Rob Tomlin has revealed his three big priorities as Exclusive Networks’ new UK&I MD as he admitted he thought he was “done with distribution”.
Tomlin quit as Dell’s UK channel boss to take up his new role at the €5bn-sales, Paris-headquartered VAD late last month.
Distribution was not on his radar when he began to weigh up his next move, the former SDG and TD Synnex exec conceded, however.
“At the start of last year I was thinking about what was next for me, and I decided I wanted to go back to running a company. Do I go and run a big VAR, or another vendor?,” Tomlin told IT Channel Oxygen.
“There were a few senior people I spoke to about roles, and one of them was [Exclusive Networks SVP EMEA] Paul Eccleston. He said ‘I’m doing two jobs and I want someone to come and replace me in the UK’.
“At that point I hadn’t thought about going back to distribution. I thought I was done with distribution, for many reasons. I love distribution, but you don’t get a lot of autonomy and are playing the play script.
“But when we went through all the tick boxes about what I wanted in my next job in my career, Exclusive very quickly became the obvious choice.”
Tomlin’s targets
Tomlin unveiled three priorities for the role, which sees him helming a UK business with over 250 staff and revenues exceeding £550m.
The first is to help partners exploit the market opportunity in cyber.
“You’re going to see a lot of activity from Exclusive around helping partners pinpoint opportunities. We’ve got some big plans around market expansion for our partners,” he said.
The second is to emulate what the likes of Softcat have done at a partner level by luring fresh talent into the cyber industry, Tomlin said.
“We all know what Softcat does for the IT industry in hiring the most graduates and apprentices in the market. It’s on us as the largest player in the [cybersecurity distribution] market to make sure we are fuelling the cyber economy of tomorrow by working with universities, colleges and vendors to identify talent for the future,” he said.
“We expect to do some big things there. So it’s a big priority for me. I won’t get it done in a week, but we’re going to start work on it this year.”
Tomlin’s final focus area is to act on vendor feedback and beef up its services repertoire, which Tomlin claimed other big distributors have “shied away from” due to the investment required.
“We are a fully invested services company that has a 24×7 NOC, 24×7 SOC, and a 100-people-plus services team, and we only plan on growing that,” he said.
“The buck stops with me”
Tomlin contrasted Exclusive with other international distributors, where, he claimed, swift decision-making is stymied by reporting lines.
“One thing that’s very important for me is that the buck stops with me. If we want to give a credit decision, I can look the partner in the eye and commit to them there and then,” he said.
“We have the autonomy to make those decisions daily, and for a company our size, that just doesn’t normally happen.”
Tomlin’s new role fulfils his resolution to take on a job in either the cyber or AI industry, he added.
“I looked at cyber, and I looked at AI. I wasn’t overly keen just to go and look in an AI-only industry, as there are so many bubbles happening there,” he said.
“But a good amount of what’s happening in the growth of cyber is because of AI, because AI is creating so much data and so much security risk for bad actors.”
Eccleston said he expects the UK and European cyber-security market to grow between 10% and 15% over the next year.
“This is a great moment for the UK now we’ve got a full-time dedicated MD for the UK and Ireland,” he said.
“The opportunities in the market are huge – cyber is one of the most exciting segments in the IT market and we’ve got a great portfolio of vendors who are growing ahead of the market.”
Exclusive CEO Jesper Trolle last month claimed the Paris-listed VAD’s expectation-busting full-year 2023 results “show that our model is scalable”.
Tomlin concluded: “I really enjoy running high-growth businesses that have a three to five-year plan to probably double or triple their business, and it’s all focused on hiring and building things that are unique.”
Doug Woodburn is editor of IT Channel Oxygen
