The SMAs and SCC - Meet the contenders
We speak to reseller SCC, nominated for two CRN SMA Awards 2023
The Sales and Marketing Awards 2023 are approaching fast - on Thursday 29 June at Leonardo Royal Hotel, Tower Bridge, we'll be celebrating this year's awards ceremony.
As we gear up to this annual event, we spoke to Adam Clark, CRO at SCC, a reseller which is nominated for two awards at the SMAs - the Best Company to work for award the ‘Over and Above' award.
Here, Clark talks about how the company is pushing tech boundaries to deliver solutions and their greatest achievements in the past year.
Why do you think awards like the SMAs matter?
Above all else, this is an opportunity to celebrate teams and colleagues for the outstanding work they do.
We are all trying to be better as reward and recognition. With most companies focused on the future, it's sometimes difficult to live in the now - and awards like the SMAs give us the chance to reflect on the great things we have achieved.
Regardless of who wins, the finalists should all be immensely proud - and as we come together as an industry on the award's night, we should remember to pause and look around at the many hundreds of talented colleagues and peers that make up the IT Channel.
What would winning this award mean to your company?
Over the past 18 months, we have invested significant time, money and effort into rethinking SCC's company culture and values, to better reflect our family heritage and the type of business we want to be for our people and customers.
This has included updated rewards and recognition packages for employees, a new set of company values, and new employee-led groups on important subjects like diversity and inclusion.
I understand we're not alone in placing a much greater focus on people - particularly since the pandemic - which is why we are making a conscious effort to mean what we say, put promises into action, and establish a reputation as the best place to work in the IT industry.
To win either of the awards we are nominated for at this year's CRN SMAs - the Over and Above Award and Best Company to Work For - would be the latest milestone on that journey and be just reward for the hard work and passion our colleagues continue to show.
What would you say is your company's proudest achievement over the past year?
It's been another record year for SCC - in terms of commercial performance but also in the delivery of people-led initiatives, business change, and embedding a better culture right across the company.
I'm most proud of our investments in our facilities, people initiatives and M&A, with two significant acquisitions including Visavvi and more recently Vohkus, which saw new colleagues integrate into SCC.
What have been the biggest challenges of 2023 so far and how have you overcome them?
Recruitment continues to be the biggest challenge for every business - not just in the IT Channel. Competition is fierce and it's likely that will continue.
We're seeing increased demand for remote and flexible working solutions, with more and more candidates placing wellbeing as their number one priority.
It's our job to respond to that and evolve with the times. That's one of the reasons why we've invested so much into our people and culture.
How have your people helped with that?
Quite simply, people are at the heart of everything we do.
This year more than ever, I feel galvanised by the teamwork and collaboration right across our business. I hope my colleagues feel it too.
It's clear to me the important role everyone plays in our success, from our marketing and pre-sales teams at the earliest stages of client engagement, through to our managed services and on-site engineering teams delivering for onboarded customers every day.
And our operational teams ensuring everything works as it should. We have talented specialists in dozens of areas - across hybrid infrastructure, digital workplace, and customer experience, all ably supported by our corporate teams, including People, Administration, IT, Commercial & Assurance, and Finance.
Without each of them pulling together and contributing as they do, I would not be able to talk about success or the awards we've been nominated for.
How do you think the channel has changed over the past year and what changes do you think it still needs to make?
The IT channel has undergone significant changes over the past year or two, notably as a result of the pandemic and the ongoing accelerated shift towards digital transformation.
That includes increased demand for remote work solutions, a resurgence in demand for products, and a return in demand for more managed services, with a greater focus on digital innovation.
All of this brings new challenges in cybersecurity, with ever-more sophisticated threats requiring technology to keep up.
SCC isn't the only company placing greater focus on people and culture - and many of us are at the start of our journey to embedding even greater diversity and inclusion across our workforces.
This is where the most significant advances need to be made - not just in our industry, but right across the board.
What do you see as the main opportunities for the channel in the coming year? How do you plan to capitalise on those opportunities?
Scale is important in the reseller side of our business, and we're not going to ignore the need to keep growing that.
But at the same time, we're going to leverage our investment opportunity across a wider range of things.
You'll see SCC diversify its portfolio of offerings in the coming years, particularly in the services space. We're going to start to explore new things around cloud, cyber, digital transformation and services, which are outside our core but important to our clients.
These are the opportunities we see and we're in a great position to take advantage of them.