17 November 2020
By Tom Collins
tom@TheCork.ie
National Business Machines (NBM), headquartered in Ballycureen (north of Frankfield) Cork and celebrating its 35th year in business, last year announced a €750,000 investment and expansion of their business, largely focussed on infrastructure and personnel.
Managing Director, Michael Galvin (left) and newly appointed Sales Director, Don Mullins of National Business Machines, with their sales team video conferencing in, adapting to the new ways of working.
Pic: Brian Lougheed
This year, they are seeing the fruits of their labour, adapting to, and overcoming the challenges of Covid-19 head on, with a can-do and flexible attitude to conducting their day-to-day operations. This approach, coupled with the promotion of a new Sales Director, Don Mullins, and the additions of three new Account Managers Tiernan Burke, Gene Foley, Gerry O’Keeffe, and a new Company Accountant Irene Rafferty, has set the company up well for a positive end to a challenging year.
The company is one of Ireland’s leading providers of workplace solutions, software, services, managed print services, large scale Production Printers and last year’s expansion positioned them as Xerox’s largest Irish Channel Partner. In order to cope with the larger and increased business of this Channel partnership, Managing Director at NBM, Michael Galvin, made the decision to promote long-standing team member Don Mullins as Sales Director, saying that:
“Don has been a part of the NBM team for over 10 years as a key Account Manager and has been a Sales Manager with us for the last three years. With the increase in our offering as Xerox Channel Partners, it was a natural decision to appoint him as Sales Director with responsibility for the 7-strong sales team located across our various offices in Cork, Limerick, Waterford and Portlaoise. I have every confidence in Don and the rest of the team to help keep the show on the road for NBM, especially in these tough times.”
“We’ve had a challenging year, but it’s been a year of learning for us and we were able to evaluate and adapt our business under the current climate. We embraced new technologies and had to accelerate our learning, but it has proved to be beneficial for us and gives us brilliant scope to apply all of our learnings next year to help us to continue to grow in 2021and hopefully for another 35 years and beyond. We are also thrilled to be one of very few tech companies running for this many years.” he said.
NBM were fortunate, with the help of Government supports, to be able to keep all of their existing staff on board this year. They did have to restructure some overheads but say they have been keeping on top of it and are moving along steadily with their planned expansion.
Founded in 1985 as one of Xerox’s first European partners, NBM served businesses in Cork and Kerry only. Through organic and strategic investments over the years, NBM have successfully grown their business and their footprint to cover all of Munster and South Leinster.
After a decade with the company, Mr. Mullins said he was relishing the challenge of his new role in the current climate, and paid tribute to the new recruits within NBM:
“We are proud of, and extremely fortunate to have such a stellar group of people working with us, and our newest members of the sales team, who have really hit the ground running, and have expanded our business and sales capabilities exponentially in our various locations across Ireland.”
“We have made huge strides this year in terms of adapting our business to reflect a changed working environment and we’ve seen a big increase in demand for apps and touchless printing solutions. We have been facilitating our customers with special offers on smaller printers and multi-functional devices for the home office and we have seen a big uptake here. We’re actively seeking out Covid- friendly solutions for our clients as a result of the changed working environment and we’re continuously looking at other opportunities to embrace newer technologies,” he added.
Another strategic move by NBM, included the appointment of a new Company Accountant, Irene Rafferty who is also an ex Cork camogie player with numerous golfing accolades to boot! Irene was appointed to strengthen the financial structure of the organisation, and to ensure the right supports were in place for the larger and increased Xerox business, and of course the Covid-19 climate.
Mark McPhillips, Managing Director at Xerox told us;
“For more than three decades, NBM has been a trusted partner of Xerox, with a track record of investing in its business to enhance client service. Last year’s expansion in the Irish market further strengthened both Xerox and NBM’s ability to offer a high-touch, locally accessible model to support clients and grow both of our businesses, and we expect that this will only improve and continue to expand in the future, in spite of a challenging year.”
For information on the full suite of NBM services, which include Managed Print Services, Multifunction Printers, Production Printers and Software, visit www.nbm.ie or call 1890 80 40 40.
