Jacqueline Sandford (Flare Telecom Ltd)

Flare Telecom Ltd offers local small and medium businesses land line and mobile telephony services. On the mobile side this could range from the supply of smart phones and tablets i.e. iphone,  Blackberry and  ipad to help your remote workers maximise their effectiveness through to guiding you through the maze of bundled tariffs for all your users to share and even helping you mobilise your back office processes to improve the service you provide your customers. On the landline (fixed line) side it coud be simply providing competitive rates on your lines and calls, providing reliable and competitive PBX maintenance contracts through to a full consultation and analysis of your call profile to provide a full design and supply for a hosted VOIP system.

Flare Telecom has specific knowledge and experience working with business customers and understands the importance of having a trusted supplier that can be your eyes and ears to guide you and give you the right advice for your telecoms needs both now and as your business evolves in the future. Flare Telecom can offer you bespoke service and support, tailored to your needs. For the larger corporate customers who prefer to remain direct with the Network Operator, Flare Telecom can offer a fully managed consultancy service to fully manage the negotiation of your telecoms contracts or work along side your team to ensure your business achieves the best possible contract terms. 

In a very competitive market with rapidly changing services, declining revenues, higher margins and a mish mash of different billing systems its becoming increasing hard for smaller businesses to get the level of service they need from the Network Providers. Customer insight has confirmed the three biggest challenges faced from telecoms suppliers are; lack of qualify management reporting information, lack of tariff optimisation and a constant string of different account managers with no prior knowledge of their business.

This is the reason for setting up Flare Telecom. I absolutely believe there is a need for a more personalised, dedicated support to offer businesses who want someone with experience and expertise to guide them on what ultimately is an important part of their business but leaves them free to focus on what they set up to do which was grow their own customer base and win in their own markets whist controlling their own costs and gaining competitive edge.

Flare Telecom is small enough to be able to be creative, dynamic and nimble to keep pace with the changing times yet focused and responsive. If you are fed up with being just a number, throttled by slow clunky processes and not wanting to brief yet another account manager on your business, why not support another local business, deal with a like minded entrepreneur and form a lasting business relationship which promises to make a difference.

I am Jacqueline Sandford, owner and founder of Flare Telecom. I have 24 years experience in the mobile industry.  I joined Vodafone not long after they had started in 1988 as a sales trainee with my wonderful badged Orion car and my filofax (like having an ipad as a standard tool to do my job these days) and of course my state of the art Panasonic Transporable phone. I was given Surrey as my sales patch and off I went. After 4 successful years I left as the grass looked greener on the otherside, so I went to work for Securicor who owned Cellent (original name for 02) with BT. I was there 8 years before moving back to Vodafone.

The last 12 years saw me progress through the ranks within sales from Strategic Acquisitions Manager (new business) negotiating and winning some very large contracts with large corporate customers and large public sector contracts.  I achieved sales person of the year several years running. I then moved into sales management and progressed through those levels to second line management where I headed up a large team of 45 people, including 4 area managers and a mixture of field based new business and existing account managers. 

I spent the last 5 years focusing on Small Medium Enterprises (SME), heading up the South Region where my team were responsible for selling a very large portfolio of services including mobile, fixed line, new PBX systems (Avaya and Shoretel), PBX maintenance, WAN's and various bespoke application based solutions. 

I left Vodafone in March 2012 and set up my own business as I am absolutely passionate about customer service and having visited so many in my previous role, I know there is an opportunity for a more proactive, dedicated provider. I thoroughly enjoy meeting customers, building relationships and taking to time to understand their business so I can use my experience and knowledge to add value to their business.

On a personal level, I am married with three energetic boys aged 15, 16 and 18. We live in Bucklebury which is a village north east of Newbury. We are a pretty active family. My husband and boys play many sports, run and are all passionate season ticket holders for Reading FC. I was for several years but had to give up the matches to give me more time for my greatest passion which is horse riding. I own my horse and have done for the last 6 years. I compete at Trec and lower distance endurance and that keeps me pretty occupied. I also set up and run a Happy Hackers club locally to enable other local horsey enthusiasts to meet and talk about their favourite subject whilst making new friends. 

I am quite a recent recruit to 4N and I find it so inspiring meeting so many like minded people, all working hard to grow their business and you learn so much listening to their ideas and the insight slots are brilliant. I am looking forward to meeting lots of new people, making new friends and contacts and importantly seeing how I can work with other 4N members to help each become as successful as possible. Hope to meet you soon.

Best Wishes

Jacqueline