Davies gets CEO role at Maintel

Maintel has confirmed that Dan Davies has been appointed as chief executive officer (CEO) with immediate effect after showing his ability as an interim boss over the past year.

Davies took on the interim CEO role last February. He was previously, from 2020, chief technology officer (CTO) and an executive director, and has held several other roles since joining the business back in 2014.

Davies has been in the hot seat at a time when the managed services provider (MSP) is navigating away from being a generalist to focus on key areas, including unified communications and collaboration, customer experience, security and connectivity.

He has also been steering the firm through a relaunch of the Maintel brand, which happened in November, to underline the refocusing of the strategy.

Davies welcomed his appointment and referred to the work that had already been done over the past year.

“It is an exciting time for Maintel, and over the past year we have made good progress in transforming both our market positioning and our offering, which I believe puts us in an even stronger position to support our customers to service their managed service needs,” he said.

Speaking to MicroScope last November, Davies said he had enjoyed being interim CEO and hoped he would get the position permanently because he felt he could bring strong leadership to the role and understood the importance of the strategy and shared the vision for the future direction of the MSP.

“I’ve absolutely loved it,” he said. “I guess, for many years, I’ve always been a bit of a frustrated chief exec. I’ve always been quite business focused.”

Having studied IT business at university, Davies has always had a combination of technical and commercial skills.

“It’s always been, for me, about the business,” he said. “I’ve built a career on helping translate that complexity for our customers so they can really understand the value they’re going to get.

“It’s been great. I think what’s helped is that a lot of the heavy lifting from a CTO perspective was done at the beginning of 2023, when we did that whole strategy review piece,” added Davies.

“Yes, it needs an eye keeping on it and steering in the right direction, but I’ve been able to throw myself wholeheartedly into the interim chief exec role.”

Maintel is continuing the search for an independent non-executive chairman to support the executive team and has indicated it will provide an update on that front “in due course”.

Clare Bates, senior independent director and chair of the nomination committee, said it viewed Davies as the ideal choice as CEO.

“Dan has been instrumental in the ongoing transformation of the company, and his shared values and deep knowledge of the business and its broader markets position him strongly to drive Maintel forward on its long-term growth strategy and to take on the many opportunities available to the company in its journey as a leading managed services provider,” she said.

Maintel shared a trading update for the year to 31 December 2024 at the end of last month, showing signs of progress with the transformation strategy.

Those who follow the company’s fortunes closely will have been monitoring the strategy to move away from being a generalist to a business focused on its three key areas. The trading update included signs that the plan was delivering, with 79% of all bookings coming from those key areas.