MTI boss on COVID-19, its most profitable year and why new territories are not on the cards

Scott Haddow reveals the infrastructure and security reseller saw sales grow double digits in its recently closed financial year

MTI saw double-digit growth in its last financial year as its investments in security and the public sector paid off, according to CEO Scott Haddow.

The infrastructure provider has not yet published figures with Companies House, but Haddow said that a push further into the security space and an increased focus on services has seen it report its most profitable year ever.

"It's been a very, very busy 18 months," Haddow told CRN.

"We made a lot of investment in our financial year ending 2019, where we invested enormously into a lot of pre sales, particularly around security.

"We have the team in place to make sure that we are on all of the public sector frameworks… which is new for us and will bring a significant upside in this year and the year after.

"Our public sector growth has been exponential, as has our security growth. So we've been significantly more profitable in the last financial year than we have been in any other."

Haddow also talked through the transformation in MTI's French and German operations, both of which have seen "significant wholesale changes in leadership", restructuring and new IT systems.

Germany has seen significant growth, he added, with France likely to be up slightly on the previous year once all accounts have been finalised.

Public sector

MTI has worked hard to get itself on huge UK public sector frameworks including G-Cloud and Technology Products and Services over recent years, according to chief sales and marketing officer Angelo Di Ventura, who joined the business around the same time as Haddow three years ago.

The duo had previously worked together at Trustmarque.

"It takes time to build your credentials and MTI had never historically operated in the public sector," he said.

"But over the last three years or so we've built a very credible bid function and brought in people with skills of selling in that sector, which is essential.

"We're fairly new on the frameworks so we haven't really started selling, so it's an interesting growth opportunity for us."

Haddow spoke of the firm being interested in inorganic growth just after he joined, and told CRN now that it came close to making an acquisition a couple of years ago, only for another business to make a higher offer.

"We are private equity backed and therefore there is always dry powder of investable funds," he said.

"We always have a weather eye on looking for something that would fit the portfolio and suite of products and services that we offer."

But while acquisitions are on the cards, growth into new territories is not, with the chief exec saying the firm has no intention of expanding outside its three countries.

"We are in the core markets that we want to operate in," he said.

"We have well-established teams and well-established customer bases… so the challenge for us is to do more with those customers and get some new-name logos.

"We are definitely not at a point where we are running out of road; if we were then we would potentially look further afield, but as it stands we have plenty to go at."

Coronavirus

In terms of COVID-19, Haddow said that the UK operation has weathered the storm relatively well over the last four weeks, with the French business seeing the biggest downturn. He put Germany somewhere in between the pair, saying that the consensus in Germany is that businesses will begin to return to "whatever the new normal is" in around 10 days. Haddow was speaking just before the Easter break.

"We're definitely being cautious as we look beyond the next month, but we're definitely seeing pipeline opportunities and customers continuing to do business.

"We're seeing opportunistic areas and also some challenging areas, depending which business areas and countries we're looking at, but in the main we're well set and planning for this to be at least six months.

"Hopefully we're planning for the worst, but hoping for the best."