Intrinsic boss turns eye to M&A after sales rejig

We chat to the VAR's recently appointed CEO Adam Jarvis about his growth plans

Intrinsic Technology's recently appointed chief executive is honing the specialist skills of his sales teams while mulling the possibilities of a big-ticket acquisition.

Adam Jarvis was promoted from his post as sales and marketing director two months ago and quickly pledged that he wanted to ensure that his staff could also receive a career boost. To this end, one of the new chief's first moves has been to promote 11-year Intrinsic veteran Gregg Spooner to the role of director of cloud and managed services. Spooner will have responsibility for setting the firm's solutions strategy.

The Merseyside VAR's sales operation has also been rejigged, with staff specialising across five defined technology areas: cloud; new products and innovations; mobility; user workspace; and managed services - a division which Intrinsic brands Fusion.

Sitting adjacent to this quintet is a major accounts team and a 20-strong business development team. Jarvis told ChannelWeb his goal is to invert his firm's 60/40 revenue split between product and services while still growing overall sales in both segments.

Intrinsic's fiscal year runs to the end of November and Jarvis claimed hardware sales are a little down this year, but services growth is offsetting this. Legal and retail were picked out as key commercial markets fuelling growth.

The public sector is also providing solid growth, claimed Jarvis (pictured), despite there being numerous organisations within the reseller's 300-strong public sector client base with which it trades increasingly infrequently.

"We are doing bigger projects with fewer people," he said. "One of the trends they are going for is multi-sourced managed services."

Growing gains
Intrinsic's oft-stated medium-term ambition is to grow into a £100m company. Its current revenue run rate is about £40m, with a three-year organic growth plan to swell turnover to £70m. To crack the nine-figure mark the VAR plans on hitting the acquisition trail.

Jarvis indicated that he is currently in "open-minded receiving mode", but that he "might start being more aggressive" in pursing M&A if no suitable targets crop up in the coming months. He added that he is more likely to go after an established, reasonably sized company rather than a smaller player with niche expertise.

"We could take that route today, but unfortunately often that expertise is tied up with a few people within the business. I do not think you get great value out of [those] acquisitions," he said. "We need to find organisations that are established, have a client base and clear strategy, but are smaller than ourselves."