Channel Awards 2024: Q&A with Carl Bagshaw, ECS Resource Group

Carl Bagshaw, managing director of IT channel & RaaS at ECS Resource Group talks about the company’s wins and priorities in 2024 after the company was shortlisted for the CRN Channel Awards

Carl Bagshaw, managing director of IT channel & RaaS at ECS Resource Group, has been shortlisted as a finalist in this year's Channel Awards. With a wealth of experience in the IT channel, Bagshaw has played a key role in helping partners navigate challenges in talent acquisition and managed services.

In this Q&A, Bagshaw discusses the current trends shaping the channel, the growing role of Recruitment-as-a-Service (RaaS), and what being a CRN Channel Awards finalist means for ECS Resource Group. He also shares insights on the future of the channel and how the company is positioning itself for continued success.

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

CB: After working tirelessly to be a partner of choice for many organisations, we can shout about our success through our own media channels, but being recognised by a CRN adds so much more value and hopefully proves to the wider channel community that ECS are a true partner who adds real value to every client we work with.

This is the first time ECS have entered for an award and having lived in an industry that seems to recognise the ‘big players’, winning “Channel Partner of the year – Support” would be a fantastic achievement and recognition for every single person who works so hard to make ECS what it is today.

CRN: What would you say is your company’s proudest achievement over the past year?

CB: Obviously working with the clients we do is testament to the value RaaS brings to our channel partners, but our proudest achievement has been where our clients have taken the RaaS offering and productised it into their own Resource solution. Seeing companies of this stature taking our solution to market has been an extremely proud period for ECS, and further proves that the benefits of what we are offering is something our clients believe in.

CRN: What have been the biggest challenges of 2024 so far and how have you overcome them? How have your people helped with that?

CB: 2024 has been a very tough year for all industries, a lot of that is driven by budget constrains from customers. People are the key to any successful business so there will always be resource opportunities available, and our RaaS framework helps identify these opportunities and diversify our channel clients traditional service offerings they provide to their customers.

CRN: How do you think the channel has changed over the past year and what changes do you think it still needs to make?

CB: Every year the channel takes positive steps forward, for me we need to continue the partner collaboration and work collectively to overcome business challenges, technology advancement and ultimately ensuring we continue to support end customers in the journey of growth and enhancement Our RaaS offering is constantly under review in order to keep up. RaaS v2.0 was released recently, seeing improved sales engagement and data provided. RaaS v3.0 is already being worked on.

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

CB: Personally, for ECS its simple, we want to continue to grow our market presence by continuously enhancing our go to market RaaS proposition and providing new clients within the channel the opportunity to increase revenue through customer lead IT resource opportunities.