Misco in bid to transform business

Misco has opened up about how it is restructuring its organisation as part of an effort to lose its ‘box shifter’ label and establish a services and solutions-led business.

The reseller states it wants to increase its services offering – currently only two percent of the business – to twenty percent.

“We want to be proactive in services and solutions, rather than just using it as a way of leveraging more hardware sales,” Andrew Pitkethly, technical solutions and services manager UK & IE at Misco tells Channel Pro.

Pitkethly says Misco has implemented a series of changes to its sales organisation, including altering its compensation plans to make them more solutions and services-focused. This, he says, is part of an effort to change the conversation with customers, “to push our way up through procurement into C-level, board-room conversations.”

He also says the firm is looking at developing more annuity-based business, citing the acquisition of Phoenix’s Cisco business – Misco is currently undergoing the vendor’s Gold [partner] audit – and more recently the purchase of SCC’s services business in Holland.

“Financially we’re in really good shape, our US parent totally understands the need for change, and they’ve heavily backed us. Almost all of the transformation we’ve been doing has been done,” says Pitkethly.

“We’re two years in at the moment [and] we’ve reached our inflection point. We’ve made all the painful changes to the business and now we’ve got to deliver.”

However Pitkethly admits changing customers’ perceptions of Misco as a just a transactional business is a challenge. He notes: “Over the last few years I watched the likes of Softcat, and how they’ve grown. But what I find interesting when I speak to customers, their perception of Softcat and how it differs from us. But we’re both just volume resellers, but Softcat’s done an awful lot in how they put themselves in front of customers, the conversations they’re having. It makes a lot of sense for us to do something similar.”

He adds: “The investment’s been made, the restructure’s been done, everything’s in place – now’s the time we need to get out there, get under our customers’ skin.”