technologyreseller.co.uk 17 reseller’s growth plans would provide far more valuable support. TR: Are customers becoming more demanding, and if so, in what ways? SP: Yes, largely due to the explosion of everyday technology and the ‘now, now, now’ culture it has created. If I order something from Amazon today and it’s not here tomorrow, I wonder why? This instant gratification mindset has shaped expectations, but the technology sector, including major vendors, hasn’t kept pace. Take Openreach as an example: if a connectivity line goes down, it can take up to 20 days to fix. In today’s world, no business finds that acceptable. We’ve had to develop innovative solutions to keep our customers operational during such downtime. Is it right that the costs associated with that should fall on us? 100% no. Vendors must look at their business models, join the twenty-first century and recognise that connectivity is essential, that people expect it to work and that if it goes down, they expect it to be fixed quickly, not when the vendor feels like it. Customers expect consumer-level service in business, especially SMEs. When something goes wrong, they expect it to be resolved almost immediately. Enterprise customers are less demanding and public sector clients are the most relaxed. But overall, the bar for expectations is higher than ever. TR: If you could change one aspect of your job, what would it be and why? SP: I wouldn’t change anything in my role because I enjoy the challenges thrown at us every day. What I like about my job are the variation and, from a people perspective, developing my management team. We are an exciting, growing business so there’s nothing I would like to change. towards cost rather than the social and environmental benefit SMEs can deliver. Supporting local SMEs that give back to their communities would be a positive step. We’ve also appointed Mark Gradner as Acquisition Director for Enterprise and partnered with Paul Sculthorpe in the north, targeting the M62 corridor as a key area of opportunity. Looking ahead, acquisitions will be part of our growth strategy in the coming years. TR: What do you see as the biggest challenges facing channel businesses today? SP: We all have our own challenges, but people are a significant one. So too are the expectations of customers and finding a balance between what customers expect and what they are prepared to pay – a lot of the big vendors go out promising prices that you cannot believe they are delivering. People, price and customer expectations are the three key areas where pressures are rising. What we must all realise is that you cannot expect an SME business owner to embrace all the technology changes that are happening: they run their own business, they are not a technology house, and they are going to need support. The challenge for channel businesses is how to deliver that support at the right price. TR: Could vendors and distributors do more to help you overcome these challenges? And if so, what? SP: Yes. Particularly in technology, vendors could be more flexible. Instead of rushing generic incentive programmes, they should tailor them to align with resellers’ needs. For instance, supporting the addition of a dedicated resource to train end-user businesses would create stronger strategic alignments. Moving away from a ‘one-sizefits-all’ approach and understanding a rights from day one (I believe this is coming). This will push businesses towards hiring experienced candidates instead, as they offer greater predictability and less risk, despite higher costs. Unfortunately, this could penalise younger people, as businesses become more cautious about recruiting school or university leavers. Apprenticeships are also becoming harder to justify due to the significant demands they place on employers. While our preference is to mould new talent into the business, this approach is challenging with limited resources. Younger employees need more support and guidance, and we don’t have an endless pool of staff to provide that level of oversight. Skills gaps are widespread. Finding strong candidates for customer service, operations or technical roles is nigh-on impossible, and competition for talent has driven salaries higher, creating unhelpful rivalries between businesses. Technology will play a critical role in enabling us to address these challenges. If implemented effectively, it could enable us to handle 20-30% more business without needing additional hires, allowing us to grow sustainably despite ongoing recruitment difficulties. TR: How have you changed/are you changing business operations to exploit new opportunities? SP: We continue to seize new opportunities. In our first 24 years, we were primarily SME-focused with a few Enterprise accounts, but that’s shifted significantly in the past 24 months. In addition, we’ve recruited Stuart Smith to head up Public Sector, enabling us to explore opportunities in that space, even if navigating public sector frameworks remains challenging due to bureaucracy. The Government could assist by simplifying processes and revising scoring mechanisms, which are overly weighted INTERVIEW
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