Top VARs Q&A: Stefni Oliver, Daisy Corporate Services

CEO of 19th-ranked Top VAR on her priorities following Daisy demerger

This Q&A featured in CRN Top VARs 2020, which you can read here

Daisy is in the process of demerging its four businesses. When will this process conclude?

We have been working on this for 18 months or so and are in the final mopping-up stages now (de-merging isn't easy kids!). The most significant change was the merger of the group's three channel-serving businesses (Daisy Wholesale, Daisy Distribution and Daisy Worldwide) under a new single brand, Digital Wholesale Solutions. The Daisy Partner Services business also began to operate independently, known as Allvotec. The direct businesses Daisy Communications (DCL) and Daisy Corporate Services (DCS) continue to look after UK businesses of all sizes in their respective markets, with my own business DCS focusing on midmarket upwards and DCL on the SMB market.

Daisy Corporate Services is an amalgam of (parts of) recent Daisy acquisitions, including Alternative Networks and Phoenix IT. How would you summarise its size and focus today, and where do you feel the business has the edge over competitors?

Today DCS is a business with c1,000 employees and c2,500 UK customers.

The history of acquisitions in DCS has given us the advantage of a broader portfolio than the competition and has proved itself invaluable this past six months by allowing us to quickly create new and innovative solutions to support the rapidly changing requirements of our customers.

What are your priorities for the next 12 months?

Our priorities centre around those of our customers and as such a key area continues to be our focus on supporting home working and keeping businesses always-on and productive. There's also a growing need to ‘re-platform' and help our customers embrace the benefits of cloud, collaboration tools and other transformative technology.

Which of your competitors do you respect the most, and why?

I've been following the journey of ANS with interest. They made a decision that many wouldn't have the kahunas to do - to say ‘we are an infrastructure business but cloud is where we want to be and that's what we are going to do'. They set out a five-year strategy to their investors outlining the planned change to the shape of their business - making it clear that during that change they would reduce revenues and lose some business, (go backwards to go forwards), invest heavily in people and culture and come back bigger and better. From what I can see it looks like they are now hitting that point.