SCC's Christine Olmsted: 'We're not stepping back from being acquisitive in a challenging market'

CRN spoke with the UK's largest privately owned reseller following its acquisition of Nimble announced yesterday

Birmingham-based reseller SCC still has some gas in the tank to fuel its M&A drive and chase its goal of becoming a leading provider of digital transformation (DX) services.

Yesterday the group announced its majority investment in digital engineering consultancy, Nimble to ramp up its DX services.

Speaking with CRN about why SCC is targeting growth in this area, Christine Olmsted (pictured), head of strategy and corporate development at SCC lifts the lid.

"Our customers are asking us to do even more for them than we do already," she says.

"We have a long history of being a trusted partner in the reselling space, and we've expanded over time to a managed services arena. Now we're looking to do transformation lead services for them as well, and Nimble give us that ability to do that transformation lead service work at scale."

Olmsted opens up about how SCC, which reported £3.3bn in EMEA turnover for the year ended 31 March 2023, is changing with the evolving needs of its customers.

"SCC wants to be more to its customers. To do that we've got to expand what we offer them and expand our portfolio," she says.

"This move for us is very much an ‘and' game, not an ‘or' game.

"We are very proud of our reselling heritage, we'll continue to innovate in that area, and continue to offer the same advisory and support work that we do in that space. And we will add to that a portfolio of digital services."

Managed services trend

CRN has spoken with a number of vendors who have revealed they are actively encouraging their traditional resellers to start looking at becoming a fully-fledged MSP.

Zyxel UK&I regional director Rachel Rothwell went as far as to say that with the type of resellers Zyxel works with, a move to more managed services is a "must".

Commenting on SCC's stance, Olmsted says: "We made that pivot years ago and had a significant footprint in Romania to support those managed services long term.

"For us, we're on to the next pivot. Because we believe strongly in the first one, but now we believe in this one for digital transformation services. I think whoever's giving other resellers that guidance is good guidance. But I think we're one step further along in that journey."

More acquisitions for SCC?

The IT group snapped up fellow reseller Vohkus in March, it's first acquisition since unveiling its £300m M&A warchest designed to consolidate its position as Europe's largest private investor in technology.

Following this latest deal, Olmsted sheds some light on whether SCC will being making anymore surprise M&A announcements for the remainder of 2023.

"We have a pipeline. We always have a pipeline of opportunities. That's important to us to continue to look for opportunities to be inorganically expand or fill in gaps or scale parts of our business," she says.

"We have a plan for that both in the UK and in France where we have also a big a big footprint.

"For the rest of 2023, maybe. It depends on how some things in the pipeline go.

"The key point is we're not stepping back from being acquisitive in a challenging market because we know it's a great way to accelerate our expansion and our transformation and it's an important lever we can pull in that effort."