Sophie James - stock.adobe.com
Exclusive Networks UK boss looking for growth
Recently installed country manager shares his thoughts about how he can make an impact at the distributor
It has been a couple of months since Adam Williamson stepped into the UK country manager role at Exclusive Networks with ambitions to tap into the opportunities that continue to exist in the market.
Williamson was given the opportunity to lead the country after the distie promoted Rob Tomlin to handle the Northern European region. He is no stranger to the business, having worked in various roles over a 16-year career with Exclusive, and for the best part of the past decade was UK sales director at the channel player.
It is an interspersing time to take the helm, with the market dynamics and customer expectations changing as a result of artificial intelligence (AI) and increased security threats.
“Go back in recent history, people told me distribution was going to die, and don’t get me wrong, hardware requirements are reducing, for obvious reasons, but the value that distribution can add and the scale that we can then drive the acceleration for vendors to get their technology into the hands of those end customers, that value is still needed,” he said.
Williamson added that the challenge was to keep partners updated on the market and in a position to take the latest vendor offerings to market, “helping our partners to navigate through that, helping them stay current on the latest and greatest from the portfolio, but ultimately then being that technical backup to them”.
The foundations of the business in the UK are strong, but he’s keen to make his own mark on the organisation and take the channel player forward.
“We’ve got to be very true to ourselves on where we improve and what our next steps are,” said Williamson. “How we deploy better tooling, etc. When you go for a role like this, it’s because you think that you can do something.”
Fine-tuning existing systems
A lot of the immediate focus is on fine-tuning existing systems to make sure they can provide the best levels of support to both partners and vendors.
“We know that there’s an absolute need for distribution to deliver customer success on behalf of the vendors and the partners – the job of ourselves and our partners is to work it backwards,” said Williamson. “There’s a problem there and we know there’s a solution at the vendor, and we’ve got to connect that. If we’re going to do that, we’ve got to transform it along the way.
“The next three months are going to be exciting,” he added. “The next year is going to be exciting. The next five years is going to be … You will see a real enhancement of what Exclusive Networks is known for.”
Having moved back into private ownership, the firm has the advantage of being able to plan on longer timescales without the pressure of meeting the quarterly pressure from the markets. “The value creation that we’re looking at over the next five years is going to be something really special,” said Williamson. “I truly believe it. But the key bits that we see moving forwards is development of our services to become a customer success engine.”
He said that the past few years had seen the business react to demands for more flexible payment options with its XPS launch, and that it would continue to look at ways it could help partners ease customer problems, most notably with AI.
“We’ve got to understand who’s using it, what data they’ve put on whatever platform they might be using, whether it’s ChatGPT, whether it’s something like Copilot that’s already within the organisation, whatever that might look like, whatever the model is, they need to make sure that they are looking at the data, protecting that data,” said Williamson. “Security isn’t here to stop people being productive. It’s there to enable them to safely be productive or more productive.”
With demand for security continuing, the challenges of AI changing the demands on the channel and the emergence of fresh solutions in the year ahead will be a busy one for Williamson. “It goes without saying that our vendors and our customers are of utmost importance to us,” he said. “I absolutely want to be present with them. I’m going to make it clear I am here for Exclusive people as well.”
