CRN Hot Seat 2013 - Martin Hellawell

Softcat chairman talks to Sara Yirrell about the VAR's people-first philosophy and why the channel has suffered less than other industries during the recession

What are your plans for 2013?

Our overall plans are the same as ever - to focus on employees - recruiting new staff and also motivating the ones we have now. Our recruitment plans go across the board and we will look at taking on 200 people this year. Of those, 130 will be from our graduate scheme.

We will also keep the mid-market as our core market in the commercial space, but we see ourselves going into the larger account market this year. We have had good growth in the public sector and that will be a big accelerator for us this year.

We will also look to add another branch next year and we need to move our London office. We have outgrown our current building and need to move within the next six months.

We are continuing to grow our Microsoft offering and there is a lot to do in that area. The market is going over to public and private cloud and we need to be prepared for that.

In terms of acquisition, we will kick some tyres and if the right thing comes along it's all good. We are not going out looking, but if something comes up and it's at the right price, who knows?

We have no plans to go abroad as we are happy sticking to the UK. In terms of turnover, we achieved our goals last year - so for this year £1m a day would be nice, wouldn't it?

What technology trends do you see in 2013?

I would say it is variations of the same. We are seeing more in the private cloud area from customers that have their own infrastructure on-site. We also see VDI projects taking off; we are seeing more of those than we have for some time. Because of that we will also get more security and networking opportunities around it as well.

Big data is on the up, so we will do more of that and we are already doing more with the likes of Cognos and ClickView. We are not going to show people how to do data mining -- we will sell big data in line with customers' IT needs.

With Windows 8, I think there is a good chance that we will see quite a lot of Windows 8 tablet adoption in the enterprise. I'm not saying Apple and Android won't have their place, there will be some who resist, but I think the Windows 8 tablet range will prove popular and people will adapt well to it.

How is customer confidence this year?

Coming into this year, it feels slightly better. However, there could easily be a setback -- just look at the "fiscal cliff" threats on New Year's Day. Luckily it didn't happen. This time. At the moment the FTSE is very buoyant and Cameron seems to have got away with the Europe referendum so far. Generally I think we are in for more of the same -- a case of taking three steps forwards and 2.8 steps back, leading to a very gradual improvement.

How do you see the channel and the economy panning out this year?

It has been a hard five years, and this has taken its toll, but there have not been that many disasters in our bit of the industry (2e2 aside) apart from retail.

Most firms are making decent money and most of the results I have seen show that companies are generally moving forwards. We talk a lot about consolidation, but we are seeing new people popping up and there is still consolidation to come in the market.

While we do not have the fundamental issues of the high street, what happened there has played more of a role than people thought in this industry. Years ago when people first saw the internet in action, lots of them thought it was the end of B2B as we knew it. But in fact manufacturers have gone more indirect over the past few years.

People need IT to run their business. But the biggest cost to business is people: how do we make them more productive? Give them the IT tools.

I think as a channel we have been a lot less affected than most industries.
In terms of the economy, I believe it will plod along and I am generally confident that it will be OK.

COMPANY PROFILE
Softcat is a Marlow-based VAR that has seen phenomenal growth over the past three years. The firm - whose many flagship vendors include HP, Microsoft, CA, IBM, Novell and VMware - has seen revenue double in the past two years, with sales that stood at about £146m in FY2010 rocketing to more than £300m two years later in FY2012. Aside from winning almost every award going - including CRN 's Reseller of the Year three years running - Softcat prides itself on its people and was nominated by the Sunday Times a couple of years ago as the best small company to work for. In its own words: "We care passionately about two things: outstanding employee satisfaction and world-class customer service. We believe the former drives the latter."