Charterhouse Group’s new CEO has insisted it has “all the building blocks” it requires as he prioritises building a single proposition at the £70m-revenue MSP.
Mike Wardell was made CEO of London-based Microsoft, Check Point, 8×8 and Mitel partner Charterhouse last month after 18 months heading up fellow August Equity portfolio company Business Systems.
Talking to IT Channel Oxygen, Wardell claimed Charterhouse “isn’t missing anything from either a talent or product set perspective”.
“It’s how do we build a proposition where it’s a single proposition that we go to market with,” Wardell said.
“We’re still going to market as separate brands a little bit,” Wardell added, referring to the group’s Pentesec, Symity and Charterhouse brands, which focus on managed security, Microsoft Teams and UC, LAN and managed services, respectively.
“I knew I’d want to go and do another CEO role”
Former Giacom CEO Wardell officially now has two jobs as he juggles running Charterhouse with a new Executive Chairman role at Business Systems.
Contact centre specialist Business Systems nearly runs itself after Wardell split it into two businesses (focused on reselling contact centre solutions, and its own Wordwatch compliance software, respectively), each with their own MD, he indicated.
“I am still leading that business, but more from a distance,” he said.
“Me sitting outside of it probably works well – you probably don’t want two MDs and a CEO for a £20m business.”
August Equity approached Wardell to run Charterhouse, he revealed.
“I’d just got [Business Systems] to a point where it’s steady, with a bit of an easier work-life balance,” he recalled.
“So you look back [and think] ‘why the hell would you do that?’ [become CEO of another company], especially as summer’s coming up… but I do genuinely think this is a really good business.
“I knew I’d want to go and do another CEO role, I just didn’t expect it to be 18 months after the previous one.
“But the opportunity within Charterhouse is pretty big. It’s got a wide portfolio of products. It seems to play with some strong vendors and have some good relationships.”
Another of Wardell’s priorities is pinning down its customer sweet spots rather than attempting to be “all things to all people”.
“We seem to play very well in the enterprise space and upper midmarket,” he said, pinpointing financial services, legal services, professional services, retail and travel & leisure among Charterhouse’s key verticals.
“There’s still work to do there,” he said.
“Not a good idea to smash more acquisitions on top”
Despite making a string of acquisitions a few years back, Charterhouse’s growth in its year to 31 March 2024 was entirely organic. Revenues rose 6% to £73.3m , ranking it 70th in Oxygen 250.
So will Charterhouse remain in organic growth mode under Wardell?
“I think that’s right for where we are,” he responded.
“Probably not dissimilar to other businesses who’ve made lots of acquisitions and got loads of skills and expertise, it’s now a case of how do you optimise them and get them working together?
“I’m only a month in, but it doesn’t feel like a good idea to try to smash more acquisitions on the top until we’ve got clarity on where we want to go.”
Wardell’s first task was to spend time with Charterhouse’s 200-strong team.
“Within the heads of the people in the organisation, I believe we’ve got all the ideas and solutions,” he said.
“I’ve been really keen not to jump in and say ‘here’s a lot of answers; here’s what I think’, and instead try and canvas as many people as I can to get an insight on how we see ourselves internally and externally, and what the opportunity is.
‘’Especially while the market’s quite disrupted by AI and various other things, I look at it and think this is a great opportunity to build an incredible business.”
Doug Woodburn is editor of IT Channel Oxygen
