Services drives Computacenter's growth

(By Anthony Miller – Wednesday, 29th April 2009 8:30am). Although its products business has been “challenged” this year, Computacenter’s services business has marched forwards in all geographies. In today’s IMS (see here) Computacenter reported 6% UK services revenue growth against a 12% overall revenue decline. Germany and France showed similar trends, with 4% and 13% services revenue growth respectively (at constant currency) against a 1% and 8% total revenue decline (also ccy). This will surely push services gross profit closer to – if not above – the 50% level (see Services nearly half of Computacenter’s gross profit). It looks to be a tough Q2 as well, with revenues down yoy so far, although the later Easter was mostly to blame.

I met up with CEO Mike Norris very recently and he put me straight on the role services plays in their go-to-market. I understand that well over 50% of Computacenter’s business is services-led, with product resale increasing playing the role of ‘add-on’ business. This is a terrific result and shows the pay-off of ‘sticking to the knitting’ with infrastructure-related services offerings. I’ll also be meeting next week with Mark Howling, formerly Digica’s CEO (see Farewell to Digica) and now in charge of all of Computacenter’s UK services and solutions business, so hope to bring you more then.