping them be more cost effective while providing a safer and more secure working environment for their staff and customers. It’s great to work in a management team that can really make a difference and make that happen for our customers.”

Settling in

We asked Tom to outline what he’s achieved in his first six months. “Obviously a key objective is sales, but I have also spent a lot of time getting to know the people in the business and integrating with them. Everyone’s been really supportive and helpful, and, having got to know them all, I really can’t sing their praises highly enough. We have a great bunch of talented professionals who live and breathe the Reliance ethos, with the customer always foremost in their minds,” he said.

A principal area of focus has been ensuring the right processes and resources are in place to meet Reliance’s customers’ needs. “This has been key. It’s seen us invest in new resources such as Steven Reed, our new Bid Manager,” said Tom. “He’s a great example of our over-arching strategy – to build a team with the right skills in the right places to best serve our customers. It’s also been great to contribute new ideas to our technology strategy as we continually explore and introduce the best new technologies in the market, in particular looking at how they can benefit Reliance customers and drive sales growth.”

Integrating Traditional Systems

Among those technologies are market-leading software and situational management systems. These software platforms overlay traditional, siloed security systems, integrating them to provide enhanced response from on-site security teams and meaningful insights about security incidents and response mechanisms. They drive improved usage and empower customers to make educated decisions about soft services and floor planning.

 Mass Notification

Tom has also worked with Chris Allcard, Head of Reliance Protect (Lone Worker solutions) and Andy Schofield, Director of Technology, across Reliance’s various divisions, to develop solutions based on mass notification technology, complimenting and integrating with traditional security solutions, particularly in the university space. These enable departments to send a wide variety of notifications to selected groups of students, from security alerts to changes of lecture theatre.

Integrating this technology with smartphone apps and personal identity management allows students to benefit from end-to-end security, access control, personal safety and notifications.

Building our IT Team

“It has been really refreshing to join a team where investment in IT, resources, cyber security and networking skills are absolutely best in class, and taken very seriously. With the digitalisation of technology, IP and cloud, we completely understand the importance of developing and retaining the best skills to support each customer on their journey, especially as we integrate into their wider IT estate.”

A strong example of this is the area of cyber threat mitigation and meeting sensitive personal data protection requirements, such as those set out by the GDPR. Tom explained: “A key benefit of investing in our business in this way, instead of sub-contracting like many of our competitors, is that we can now do far more system pre-configuration and ongoing remote support at the Reliance IT and Data Centre facility, before deploying equipment to customer sites. Reducing install time and the risk of out-of-the-box failures, this improves the level of service we provide to our customers, while significantly increasing the robustness of their IT security and password management, as well as ensuring all software and firmware deployed has the latest security patches.”

What’s Ahead?

Looking ahead, Tom sees on-going strengthening of the team as a key theme. “People are at the heart of our business, so I’m really excited that we have another new starter in the sales team this month, working in the police and criminal justice sector. We’ll continue to build the team as we support customers in our core and emerging market sectors,” he said. “This expansion will be backed by parallel development of our design and professional services teams, working together to support our customers, seamlessly extending their internal teams.”

“We’re convinced that triangular relationships between us, our technology partners and our customers are key to securing real benefits for all three parties in each project,” Tom summed up. “Our focus will always be on pulling together with clear communication to deliver the best possible solutions and services to our customers.”

Find out More

Contact us on 0845 121 0802 or at info@reliancehightech.co.uk to learn more about Reliance High-Tech and how security systems integration can deliver tangible, on-going value for your organisation.