Business Environment of Softcat plc

BUSINESS ENVIRONMENT

TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
TASK 1............................................................................................................................................3
Company overview......................................................................................................................3
Organisational structure...............................................................................................................4
Corporate governance..................................................................................................................5
TASK 2............................................................................................................................................6
Importance of PESTLE Analysis for Softcat plc.........................................................................6
TASK 3............................................................................................................................................7
Political factors............................................................................................................................7
Economic factors.........................................................................................................................8
Social factors...............................................................................................................................9
Technological factors...................................................................................................................9
Legal factors..............................................................................................................................10
Environmental factors................................................................................................................10
CONCLUSION..............................................................................................................................11
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................12

INTRODUCTION
Business environment refers to all the internal and external factors that directly and
indirectly impact the operation, activities, function and decisions of an organisation. These
factors are employees, supply and demand, customers, clients, vendors and suppliers,
government, market and social trends, economic conditions, environment, legalities and politics,
innovations that come with technology, internal management, competition etc (Čepel and et.al.,
2018). This report will aim to evaluate the business environment of the organisation Softcat plc,
which is an IT infrastructure provider established in 1993 and headquartered in Marlow,
Buckinghamshire. The report will provide a general overview of Softcat plc by elaborating
history, corporate governance and organisational structure. The significance of macro
environment analysis tool Pestle will be elaborated and will be applied on Softcat plc to assess
all six dimension and the potential and current threats and opportunities.
TASK 1
Company overview
Softcat plc is a UK based company that deals in IT infrastructure provision services and
is headquartered in Marlow, Buckinghamshire. It was founded in 1993 by Peter Kelly and has
multiple office branches i.e. 9 offices across UK in London, Manchester, Glasgow, Bristol,
Southampton, Birmingham and one branch in Dublin, Ireland. The company constitutes as the
FTSE 250 Index and is also listed on the London Stock Exchange. The present CEO of the
company is Graeme Watt, the chairman is Martin Hellawell and the chief financial officer is
Graham Charlton and works with more than 1500 employees. The total revenue of the company
is £1078 million and operating income of more than £ 94 million as of 2020 (Companies house,
2020).
The company was initially established as Wardswift in 1993 with business name software
catalogue. Martin Hellawell was appointed as the managing director in 2005 and the soon the
company shifted its headquarter to Marlow. In 2015, the company subjected to initial public
offering on the London Stock Exchange (Annual report, 2020). The products that are offered by
the IT infrastructure company range from software licensing, data centre, networking to cloud
based computing and security. It also provides IT intelligence, digital workspace and Hybrid
infrastructure. The company works with blue chip companies like Dell technologies, Microsoft,
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Apple, Citrix, VMware, Cisco etc. The most significant product that earns the company its
highest revenue is the software, which comprises of around half its revenue (Softcat plc, 2020).
Organisational structure
The organisational structure refers to the system which outlines various functions and
activities off an organisation which are directed in a specific manner for attainment of the
objectives and goals of the organisation. The organisation defines a particular hierarchy of
structure which elaborates the job role of employees and a layout of the overall organisation and
authorities. There are various kinds of organisational structures, like linear structures, functional
structures, flatarchy structure, divisional structure and matrix structure. Softcat plc operates on a
functional organisational structure (Raziq and et.al., 2020).
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CEO
Sales and
Marketing
Operations and IT
services Human resources Finance
International and
national dealings
Software
development
Operations
department
Customer service
Procurement