'There's no magic formula - we've just listened and improved' - CCS Media boss on hitting £250m revenue milestone

MD James Hardy tells CRN how CCS Media achieved its five-year goal of reaching the quarter of a billion revenue milestone

CCS Media has achieved its five-year ambition of hitting the quarter of a billion-pound revenue mark, MD James Hardy has told CRN.

Hardy said that growing its services business and sticking to its roots as a value-added reseller have been key to its growth over the past five years.

The Chesterfield-based reseller, which ranked #17 in CRN's Top VARs, achieved revenues of £254m in full-year 2021, according to Hardy, an increase of 13 per cent compared to 2020.

Gross profits meanwhile surged by 18 per cent during the year.

The Cisco, Microsoft, Dell, Lenovo, HP Inc and HPE partner traded with 9,700 customers over the 12-month period of 2021, 70 per cent of which came from the SMB space.

The business traded with 2,000 public sector customers, of which 60 per cent were in the education sector. Hardy said that CCS Media is now participating in 11 public sector frameworks.

CCS Media first set its £250m revenue goal at the end of 2016 when group revenues for that year came in at £154m.

In a 2017 interview with CRN,Hardy said that developing its staff and building its services business would be key factors in achieving the milestone.

Speaking to CRN this week, Hardy said that there was no "magic formula" that helped CCS Media to reach the quarter of a billion-revenue figure.

Describing CCS Media as a "learning organisation", Hardy said that the reseller's investment in its people, systems and processes meant that everyone in the company was working towards the same goal.

"All we've done is the basics well," he said. "We've listened, we've improved, we've listened some more, we've improved some more. And we've made sure that we work collectively as a business, as opposed to it being something that's coming from the top down."

"We're eternally grateful for the people in the company. It requires a significant degree of trust that's been built up over a significant amount of time to reach this milestone."

Hardy said that a good reflection of CCS Media's progress over the last five years is in how it has increased its operating profit per employee by more than 200 per cent between 2016 and 2021.

Meanwhile, the number of customers buying solutions and services from CCS Media has increased from 10 per cent in 2016 to more than 25 per cent in 2021.

"We've built a new organisation on the foundations of the old business by evolving our product offerings, while maintaining our existing products and services," he said.

"We have been building the capability of our technical teams, and also building the capability of the sales organisation and operations to be able to manage all of those services and get confident about promoting it to our customers.

"What I think we've stepped up significantly in the last five years is how we communicate all of those improvements across the entire business - little and often."

While adding new services has helped propel CCS Media's growth, Hardy said that sticking to its roots as a "broadline value-added reseller" has also been a key factor behind its success.

"Over the last five years, we've continued to be broadline, but we just added depth in some of the solutions and services that we offer our customers. And we're going to continue to do that," he said.

The MD said that CCS Media currently only has around 20 per cent share of wallet with its existing customers and has only captured around 10 per cent of its addressable market. It leaves the VAR plenty of space to grow.

"There's no room for complacency. We're terrified about complacency, we might be outperforming the market, we might be outperforming other organisations, but we know we've got to keep focused," he added.