Channel Awards: Q&A with Exertis Enterprise MD

Jason Chibnall tells CRN about the biggest challenges of 2023 so and how he overcame them

Why do you think awards like the Channel Awards matter? What would winning this award mean to your company?

I think its important to find a common way of many different companies to celebrate success and measure themselves against their peers. The Channel Awards provide a perfect vehicle to do just that. Winning an award really proves to everyone in Exertis Enterprise that those outside value what we do.

What would you say is your company's proudest achievement over the past year?

At a commercial level I am proudest of the great technical intellect and knowledge my team have, I believe we are unique in our market segment in that respect, We have decided to develop our UK offerings into Europe and I proud of how well our teams have mobilised to allow us to start building that incremental success for ourselves and our vendors. At people level the work and effort my teams have put into diversity transformation is great to see.. A long way to go but such a distance travelled in this respect.

What have been the biggest challenges of 2023 so far and how have you overcome them? How have your people helped with that?

Like many distribution business's we have faced a significant set of challenges around supply, bounce back from Covid, chip shortages, and now economic and global uncertainty. It not been easy in delighting our customers in smooth & continued supply of the products we represent, but I know our deep technical understanding and great commercial relationships from our people have really made the difference to the success we have seen in the last year.

What do you see as the main opportunities for the channel in the coming year? How do you plan to capitalise on those opportunities?

The channel has faced all of the issues as mentioned above, we have seen a significant number of supply partners having to re-evaluate, the way in which they address the channel and, in many cases, changing their supply models. I think this provides an opportunity for all of us in distribution to help step into some of the spaces being created in the delivery model, whilst introducing new working practices with both partners and vendors alike in forecasting demand, Getting this right for many of us will dictate success or failure in the short to medium term.