01732 759725 38 Q&A With Paul Eccleston, Managing Director UK & Ireland, Exclusive Networks sometimes have the effect of taking value out, which a new business is then formed to bring back in because that value is still needed. TR: How does consolidation take value out? PE: Almost always, you will have a bigger player buying a smaller player and sometimes the values and the structure of the bigger company roll over the acquired company, which tends to be more specialist and higher value, which is why it’s being acquired. I’ve been in businesses that have been acquired and I’ve built businesses by acquiring. The real challenge when you’re acquiring is to make sure you don’t diminish any of that value. What I see with Exclusive is the absolute requirement not only to maintain that value but to increase that value. We’ve got to defend the value we create and part of that is to build it: you can’t just say ‘we’re value add, so we want you to treat us as such’; we have to prove it every day and we have to continue to look at what the market needs, what end users need. What are solution providers going to have to do? What capability have they got today? Where can we, as distribution, augment that capability to enable solution providers to sell more, more quickly and more profitably? That’s our job. I don’t think it’s changed. I just think it gets slightly more complicated and because of that the need to bring value is higher. TR: Infinigate recently bought your old baby Nuvias and has since acquired a number of other distributors. Do you see them as a threat? PE: No. I see them as having a similar ethos, which is to deliver high value. I know that’s why Nuvias was created and I know that’s why Inifinigate was attracted to them. Having another company with a very similar value set trying to drive and extend value is a good thing, not a bad thing. We don’t compete very much in terms of the vendor partners we work with – there’s very little overlap. It’s possible we could compete when it comes to acquiring new vendor partners but I don’t think that will happen very much, and if it does and we happen to be the two distributors with a vendor, both driving value and driving success for the channel and the vendor, then that’s a good thing. I’m very confident in Exclusive’s ability to deliver a higher value than anybody else, including Infinigate. TR: You’re rejoining the distribution market at a difficult time, with recession, war, inflation, rising interest rates, skills shortages. To what extent are these impacting Exclusive? PE: I’ve been around a bit and I’m not sure I’ve ever experienced the combination of challenges we have today – I’m not In September Exclusive Networks, the cybersecurity specialist for digital infrastructure, announced the appointment of Paul Eccleston as Managing Director of its UK & Ireland business, following the retirement of Graham Jones in May. Joining from cloud security company Zscaler, where he served as VP International Channels & Alliances, Eccleston has in-depth knowledge of the evolving channel ecosystem. In 2015, he founded specialist IT distributor Nuvias, scaling it to a $500 million business across EMEA in just five years. Before that, he held executive leadership roles at Computacenter, SCC and Tech Data. Here, Technology Reseller asks him about challenges and opportunities in the distribution sector and his plans for Exclusive Networks. Technology Reseller (TR): You’ve been out of the distribution market for about 18 months since leaving Nuvias Group. Has it changed much in that time? Paul Eccleston (PE): I would say not at all. The role of distribution continues to be the same. It’s helping our partners, both vendor partners and solution provider partners, to deliver a solution to the requirements of end users in all segments, in all vertical markets in the UK and Ireland. I don’t think that changes over time. What I’ve been delighted to see at Exclusive is its real – sometimes I say old fashioned – distribution values. It’s about the quality of people really caring about the success of our partners as a team. That’s what I was expecting but it is even better than I thought it would be. Those values continue to be a requirement in the market. Then we think about vendor partners needing to get their technology, as part of a broader solution, through a channel community to the marketplace, which is about reach and capability. That continues but if anything it is getting a little more complicated. What tends to happen is distribution consolidates and then reinvents itself. Consolidation can Q&A Paul Ecclestone We’ve got to defend the value we create and part of that is to build it: you can’t just say ‘we’re value add, so we want you to treat us as such’
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