'If it's not broken, then don't fix it' - Bytes CEO Murphy on hitting £1bn sales mark

Software reseller has hit £1bn in gross invoiced income with two months left to go in its financial year

Bytes has surpassed £1bn in sales (gross invoiced income) for the first time in its history, its CEO Neil Murphy has disclosed.

In a LinkedIn post on Friday, Murphy said the Surrey-based reseller surpassed the £1bn milestone 10 months into its financial year which ends February 2022.

Speaking to CRN, Murphy said the company has come a long way since he joined 25 years ago.

In that time, the reseller has gone from a small outfit with 25 staff and £12m turnover to a £1bn present-day giant with near 1,000 staff.,

"It's only when you look back and join the dots up that you realise how the company has grown so significantly," he said.

"It has been a long and gradual evolution; it's not something that you crack overnight. The news has created quite a buzz here; people are proud of the achievement and it's a nice thing to be able to report."

Bytes floated on the London Stock Exchange in December 2020, with its share price rising by around 70 per cent during 2021.

Murphy said he knew the business was on course to crack the sales milestone this financial year, given that the reseller has consistently logged in excess of 20 per cent sales growth over the last several years.

The business came just £42m shy of the £1bn mark in its last financial year ending 28 February 2021, its first as a public company, after growing sales by 33 per cent to £958m.

Reflecting on the last 25 years, Murphy attributed Bytes success to doing the basics well and "sticking to our knitting".

"The secret sauce is the culture, sticking to our knitting, focusing on the basics, not trying to change the business too much each year.

"If it's not broken, then don't fix it. We're essentially doing more of the same, just scaling up each year. Last calendar year we increased our headcount by about 13 per cent, and we'll probably do the same this year as well."

"We're recruiting now because we need to be growing in two to four years out. So we carry on investing in the business each year and layering more people into the organisation as we go."

Bytes' growth has been "broad-based" this year, Murphy said, although he added that continued growth with Microsoft as well as in security and cloud have been key growth drivers.