Norris opens up on Computacenter management rejig

CEO Mike Norris claims there is 'a huge amount of logic' in splitting up Neil Muller's old role among three top execs

Computacenter's chief executive Mike Norris has said he expects the trio of execs handed the duties of ex-managing director Neil Muller to be in place for "a number of years".

Over the weekend at the company's sales kick-off, Norris (pictured) announced that Muller's former duties would be split up among a trio of the reseller giant's existing top execs.

Kevin James, director of solutions and services, will take the lion's share of the MD duties and the remainder will be split among Neil Hall – who runs the reseller's German managed services arm – and group chief operating officer Chris Webb.

Norris told CRN he expects the trio to be in place for the long term.

"Nothing stays forever but this is how I expect it to run for a number of years," he said.

"But I don't know what is going to happen tomorrow – you never know. The structure in the UK absolutely mirrors which I have in Germany – identically. It's not something that is unusual to me and there is a huge amount of logic behind it."

He added that the UK organisation has always had a somewhat unusual structure and that sharing the top duties between three people was not out of the ordinary.

"Don't get confused with titles," he said. "I have 5,000 people working for Computacenter in the UK and only 850 worked for Neil Muller. So if you said someone was the managing director of the UK, you would expect everybody to work for them wouldn't you? So the structure was already not as normal as you may like.

"Chris Webb is a more senior guy than Neil Muller was – he is COO in the company. He's taken the responsibility for service management which he already has in Germany.

"Remember, in the UK, some 2,500 employees already worked for Chris. This just adds another 50 so it's not a big change for him.

"Computacenter is a pretty shallow organisation: it has a very light management structure between the top and the bottom and that has always been the case."

Last November, Computacenter announced Muller was leaving the firm, and this month he joined newly private comms firm Daisy. On announcing Muller's departure at the time, Norris reiterated his commitment to nurturing internal talent.

Speaking to CRN today he said it has always been important to him.

"I have been CEO of Computacenter for 20 years and I've just carried on doing what I've done always," he said.