New North CEO Williams open up on plans to scale through M&A and becoming the UK's 'de facto' IoT player
The channel stalwart opens up to CRN about M&A plans, heading the new entity and what attracted him to his new role
North's new CEO Glen Williams says he plans to expand the IoT and networking VAR's footprint in the UK through acquisitions in a bid to become the "de facto" player in the UK.
Williams has been appointed as the new chief director of the entity that was formed last October by the amalgamation of Pinacl, Boston Networks, 2020 Vision Systems and PEL Systems by their private equity owner Aliter Capital.
His leadership is effective immediately and replaces former chief exec Scott McEwan who will remain with the company as group executive director reporting into Williams.
Williams most recently held the role of CEO at Daisy spin-off Allvotec. He told CRN that there were a number of features that attracted him to the North role, including the approach of Aliter to the market and the fact that he "missed" working with end users.
"There are very few companies out there can go and deliver this whole smart building, smart solution, smart places technology, and IoT and 5G are really exciting places to be in the marketplace at the moment," he stated.
"I've also been very impressed with the private equity backers and their approach and, honestly, I missed end user engagement. I spent a lot of time with systems integrators and channel partners at Allvotec, but I spent a long time in my career selling to end users and I kind of missed that."
Williams is unfazed at the prospect of overseeing a company that was five different companies and cultures until recently. He believes his previous experience heading Damovo and integrating different countries has given him the confidence to continue integrating the teams at North and focus on increasing the brand's exposure in the market.
"But in terms of bringing the five companies together, I don't necessarily find that daunting - that part is relatively straightforward," he said.
"I think getting the story right to our customers - which is something I'm working on with Scott - is actually a challenge. We have to make sure people are really clear about what it is we do and why they should buy from us, so we're currently in the process of collating that story."
Williams intends for North to be seen as the "de facto" IoT solutions provider of choice in the UK, and the firm will require scale in order to achieve that, he said.
Any acquisitions will be more about expanding North's presence rather than bolstering its portfolio, according to the new chief exec.
"We don't necessarily see any gaps in our technology offering, we just need to be a bit bigger," he stated.
"That's really what we're looking for - someone who is a reasonable fit, in terms of doing similar things to us, and we can then apply a lot of the technology solutions that we take out to market to them. We're basically looking for scale."
North has offices in Glasgow, Wales and across the north of England, and Williams hinted that any new purchases will likely be based in the south, a factor that is being taken into consideration as it tries to establish an official head office for the company.
"[Setting up a formal head office] is something that we're going to be looking to try and do because we are going to be looking at buying some organisations," he said.
"We've got offices in Middlesex, Newcastle, North Wales and Scotland, so we need probably a bit more of a presence down south and that's one thing that we're looking at in terms of potential M&A opportunities."