Core BTS CRO: ‘We’re Going To Be A Force To Be Reckoned With’

‘Traditionally we were one solution, or one type of capability, around service. What you’re going to see is more of a land-and-expand approach where we’re going to be more expansive and provide more value to our current clients,’ CoreBTS CRO Irwin Teodoro tells CRN.

Irwin Teodoro believes Indianapolis, Ind.-based Core BTS is on an upward trajectory and will be “a force to be reckoned with” in the IT industry.

“Once we put our message out there and we start delivering on it, you’re going to see more of this consulting-led organization that can back it up with the execution around infrastructure, consulting and more,” Teodoro, who joined Core BTS as its CRO in January, told CRN.

In the newly created role, Teodoro will head all sales and marketing efforts and report to Kevin Thimjon, who recently took over as CEO. Thimjon previously was the solution provider’s CFO, a position now held by Eric Weber.

“We’re not laying people off, we’re actually doing the opposite,” Teodoro said. “It’s really refreshing. We’re close to a 900-person company now and I see us definitely exceeding that next year.”

Prior to joining Core BTS, which is No. 161 on CRN’s 2022 Solution Provider 500 list, Teodoro spent 11 years at Insight Enterprises leading consulting, delivery and sales. Most recently, he served as the vice president for Insight’s central region.

CRN spoke to Teodoro about his new role, positioning the company for a possible economic recession and where Core BTS will see the most growth this year.

What attracted you to Core BTS?

It’s just the culture first. They have an amazing culture with amazing talent, and the capabilities are amazing as well. I have built several businesses over my career from scratch and knowing that, coming into Core BTS, I had all these capabilities, and that type of talent they had was so refreshing. It’s a matter of connecting the dots because over the last few years, we’ve gone on a pretty ambitious growth strategy through acquisition. So it’s a matter of refining it, not so much retooling it, because I think all the tools are there. It’s putting it all together in one solution portfolio that we could go to market with and show the community how different we are through all these capabilities. It’s culture, the capability and the growth mindset. There’s a saying we have here called ‘Committed to Excellence’ and I really love that because it’s about doing the right thing to help the company and people grow, and that’s really compelling to me.

Let’s talk about a recession. How are you helping position the business to sustain a possible economic downturn?

I think it’s to become very consulting-driven and consulting-oriented. Whenever you’re facing these kinds of headwinds in our industry, our clients try to do more with less. So trying to pivot to a more consulting-driven approach really helps us. A lot of our clients are looking for that help, maybe instead of refreshing or moving somewhere they’re saying, ‘How can we do it better and more efficiently and optimize it with what we have?’ We’re not really seeing as much right now, but I think what’s going on [is similar to] the pandemic. People overbought or there were supply chain issues. Knowing what the pandemic would bring in terms of people being remote, there was just a blast of opportunity in infrastructure. It was just a great last couple of years from that perspective because some of my clients used to tell us, ‘I bought 10 years of consulting and solutions from you in a two-year time frame.’ So I think you’re just seeing more of a recalibration in some respects. To your point, we have to be ready for it but it’s really through our consulting-driven approach.

Where do you think customers will have the most IT spend this year?

There’s three areas. Certainly security cannot and will never be ignored. IT security is probably synonymous with cloud leading the way. I think the other part is cloud transformation. Where we’re at today with cloud is now, ‘I’m in the cloud, what do I do? How do I optimize it? How do I manage it?’ You’re really starting to see a lot of effort in modernizing, optimizing and automating cloud. That aligns really well with our strategy. When we kicked off our year, those were the things we talked about—how to make best use of our security portfolio, how do we maximize our capabilities in data center transformation and cloud transformation.

Another thing is data at the edge. What you’re seeing now is a lot of organizations, whatever industry they’re in, are looking at how to make best use of the data where it’s generated.

Those are all things that Core BTS is poised for. We have all those capabilities through the acquisitions we’ve made and some of the heritage capabilities we have.

You mentioned acquisitions, do you have a strategy for M&A?

We definitely have a team devoted to it and we have an executive that is constantly looking at it. We’re always looking for the right fit. For us right now it’s looking at the last four or five we’ve made over the last three years. The portfolio is purpose-built with the acquisitions we’ve made, so now it’s finding the right pieces to fit. We’re always looking out for a security company and organizations that fill a void in our base. Really where the acquisition for us is happening is through additional people. Last year we had 40-plus reps, we’ve grown that to almost 70 since then, and we’re on a goal to add another 25 by the first half of this year. You can’t have the capability without the consultants, so we’re equally as aggressive on the hiring front as well. But we’ll always keep on the prowl. We’re always looking at organizations and I think it’s looking at something that fits a gap, something that is culturally a fit and operationally and financially sound. That’s really the approach we’re taking right now.

Where do you think Core BTS will see the most revenue this year?

I believe it’s going to be in the hybrid solutions area. The reason being is what we’re doing now is we’re taking all these great ingredients and building the perfect cake to go to market with. It’s literally building a portfolio that’s modular where we start with an assessment, we start with a discovery and we start with an analysis of a complex problem. Then we get down to the planning execution through consulting or through additional solutions, and then try to end with another service. The biggest opportunity for us today is to really leverage what were calling ‘cross-sell and emotion.’ We’re incenting our sales staff to bring in somebody that may not have the background, or the specialty in, and partner with them to be better together. We’re trying to execute on a cross-sell approach to drive more hybrid solutions for our clients. So I think hybrid is a big space, and data center transformation and cloud transformation.

What can we expect to see in terms of growth for Core BTS this year?

What you’re going to see is more portfolio share, wallet share, for our clients. Traditionally we were one solution, or one type of capability, around service. What you’re going to see is more of a land-and-expand approach where we’re going to be more expansive and provide more value to our current clients. In turn it will attract more clients because of that versatility. Our growth area is going to be the ability to combine a very consultative approach with that execution piece, which is very difficult to find in the marketplace. We feel we have a really strong competitive value and advantage in that. We’ve accumulated the strengths around consulting, and it’s now time to put it all together to have a really competitive differentiator.