1. Softcat

GII: £2.6bn (+2.2%)

Staff: 2315

Softcat once again takes the top spot in CRN's ranking this year, narrowly eeking out a victory with 2.2 per cent annual growth in gross invoiced income, amid a slowdown in device sales and overall challenging economy.

But behind the scenes, the business has been doing lots to accelerate growth in an unpredictable economy.

2023 was a year of transition for Softcat. The Marlow-HQ VAR welcomed Graham Charlton into the CEO seat, following a Graeme Watt's five-year tenure.

In his first month in the role, Charlton, a near-decade-long Softcat vet, committed to stay the course. Speaking to CRN, he said: "Today, I think we have the broadest and deepest technical offering for our customers and what we can do and the depth of talent we've got, I don't think anybody can rival that."

Softcat's staff and workplace culture is widely lauded, with multiple channel partners and competitors praising the company's early careers programmes, apprenticeship scheme and overall inclusion policies.

So much so, that the reseller and services giant landed on Glassdoor's Best Places to Work for the second consecutive year in 2023.

Unsurprisingly, Softcat is looking to staff up further in 2024, growing its workforce by 10-15 per cent, the reseller tells CRN.

The majority of these investments will be directed towards new capabilities in "new capabilities in exciting and emerging areas of technology, organised around three key customer priorities: hybrid Infrastructure, digital workspace and cyber security."

"If customers want to talk about their IT infrastructure, they want to do so in a way that makes sense to them."

"They don't want to talk to an on-premise datacentre team separately to a public cloud specialist. They want to have that joint up conversation about solutions.

"So the challenge we have as technology evolves in the way it is, is just to make sure we're reorganised effectively against that, and not trying to get them to dance to our tune."