'We were going into FY21 high-fiving and then - boom - corona hit' - ANS CEO to open up on life under lockdown

ANS CEO Paul Shannon and marketing director Olivia Jaskolka will give warts-and-all account of how COVID has impacted their strategy at upcoming CRN Deskflix-MSP event

ANS' top executives will be opening up on how COVID-19 wreaked havoc with their plans in the keynote for CRN's upcoming Deskflix - the Future of MSPs event.

The £50m-revenue, Manchester-based firm has spent recent years transitioning from a reseller to a public cloud consultancy, and was set to enter its fiscal 2020 on the crest of a wave when coronavirus hit, CEO Paul Shannon admits.

Shannon and ANS CTO Andy Barrow opened up at last year's CRN Channel Conference (pictured above) on how they had "massively underestimated" the cultural change required in shifting to a recurring revenue model.

Based on their reception at that event, we invited the team back to deliver an update on how the pandemic has disrupted a disruptor.

Shannon will be joined by ANS marketing director Olivia Jaskolka to give a warts-and-all account of how lockdown has forced ANS to reinvent itself once again.

"For FY 2020, we'd managed to get 80 per cent of EBITDA from digital, and only 20 per cent of it was from the old world," Shannon told us ahead of the online event, which you can register for free to attend here.

"We were all high-fiving each other, thinking we were about to go into FY 2021 with almost a completely clean slate and then - boom - corona hit."

Shannon and Jaskolka (pictured right) will focus on both the high points and pain points of the last few months, he said.

"We closed the doors [of our office] at 8pm on 16 March and at 8am the next morning everyone was online and WFH," Shannon told us while in the midst of storyboarding his keynote presentation.

"We've got a section on keeping the staff engaged and - probably most importantly - how marketing has adapted and changed to help the sales team win different types of deals and different propositions - which didn't even exist in our portfolio before lockdown."

Held on 23 July, CRN Deskflix - the Future of MSPs event will provide MSPs with exclusive insight into how the managed services landscape will change over the coming years.

Alongside ANS' keynote, Forrester analyst Jay McBain will be setting out his predictions for the MSP space for the next 12 months, while leading MSP bosses will also come together to debate the topic of whether or not MSPs will need offices in the future.

You can register to attend the event here.