David Dicker (Dicker Data)
The boss of distribution giant Dicker Data has revealed his plans to push the company towards a record A$2 billion revenue this year despite planning only one year ahead.
David Dicker, whose company bears his namesake, expects the distributor to double its half-yearly revenue for its end of financial year amid the COVID-19 pandemic by simply just doing "what we expect to be able to do".
Speaking to ARN, Dicker claimed the distributor’s recent success has come by not looking too far into the future, planning ahead mostly 12 months in advance.
“The way our company works is that we basically project the year ahead on a month by month basis,” he said. “We've already projected out those numbers, so all we’ve got to do is achieve it.”
Strategy execution
With the goal of doubling the A$1 billion revenue seen in its HY20 results, Dicker Data isn’t varying its investment plans too much to reach it, with the CEO saying the distributor is taking the same steps it has always done – improving efficiency, customer service and its vendor count.
The distributor is actively moving on vendor count, with it adding 10 vendors to its portfolio by the end of its half year for 2020, four of which were Veeam, Heimdal Security, Five Faces and Cohesity.
“Most of it hinges around execution, because we've got competitors, and we've always had competitors – we've been fighting these guys for over 20 years,” Dicker said.
“The key to success there is to have a better strategy and execute better. All that’s pretty easy to talk about, but it's not quite so easy to do.”
For that execution, working from home has played a major part. It wasn’t a concern for the CEO though, as it always had the capability for remote working but it wasn’t overly important for the distributor up until this year.
“We already had a good set up in regard to being able to work from home, so most of our systems could slide into that easily. From an operational standpoint, it's not such a big change,” Dicker said.
“You do everything with the computer, and it doesn't make a real lot of difference if the cable's 10 metres long or 10 kilometres long.”
The CEO is also looking to expand its global footprint past Australia and New Zealand, but didn’t share any details, referring to that particular plan as “a work in progress”.
Keeping concerns
While Dicker Data has found success throughout 2020, its CEO isn’t complacent about its current situation amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We're going well, and I'm happy with the way we're going, but I wouldn't say I wasn't concerned. I am concerned because when this whole thing started I figured that if we were back to normal by September, everything would be okay,” Dicker said.
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