Crayon UK boss: Brexit will not halt our growth plans

Three months after his appointment as the UK head of SAM specialist Crayon, Richard Lockey is in a bullish mood for the future

The new boss of Crayon UK is well on the way to shaping the business for growth, and said Brexit is an opportunity rather than a hindrance.

Richard Lockey (pictured right) joined the software asset management (SAM) specialistjust over three months ago, and is confident that the firm is on the right track after a few years in the wilderness. Crayon UK is part of the wider Crayon group which is headquartered in Norway, and has a presence in 23 countries so far.

"For us as a business Brexit should be positive," he told CRN. "We are a consultancy-led organisation focused on asset management optimisation. Companies should want our services in abundance because of the money we can save them. For example we went through a recent [asset management] exercise with a company that owed a vendor £9m. But we turned it around and the vendor ended up writing them a cheque!"

He said he has started building a dedicated cloud practice at Crayon from scratch and is setting up dedicated storage, virtualisation, security and mobility teams within the company. He is also looking at collaboration as a means to growth.

"We are definitely looking at collaboration with other channel companies. Everybody wants their own people, but the practical reality is different," he said.

Lockey also admitted that the firm had not been heading in the right direction in previous years or been as visible as it should have.

"Historically we were not going in the right direction, but now we are taking the business in the right direction and building our presence," he said, adding the firm has 45 employees currently, but is looking to ‘substantially increase' that in the near future.

"We are in an interesting space and it is a crowded space, but it is crying out for someone to be a bit different. We have built the foundations and the platform and we are growing the business from there," he explained.

One of his biggest challenges when he first arrived, Lockey said, was changing the mindsets of employees that have been at Crayon a long time to help create a more holistic approach to clients.

"We are seeing some good wins already and are building the confidence of our vendor partners in the UK," he added. "We want to optimise everything, and while we are not the size of some of the bigger boys out there, I am confident we will grow our market share."

Looking ahead, he said the future is bright for SAM and Crayon.

"I think people should be looking more at asset management services as the IT industry is all going down the software route anyway," he said. "Too many companies do not understand or care about how they manage their software. Also the whole move to the cloud. I think there is a huge opportunity for us."

Clive Longbottom, founder of analyst Quocirca, agreed SAM was a benefit to companies that many had yet failed to recognise.

"I've been a long-time supporter of SAM, as part of a larger overall asset management and IT lifecycle management strategy. It can save a load of money in licences, maintenance and support, yet far too many organisations see it as a needle and an expense - and one that means buying extra hardware and software (along with maintenance and support along with administrators) - to carry out the actions anyway."

But he warned the onus was on the channel to get the offering right.

"By moving it to as a service, these problems are removed - as long as the provider gets the pricing model correct, and can offer something that is not just SAM, but includes at least full software lifecycle management to include patching, upgrades and so on. Something that just monitors licence usage may not be seen as a worthwhile subscription investment," he said.