C2000 pans for public sector gold

Distributor unveils its public sector centre of excellence and talks about growth plans for 2012

C2000 is planning to make a splash in the public sector space and has set up a public sector centre of excellence to fulfil its ambitions.

Peter Hubbard, C2000’s new UK managing director, stressed that the distribution behemoth is very much on the front foot when it comes to investing in growth and pursuing its plans to become a £2bn company.

He told CRN: “This will help our reseller partners go after and own large government contracts at a regional and local level, and we have the facilities put in place to help them, whether this is responding to tenders from a technical specification level or a T&Cs specification, right through to providing them with a resilient supply chain infrastructure which will enable an SMB reseller to roll out tens of thousands of devices as and when required.

“It means we can align with vendor public sector teams and provide the right sort of value to customers. With our collection of specialists approach, we can act as a one-stop shop to our resellers.”

Cathi Low, who joined the distributor from rival Ingram Micro last month, will be heading up the public sector business. To further its public sector and general growth plans, the firm is expanding its logistics centre, situated in Lutterworth, Leicestershire from 500,000 sq ft to 750,000 sq ft. It recently moved into new headquarters in Basingstoke over one weekend.

Andy Dow, marketing director at C2000, said: “The move went really well. We did not miss a minute of selling. Over one weekend we moved 500 people, and by 9am Monday morning we were fully functional as before.”

Hubbard stressed growth was very much the order of the day for the distributor. “Everything is about growing with customers – how we are driving growth through the reseller community, which in turn grows us and helps the vendors to grow. From our perspective this company is still hugely ambitious and we have to focus on growth. It is my job to ensure that we remain on the front foot,” he said.