Forging new standards of channel success in the field of IT distribution across Europe: Nuvias Group

The Silicon Review

“Nuvias mission is to provide market-leading products and professional services to enable the channel to deliver business solutions to its customers and success to their business.”

The distribution channel has the prerogative of getting technology products and solutions from the vendor to the business. The chain normally follows this order: vendor to distributor, distributor to reseller or SI, reseller or SI to business. High value-added distributors offer a range of specialist services to help resellers deliver comprehensive solutions to business, including bespoke solution architecting, installation and trouble-shooting, as well as supporting resellers by providing specialist training, 1st and 2nd level post-sales support and ancillary services — from professional marketing, to business analytics, to help them grow their business.

Nuvias Group fits in this High Value-Added Distributor category and is active across Europe, looking to redefine value distribution, in line with the changing market environment and the complexity of the technology landscape. Innovation has brought us variety but also confusion; high value added distributors have the opportunity to educate the channel about where different technologies fit and enable intelligent consultancy to help customers select the most appropriate technology solution for their business requirements. Nuvias was born form the fusion of three specialist, value-added distributors across three areas of specialization, cybersecurity, advanced networking and unified communications. All three companies have proven experience in providing innovative technology solutions from world-class vendors and delivering exceptional market growth. Nuvias Group is redefining international, specialist IT distribution. Working across Europe, the firm has created a platform to deliver a consistent, high value, service-led engagement - ready for the new world of technology supply. This allows their partner and vendor communities access to exceptional business support that enables new standards of channel success.

In conversation with Simon England, CEO Nuvias Group

Q. What was the reason behind the genesis of Nuvias Group? And how did you expand your company and its offerings?

Nuvias is one of a new breed of high-value distributors, addressing the changing needs of channel partners and vendors in a rapidly evolving technology market, moving from products to solutions, tailoring its services in line with the shift in IT consumption and provisioning models. Nuvias operates across Europe, providing channel partners with high-quality solutions, services, and support designed to accelerate their growth. Our deep understanding informs our highly-focused channel engagement of the technology market opportunity, and our full range of flexible services is designed to support channel and vendor partners alike. The Group’s portfolio covers a comprehensive range of IT solutions, with the focus on increasingly mission-critical Cybersecurity, the foundation layer of Advanced Networking, overlaid with Unified Communications, leveraging both. Additionally, Nuvias’ Solution Practices cover Cloud, NextGen Infrastructure, Application Optimization, and Mobility. This approach enables us to provide innovative technology solutions from world-class vendors, delivering rapid and exceptional market growth for channel partners.

Q. Can you brief us about the history of your company?

The Nuvias Group, founded in 2015, brought together award-winning channel businesses across Cybersecurity, Advanced Networking and Unified Communications. The initial phase, integrating these acquisitions as a group between 2015 and 2017, resulted in the creation of Europe’s leading challenger in the high-value distribution landscape. Nuvias Group has 20 regional offices across EMEA, as well as serving additional countries through those offices. Turnover is more than $500 million.

Q. What is your company’s M&V statement?

Nuvias mission is to provide a market-leading range of best-in-class technologies and products to enable the channel to deliver business solutions to its customers and success to their business. Nuvias acts as an integrator for the channel, providing high-quality services designed to accelerate sales growth.

Nuvias vision is to redefine value distribution to the IT channel. We provide services and solutions to enable the channel and vendor community to deliver exceptional business value to customers, enabling a new standard of channel success.

Q. What were the biggest initial hurdles to building your business and how did you overcome them?

Nuvias was built by integrating existing successful businesses, expert in their respective fields. The integration of separate companies to form a new organic business is always a challenging process. It takes strong, engaging leadership and clear objectives communicated to all employees, to ensure cohesive effort and direction. It is crucial to ensure the brand promise is not only recognized and understood by all employees, but that all teams embody the brand through the way they operate, both internally and externally.

Q. What is your greatest fear, and how do you manage to overcome the same?

My greatest fear is losing the edge, personally and/or corporately, as we grow. The way to prevent this from happening is to stay in the challenger mindset, driving proactivity to stretch the envelope and holding opportunity creation as a core value, recognizing and rewarding extra-mile engagement and new ideas driving impact.

Q. What would you say are the top three skills needed to be a successful CEO?

Leadership: anticipating change, creating a journey and an experience others want to be part of, then driving strategies and execution to get there first.

Integrity and Accountability: being fair and predictable, accountable to a set of values, helping to inspire the same in others.

Team focus: building teams, winning and retaining key talent, creating an environment that engages and empowers team members in and outside of the company.

The preeminent leader behind the success of Nuvias Group

Simon England serves as the Chief Executive Officer of the Nuvias Group. He has a remarkable, wide-spanning career in IT Value-Added Distribution. Simon England is leading Nuvias into the next phase of its growth and development, leveraging its service-led and solution-rich platform and completing its vision to become Europe’s leading high-value IT distributor, by accelerating growth for partners.

He has developed and led businesses in the IT Value-Added Distribution space for almost 30 years. In his previous role, England led the development of new business segments and models for Tech Data, as SVP Next Generation Technologies, after significantly expanding the company’s value businesses, under the Azlan, Datech, and Maverick brands across Europe, as SVP Value Added Business. England joined as CEO for Nuvias in March 2019.