01732 759725 of operational excellence from Danaher, who was part of the team that made that business such an amazing success. They did that by optimising business operations, leveraging new technology, streamlining processes and investing in people. TR: What do you see as the biggest challenges facing channel businesses today? DS: The biggest challenge is remaining relevant, with change coming from every direction. The hyperscalers have muscled into the industry very successfully, to the point where many analysts expect them to command more than one third of total IT spend. There is huge consolidation in the MSP space, where bigger appears better and closeness to the customer is critical for success. Finally, there’s no doubt that generative AI will create just as many challenges as opportunities. Governance, maintenance, testing and quality assurance of AI agents is a huge area. TR: Could vendors and distributors do more to help overcome these challenges? And if so, what? DS: Absolutely. Distributors sit between vendors and partners, helping partners become relevant to vendors and vendors become relevant to partners. It is important to anticipate what the future looks like and make sure you are building a business case that still has a place in that future. Hyperscalers, data engineering and GPT AI are all huge challenges, and the channel will need to be adept at solving them if they are to turn those challenges into opportunities. TR: If you could change one aspect of your job, what would it be and why? DS: I am happy with my job and every day I work to change it into the job I want it to be. This generally comes from passing on my knowledge, experience and responsibility to the team around me. I am becoming a ninja at delegation and sharing the workload. When I started the company there was just me, so by default I did everything. Now that I have 450 colleagues working with me, I have lots of experts to share the workload with. growing year-on-year by carefully blending double-digit organic growth with the integration of (and uplift from) our acquisitions. We remain optimistic about the future and expect to gain share in a growing market. TR: In what areas are you experiencing strongest demand? DS: At QBS Software we operate a software delivery platform that has two strengths – longtail software delivery and value-added distribution. Both areas are growing significantly, but with our new CRO Tom Corrigan on board we are seeking disproportionate growth in our VAD business, driven by demand gen and extra sales and marketing effort from our team. TR: What recent wins are you most proud of? DS: At the risk of singling out any particular deal, one that did make all of us proud was co-selling with a reseller on a federal government project to consolidate their entire software spend through a single reseller. We worked with the team to manage their complete long tail software through a single app, with co-termination, renewals management and rapid onboarding of new SaaS and software tools. TR: Where is business proving most difficult? DS: The main difficulty is integrating the systems of the acquisitions we have made. This starts with ensuring metadata and master data integrity and quality. I can see why the market for data engineering tools is so large, as every business is so dependent upon the quality of its data to make intelligent, automated decisions. Our highly experienced integrations team have the battle scars and grey hairs from all they have learnt on previous deals, so hopefully this challenge is getting solved better and quicker each time. TR: How have you changed/are you changing business operations to exploit new opportunities? DS: We are in the privileged position of being among the first to see many of the best and fastest growing software tools in the world. We have employed a new head QBS delivers the software that the world’s largest companies use every day through their partner of choice. As well as operating the largest channel-only software delivery platform in EMEA, featuring over 12,500 global and niche software vendors, QBS has a growing Value Added Distribution business built up through the completion of 15 acquisitions over the last 7 years. Based in London and with a headcount of 450, QBS represents vendors such as Opentext, Docusign, JetBrains, Delinea, Sharegate, Smartsheet and TeamViewer. Approximately 6,000 partners interact with the Group on a yearly basis. The company has just appointed software distribution expert Tom Corrigan as CRO as it looks to boost annual recurring revenue from over $600 million to $1 billion (see page 36). Here, Group CEO Dave Stevinson offers his view from the channel. Technology Reseller (TR): How’s business? Better or worse than 12 months ago? And how confident are you about the future? Dave Stevinson (DS): Business is going exceptionally well – there is an insatiable demand in the UK for software and this is being supercharged by data engineering, cybersecurity and generative AI. We are With Dave Stevinson, Group CEO of QBS Technology Group View from the channel… View from the channEL 08 Dave Stevinson
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