Exclusive Networks Boosting Services and MSP Support

Exclusive Networks is confident of growth in 2023, despite tough market conditions.

Six months into the job, Paul Eccleston, managing director, UK & Ireland at Exclusive Networks, shared the distributor’s strategic plans. It includes building out Exclusive’s technical and financial service offerings, along with its capability around MSPs.

Exclusive Networks’ Paul Eccleston

“We expect the business will continue to grow significantly in fiscal year 2023. It will probably not grow as fast as FY22, but we still expect significant growth,” he said. “And we need to make sure that we continue to serve our customers to the same level as we have done in the past.

“We can build our financial services and financial solutions more than we’ve done. We can build our demand generation capability for our partners and our vendor partners. We’re focused on looking at how we support the MSP community more strongly. That’s the direction the markets moving in, so it makes sense to do that.”

Cybersecurity Remains Robust

Eccleston also acknowledged that cybersecurity has been somewhat shielded from the impact of the recent industry disruption.

“We expect FY23 to be more challenging than FY22. The good thing for Exclusive is this focus on cybersecurity, which has always tended to be a more robust segment through challenging times.

“Clearly there are bigger distributors than us in the U.K. But the company is very clear that we want to maintain and grow and enhance our global leadership in cybersecurity distribution. So we will maintain that focus,” he said.

Elsewhere, he noted that vendors will rely on partners more during these tough times.

“They will need to rely on the channel more consistently,” he said. “One of the reasons for [relying on] the channel is, they’re in the customers. Our solution provider partners are generally in the end-user customer, every day, most days, certainly every week — and vendors can’t do that. And if they’re having to trim their budgets, then they’ll be able to do that even less. Therefore, they’ll lean the channel even more. I think we’re already seeing that. They need a bit more from the channel and from distribution and we’ve got to be ready to accept that and take it forward.”

Acqusitions On the Cards

The exec reiterated the firm’s focus on growing its presence globally. That could mean more acquisitions on the cards.

“The strategy of the company is to grow both organically and acquisitively,” he said. “We’re continuing to look at acquisition opportunities in in our core markets where they can add more capability, more of what we need.”

Moving forward, he said Exclusive needs to maintain a high level of growth and service and value-add.

“That’s a lot of what I’m looking at the moment — how do we make sure that the business is robust? [For example,], where we need to we add resources and where we need to look at things we can do more of or better. We’ve got a very strong surface capability, but I’m very focused on that being stronger so that we can support our partners even further.”