Role: CEO, Creative ITC
What’s been your business high point of the last 12 months?
Winning and beginning delivery on some of the most complex global infrastructure programmes we have ever taken on, particularly our work with CB&I. This was not only a major commercial win; it proved that the investment we have made in our people, platform and international capability can stand up to a very demanding global customer environment.
Name one thing your company is looking to achieve in 2026
Turning progress into performance. We have changed and grown a lot over the last couple of years, from our platform and tooling to our international footprint. This year is about making that change feel more consistent for our customers and more scalable for our people.
What keeps you awake at night as a partner leader?
Complacency. In managed services, you can build a great customer relationship over years and damage it very quickly if your service drops when it matters most. We have to keep challenging ourselves on resilience, communication, accountability, and the quality of the customer experience.
Is AI being over hyped?
Yes and no. It is definitely being over sold in some places, where every tool suddenly has AI attached to it, whether it adds real value or not. But the underlying impact is not over hyped at all. AI will fundamentally change how technology businesses operate, how services are delivered and how customers expect to engage with us. The key is moving beyond the demos and applying it to real problems.
What’s been your most successful internal AI project to date, and why?
Our most successful internal AI project to date is NEO, which we have deployed as the pre and post ticket triage and classification engine within our service desk. It classifies tickets and routes them to the right resolver group far more quickly and consistently than a manual process alone. It has sped that part of our service desk operation up by around five times, which means customers get to the right technical team faster and our engineers spend less time moving tickets around or correcting routing mistakes.
What I like about NEO is that it is not AI for the sake of it. It solves a very real operational problem at scale, improves the customer experience, and gives our people more time to focus on resolving issues rather than administering them.
Can you share a surprising prediction about how UK IT channel partners or the UK IT channel will evolve over the next five years?
I think a large part of the traditional MSP model will disappear. The businesses that mainly resell licences, provide generic support, and make money from adding more people will struggle. The winners will be more specialised, more automated, and far more accountable for business outcomes. They will look less like outsourced IT helpdesks and more like technology operators for the sectors they serve.
Which tech gizmo, hardware or software, could you not function without?
My iPhone. I use an iPhone Mini – which I still love, but my eyes are not quite what they used to be – and I effectively run a large part of the business from my phone. It is my office, communications hub, travel assistant, and second brain.
So, I am very eagerly awaiting the day Apple brings out an iPhone Fold. The idea of having a proper working screen in my pocket feels like it has been made for people like me.
Which three famous people, dead or alive, would you invite to a dinner party?
Gordon Ramsay, Muhammad Ali and Jürgen Klopp.
Ramsay would make sure the food was incredible, although I would probably be nervous about offering an opinion on it. Muhammad Ali for the confidence, humour and stories. And Klopp because, as a Liverpool supporter, I would love to hear how he built belief, culture and togetherness in a team under huge pressure.
I think it would be a great night: good food, good stories, plenty of opinions, and no chance of an early finish.
If you had a warning label, what would it say?
Impatient with excuses. Very patient with effort.
Which tech figurehead has impressed you the most this year, and why?
Jensen Huang. It is easy to focus on Nvidia’s commercial success, but what impresses me most is the long-term conviction behind it. He has spent years building towards a future that much of the market is only now properly understanding. He also has a rare ability to make an incredibly technical subject feel relevant to business leaders, not just engineers.
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