Colin Brown on his new non-exec roles and life after Softcat

Former Softcat managing director Colin Brown has taken on two new non-exec roles as he prepares to leave the reseller later this year.

Brown stepped down as MD in August but has stayed on to aid the transition of Richard Wyn Griffith into the role.

Speaking to CRN, he said that the advisory role with the reseller has been refreshing and enabled him to concentrate on fewer parts of the business.

"I've helped some individuals by coaching them through the transition, and our cloud strategy is one of the things I'm looking at -so it's quite nice to focus in on a few things, rather than have 20 or 25 plates spinning.

"So I'm enjoying it and I have a couple more months of that, then I think they'll be pleased to see the back of me at that stage!"

Brown revealed that he has taken on two new roles, the first of which is with T-Cup - a tool designed to assess the health and wellbeing of a company's employees and help the business make decisions accordingly.

He said this fits in well with the role he held for eight years at Softcat.

"Softcat's focus has always been on its people; that's the one differentiator we think we have," he said.

"It's a simple understanding that you won't have the highest levels of customer satisfaction unless you have the highest levels of employee engagement and satisfaction. That has literally been on my mind every day for the last eight years, so that will be a focus for me."

T-Cup works by asking employees a set of 10 questions every morning and pulling all the data together, to give employers a picture of how their teams and individuals are both feeling and performing.

It takes the employee just a few minutes to complete, before presenting both the employer and the employee with reports and insights.

Brown said that this data can be used tweak workloads accordingly.

A benefit over the current methods of gauging wellbeing, he added, is the frequency at which the data gathered.

"There are employee surveys and things like that, but they're old-fashioned," he said. "There is always a big delay between when you do it and get the results, then analyse the results and take action.

"For that very reason most organisations do it once or twice a year. It's one of those things that, for something that is so important to any organisation, what do you do about keeping on top of that?

"So I think it's a no-brainer. If people are you biggest asset, it's almost irresponsible not to garner information and help them feel better."

Brown's second non-exec role is at Adoptt - an IT services firm founded in 2018 that typically sits in between a vendor and reseller, helping build out relationships between the two.

Specifically it helps partners build practices in new areas, for example public cloud, and helps them make sure these business units are compliant with the vendor's demands.

"It's a gap in the marketplace and many resellers have already signed up to work with Adoptt," he said.

Brown added that he may seek other non-exec roles in the future, but ruled out a return to senior management in the channel.

"I have enjoyed it," he said. "I joined Computacenter just over 30 years ago, so I had a great run there and at Microsoft and Softcat, but it's just not something that I see myself doing again.

"I really want to focus on smaller organisations and help them be successful, which I think will be fun and rewarding."

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• Reseller
• Softcat