Alex Phillips

Director of strategy, Northamber

What is your greatest career move to date?

Joining Northamber, of course. Northamber is the oldest UK-only IT distributor and being part of the next phase of the company is exciting, especially as we aggressively evolve our solutions business alongside our core distribution business.

What is top of your bucket list?

I love to travel and have been lucky enough to visit some amazing places, but there is still a long list of places I'd like to go.

What has changed most since you started working in the channel?

Distribution has been evolving for many years. The role of value add distribution has become increasingly important for both resellers and vendors. We are positioning Northamber to take advantage of this by investing heavily in areas to help drive this long-term value for all our partners and allowing them more time to focus on selling. Just some of this value add includes providing pre- and post-sales support, proofs of concept, tender support, training, marketing support and so on.

How do you think Brexit is going to affect the channel?

Brexit is already having an effect. Prices are volatile and changing constantly, planning is more difficult and all this creates an uncertainty on our resellers and their customers too. Projects are being delayed while customers see how things settle down. Luckily in this business we are used to rapid change and uncertainty and are working hard to provide as much stability to our resellers as possible.

What is your least favourite task during the working day?

I love my work so it's hard to answer this. I'm extremely passionate about what we are doing and am usually one of the first in and last out but despite that still find the work day is never long enough to get everything done that I want to.

If you won the big one on EuroMillions, what would you do?

I'm a huge travel fan so that would definitely be something I would do a lot more of.

What is your worst habit?

I'm a bit of a workaholic; luckily my team is used to getting emails with ideas from me at weird times of the day or night.

What major issues will the channel face in 2017?

Brexit will no doubt create a number of challenges, as we've already seen. There will be more upheaval as the UK goes through the various stages and markets and currencies react to the ever-changing news. The effect on pricing and forecasting will be a distraction we don't need but have to deal with. However, once out the other end things will start to settle and those companies who survived the changes will have an opportunity to do well.