Bytes boss Neil Murphy on IPO, growth, remote working and more

The CEO of Bytes speaks to CRN about life as a public company and where the business has been performing well

The CEO of Bytes, Neil Murphy, says becoming a publicly traded company has been an "interesting journey" and revealed that the business is planning to increase its headcount by a further ten per cent this year.

Bytes listed on the London Stock Exchange back in December last year and recently posted its first results since the IPO, reporting a five per cent increase in revenue and an 18 per cent increase in adjusted operating profit for the year ending February 28, 2021.

Murphy labelled it a "landmark year" for the software reseller, though admits he has failed on his aim of not checking the share price every day.

"I check it all the time!", he said.

"I do look at it more frequently than I should do. The silly thing is, of course, it will go up and down. The shares are affected by external factors.

"I think the prudent thing is to think about what the longer-term picture is. It's important that it's going in the right direction over the next few years."

Bytes' IPO saw the company demerge from long-time partner Altron, while it was also recently included in the FTSE 250.

Going public has seen the company implement some key changes at board level, while Murphy's role has also adapted somewhat, something which he sees as a positive.

"The biggest difference is the increased interaction with investors, primarily, and the new board of directors that we've had to create on listing," he explained.

"We moved away from one set of board of directors and created a new board, so there's been much more interaction with the board, much more interaction with investors, and that is fairly time consuming.

"There's nothing I dislike about the new role. I'm not going to be majorly distracted, I'm still very focused on the wellbeing of the staff and keeping close to the teams and individuals in the business. Because that way, it keeps you grounded."

Murphy said the company grew its headcount by around 13 per cent last year and highlighted plans to grow it by a further ten per cent this year, which he said would mostly be "in the sales side of the business" with the aim of continuing its "organic growth story".

He also picked out several key areas where Bytes has thrived recently, most notably in Microsoft sales which he said equate to roughly half of the business.

"The continued migration to the cloud is driving a lot of Microsoft Azure sales. Microsoft continuing to grow means we're going to carry on, so that's a big growth area for us now and has been for many, many years, and it looks set to continue that way," he added.

"Then the other major growth area for us is security, and it's probably the same for most other partners and resellers, working with important vendors like Mimecast, CrowdStrike, Sophos, those sorts of businesses, and also delivering new services.

"There's an awful lot of work going into making sure customers' defences are as good as they can get and they're reducing their vulnerabilities."

The Bytes boss also weighed in on the remote working debate, with some of the world's biggest tech companies recently u-turning on their previous guidance to allow for a more flexible post-pandemic approach.

Murphy said he is a "great fan of the flexible approach" but warned that those wanting to advance their careers at Bytes must make use of the office or will otherwise leave themselves "out of sight and out of mind".

"I think we look back over the last year and a bit and most of that time we've had 99 per cent of our staff working remotely, and yet we've still been able grow the business, so it's proven to me that productivity can continue to grow," he said.

"We are offering teams and managers the flexibility to make their own decisions but we're recommending that staff come back to the office on a much more regular basis, but we're not dictating, so there's quite a lot of flexibility.

"The thing I'm saying to some of our teams and managers is when it comes to things like promotion, I'm not in favour of promoting people who you don't see visibly. So, if there are people who are interested in progressing their careers, they need to be back in the office.

"It's much more difficult for us to recognise the people skills if you don't see them working physically with people, and people skills are an important part of team leadership, sales management, general management, and so on."