technologyreseller.co.uk 39 Q&A our overall business that matters. More importantly, are we able to solve the challenges our partners have? I think in many ways we do, but we can do more and we can do better. And that applies to X-OD like other areas of the business. TR: Roughly what proportion of your business do you think goes through X-OD now? PE: It’ll be very small today. It’ll be in the low single digit percentages, which as I say, is great growth but overall not a big number. Ultimately, if the market requirement is for X-OD to be 5% of our business, then that’s what it should be, and we shouldn’t be trying to make it 10%. If the market requirement is 10%, we should make sure we’re able to meet the full demand of the market. TR: You have said that you want to focus on services as a growth area. What services do you have in mind and are they your own services or those of your customers? PE: We have a very strong services capability and it’s my intention that we have an even stronger services capability in the future, and by services I mean all services – P/S (product/service) support services, implementation services, financial services, marketing services. We’ve got 40-plus people in our services business, which is a high percentage of our total headcount (circa 250) and they are delivering services of all types. We sell vendors’ services; we sell our own services; we sell renewals, which ultimately are our vendors’ services, and we add to some of those ourselves; and then we build managed services, which cover the full spectrum from a very light managed service to a complete managed service. A lot of my background is in building services capability in distribution businesses. Because we’re a distributor of technology, we have the scale to build a managed service where other people may not have the scale for that to work economically. That’s why I keep going back to the point that we can do a lot more. The services capability at Exclusive today, certainly in the vendors we carry, is ahead of anybody else. But I’m very focused on the fact that that should not be the bar. That’s not really the measure; the measure is: are we able to deliver everything the market needs? We’ve got a lot of opportunity to build on that. TR: When you say build on it, will you be building scale or will you be expanding the range of services you offer? PE: Both. I’ve been here I think 35 working days and I’m already pretty heavily involved in looking at how we expand the range of services we offer. My approach is if there’s a need in the market and we can address that need economically then we should be doing it. We’ve got the scale to be able to build these services in a more economical way than almost anybody else and that’s part of our job. When we say value added distribution, we’re distributing product, we’re distributing software, we’re also distributing knowledge and capability. We need to build that capability to move forward more quickly. If we can help a project be designed, scoped, implemented, be successful more quickly, then everybody wins. The end customer wins because they’re getting the benefit more quickly. The solution provider/ partner/reseller is benefiting because they’re selling more quickly, and we’re able to make that sale more profitable for them and potentially at a lower cost point for the end user. That’s a really big part of our role. TR: Are there particular areas you’re focusing on? PE: Historically, we have had fantastic endto-end services with some of our vendor partners, but not all of them. One of the big drives for me is to get us to a position where that capability is consistent across all the vendors we carry. This is a hard task for three reasons. First, not all vendors are the same; they’re at different levels of maturity, different levels of development, so what each vendor wants us to do and will allow us to do varies. If they’re not ready for the channel to deliver services, then it’s pretty hard for us to do that. Then, because of the stage a vendor is at, a channel partner will quite often have done something themselves, so the level of support they sure anyone has experienced such a combination since our parents or grandparents. We would rather we didn’t have those challenges but the role of distribution, I think, becomes even more important when we do. Of course, our life becomes more complicated because we’re often buying in dollars and selling in pounds or buying in dollars and selling in euros. The high volatility in the currency markets and rising inflation clearly make life complicated, and we have to be ready to take the actions we need to take but also ensure we’re there even more to help and to support and to deliver the capability that people need. What’s not going to change in anything we’ve looked at is the need for increased levels of cybersecurity, and that’s principally what we do. I think demand will stay very high, even in a more difficult economy. Might it contract a little? I’m sure it might. But today we’re still seeing very strong demand and bookings are at a record level. TR: I suppose the risk is that your customers will be affected if their customers fail. Do you have contingencies in place to support resellers with different financing options and things like that? PE: We do that already and have been doing so for quite some time. That said, from the vantage of my first 60 days spent looking at the UK and Ireland business, we can do more. I’m very focused right now on all aspects of our service, including financing options, as-a-service options and utility options with X-OD. They’re all successful today, in that all elements are operating, but notwithstanding the challenges we face I would like them to be a significantly larger part of our service than they are already. We’re in a good position and we’re making good progress; I just want us to go further and faster. TR: What are the adoption rates like for X-OD? PE: It’s going reasonably well. The adoption is good because when you start something your growth rates are always very high, but it’s the absolute rate and the % of continued... Because we’re a distributor of technology, we have the scale to build a managed ser vice where other people may not have the scale for that to work economically
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